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The Regeneration and Facilities Management (FM) research programme brought together different disciplines, focused on engaging with communities of people and organisations to transfer good practice to public sector services management. It included seven members of staff, five PhD students, five grant-funded research projects, RAE2008 funded PhD projects and other non-grant projects; employing applied or action research approaches in working closely with organisations for the development and implementation of research outputs.
The theme of community engagement and empowerment has resulted in organisational policy changes, improved social sustainability and continuing professional development; changing practice in public service management and strategy development.
This case study details the research undertaken in the Built Environment Research Institute (BERI), Centre for Research on Property and Planning concerning the interrelationships across regeneration, value creation and innovative funding mechanisms. Outputs have impacted at the property market and regeneration policy levels with benefit arising from benchmarking of performance, enhanced transparency, changed perceptions of regeneration areas with increased appreciation of innovative vehicles for regeneration and infrastructure delivery. The underpinning research has been published in leading journals and launched at keynote events organised by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Investment Property Forum (IPF).
Housing and regeneration programmes both in the UK and internationally have struggled to have lasting impacts upon the places where they are enacted. The University of Glasgow's research and learning programme, GoWell, has worked across a wide range of policy sectors together to improve the circumstances of deprived communities. Specifically, GoWell has: supported the framing of strategy and policy objectives around social regeneration and health outcomes; assisted the definition and understanding of policy problems, such as around the link between `overprovision' of alcohol outlets and local crime rates; proposed the design of new policy instruments such as the Scottish Neighbourhood Quality Standard; and contributed to the monitoring and evaluation of policy implementation by showing how health and wellbeing indicators could be used to measure responsiveness to residential change.
Chik Collins's research on the effects of neo-liberal policies on working class communities in contemporary Scotland has contributed to important changes and benefits beyond academia. It has supported community, third sector, professional and trade union organisations in developing appropriate strategies for action. Oxfam Scotland has used the research extensively in reconfiguring its UK Poverty Programme, and has instigated a Partnership with UWS to enhance this development. Public health professionals grappling with Scotland's lagging health outcomes have used the work in shifting their focus towards underlying causes and in reassessing prevailing public health interventions focused on `health behaviours'.
As a direct result of methodological research led by Professor Ray Pawson at Leeds, `realist evaluation' has provided a new lens through which to assess and develop social programmes. It has critically changed the apparatus of evidenced-based policy and the way in which policy research is commissioned and utilised. Through advisory work, training package provision, partnership-research and professional exchange, this `realist' perspective has formed a new standard in social programme evaluation, and is used by commissioners in the UK and internationally to frame their interventions across policy domains, including education, environment, criminal justice, and health and social care.
Traditionally seaside towns have been one of the least understood of Britain's `problem areas'. Research by Beatty and Fothergill in the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) has broken new ground by developing and applying methodologies to assemble systematic evidence on the population and economy of seaside towns, dispelling myths about their decline, providing more subtle view of trends around the coast, documenting economic growth as well as unemployment, and highlighting the diversity of local experience. Impact has been achieved through the dissemination of findings and the provision of advice and guidance to government, policy makers and politicians. The major beneficiaries of this research have been policy makers and politicians in central and local government.
Research at the Centre for Urban Policy Studies (CUPS) at the University of Manchester (UoM) has contributed significantly to the improvement and targeting of resources to deprived urban areas. Through the development of a matrix approach, this work has both informed and transformed the UK Government's `deprivation index', the measure used to direct resources to areas most in need. More recently, a functional typology for use in the classification of deprived neighbourhoods has been developed. This was subsequently used by central government, local authorities and city-regions to better inform the nature and scope of regeneration initiatives.
The Open-Air Laboratories (OPAL) project was funded by a £14.4 million grant from The Big Lottery Fund and represented one of the largest public participation initiatives in environmental research projects ever. The Grenfell-Baines School of Architecture, Construction and Environment (the unit of assessment, UoA) was one of nine academic partners to benefit from this funding (see REF 5a). OPAL was led at the UoA by Toogood (Principal Investigator) from 2007 to 2013. This project has positively impacted society's awareness of the natural environment and inspired over half a million people to explore their environment through active engagement. OPAL has also positively changed the way environmental teachers, scientists and other professionals, view and discharge their duties.
The Change Management Consortium (CMC) is a collaborative network of academics and organizations seeking to improve knowledge and practice on staff engagement in the strategic implementation of change. Research done at the University of Bath has helped organizational members of the CMC internally to improve employee trust and to build commitment to change. The CMC provides member organizations (including: Aviva, Ernst & Young, GKN, GlaxoSmithKline, Kraft Foods, the Ministry of Defence and T-Mobile) with opportunities to utilise highly relevant research findings in order to create cross-organizational dialogues on improving practice. The broad aim of the research is to move from strategies for change based on alignment with management requirements, to strategies for change informed by employee engagement. One of the CMC members, Her Majesty's Revenue and Custom's (HMRC) provides a specific case example of the benefits of this research, which led to acknowledged improvements in trust and employee engagement.
The research and evaluation work carried out on public art and cultural regeneration that took place in the School of Built Environment and Engineering at Leeds Metropolitan University (2003-2013) has resulted in the production of a range of public art strategies and plans for local authorities and government agencies and organisations. The work has involved extensive research and evaluation of a range of cultural and public art strategies at local, regional and national level in the UK. This research work has contributed to better informed public policy debate around the role of art and culture in the process of regeneration and the analysis of the extent to which public art can contribute to creating places that have strong social, cultural and visual vitality and sustainability.