The national effort to support people into employment is bringing funding to West Yorkshire.

The government white paper ‘Get Britain Working’ was published on 26 November 2024, outlining national key strategic ambitions regarding health-related barriers to work – notably, ‘empowering local areas and leaders in England to take a leading role in addressing economic inactivity.

Proposals within the White Paper outline a series of plans including funding for eight Trailblazer locations to help them tackle economic inactivity. Three of these locations were identified as Accelerators, receiving extra funding to target the health drivers of economic inactivity.

West Yorkshire was named as both a Trailblazer and Accelerator and is likely to receive £37m divided across the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (£10m), Local Authorities delivering Connect to Work (£16m) and the NHS West Yorkshire ICB (£11m). Leeds ICB will be receiving around £2.9m to support 552 more people to stay in or return to work through health orientated interventions.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority and the NHS (West Yorkshire Heath and Care Partnership) are working closely to maximise impact and boost economic activity.

The funding is for one year only. Programme delivery will be very past-paced and is being coordinated by Kate O’Connell, Lindsay McFarlane and Gillian Wallace for Leeds ICB, overseen by the Delivery Sub-Committee.

More about the Leeds ICB Funding Stream

Funding, aims and objectives:

Leeds will receive ~£2.9m for place initiatives. The aims of the Accelerator are to (i) improve population health outcomes; (ii) increase economic growth by reducing health-related labour market inactivity:

  • Support 552 more people to be economically active through health-orientated interventions,
    compared to a do-nothing scenario (% of West Yorkshire’s target of 1,300 people)
  • Take a new system-wide approach to this challenge and to learning and testing at scale.

Approach:

The pace, complexity and constraints of this work present a challenge. The other 2 Accelerators have taken a system-wide approach, whereas the West Yorkshire ICB has devolved most funding and design to places. The five places came together in December to agree common principles and specifications for all initiatives, and input into the draft delivery plan submitted to NHSE.

Colleagues in Leeds are now working to develop a detailed list of potential interventions. This will then be refined to ensure it aligns with local population needs. Time limitations mean it is unlikely there will be widespread engagement, or the opportunity to assure initiatives through ideal governance structures, such as engaging with multiple Population Boards through the development of the initiative list.

It is important to note that other funding streams through the Combined Authority will also be developing programme plans in Leeds at the same time.

Governance, people’s voice and leadership:

Accountability for the Accelerator sits with the NHS West Yorkshire ICB. At place, a ‘steering group’ meets weekly to co-ordinate development activity – which will become more formal over time. Our accelerator work at place is structured across three pillars, each with a lead. Key leads:

  • [email protected] (social care and NHS workforce pillar, lead place contact),
  • [email protected] (prevention and early identification pillar),
  • [email protected] (employment support and employer liaison pillar, and key connection to other funding streams in the council).

With the rapid pace of development, it has not yet been identified how to undertake public engagement. Given time pressures – if colleagues would like to input or comment on the work (which is welcomed), please contact the representatives on the Delivery Sub-Committee (the third sector Rep is Jo Volpe, Leeds Older People Forum), or contact the named leads directly.

This information is from the: Leeds Health and Growth Accelerator – Briefing – January

More about West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) Plans

West Yorkshire expects to receive a total of approximately £20m from the Trailblazer and Accelerator funding to be used across the whole region. The West Yorkshire Work and Health Partnership will deliver this work.

They are expecting to sign-off on a Work, Health and Skills Plan by February 2025. The plan will set the over-arching strategic direction for the work of the West Yorkshire Work and Health Partnership. how employment and skills support will be delivered in future and how more people can be given the support which makes work possible for them or which makes it possible to stay in work.

An early draft Interim Work, Skills and Health Report Executive Summary (KADA Research)t was shared with the steering group ahead of the publication of the full plan.

The report and plan will take into account the feedback from a number of interviews and an online survey which WYCA ran from Nov – Dec 2024. Find out more about the Work Skills and Health engagement on their website.

The West Yorkshire Work and Health Partnership will be the key reference group bringing together the Job Centre Plus, ICB, Health, Combined Authority and Local Authorities, with the Strategic Skills Officers Group as a collaboration point for the 6 authorities to codesign the implementation of these programmes.

In addition, a DWP grant-funded supported employment programme, Connect to Work, will be grant funded to the Combined Authority and is expected to launch in 2025 to support those furthest from the labour market to find work. At peak delivery, this will deliver c£16.2m of funding in West Yorkshire to assist 4,500 economically inactive people through a supported employment model over 12 months. Work is already underway with partners to prepare the Combined Authority for this programme.

A slide deck giving a broad overview and some detail around proposals was shared at a regional breifing: Get Britain Working Headlines and Work and Health Landscape slide deck Nov 2024

WorkWell (National)

Another strand of ‘Get Britain Working’ is ‘WorkWell’ which went live at the beginning of October 2024.

It is a new work and health pilot and will support up to 56k disabled people and people with health conditions to get into work and get on in work.

Through WorkWell, participants will be able to build a personalised action plan to address their health-related barriers to work. Services will also act as a joined-up gateway into other work and health services locally.

WorkWell is testing a model of locally designed and led service provision:

  • It is an important steppingstone and learning exercise towards a more localised model.
  • It is a core building block in making Employers have a key role to recruit, retain, and support people into and in work.

The NHS, local authorities, Jobcentre Plus and the voluntary sector are working together in 15 pilot areas:

  1. Birmingham and Solihull
  2. Black Country
  3. Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire
  4. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough
  5. Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly
  6. Coventry and Warwickshire
  7. Frimley
  8. Herefordshire and Worcestershire
  9. Greater Manchester
  10. Lancashire and South Cumbria
  11. Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland
  12. North Central London
  13. North West London
  14. South Yorkshire
  15. Surrey Heartlands