COVID Economic Recovery Plans
Brighton & Hove, Gatwick Airport sub region, Birmingham and the Midlands, Hull and the Humber region, Derby and Derbyshire, North
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United Kingdom
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2020-21
Our economic recovery and skill plans cover 15% of the UK population
Short-term policies have taken immediate measures to protect jobs and businesses providing protections for at risk sectors and redundant retail space
Longer term green infrastructure projects support investment in freeports, and town centre regeneration
Challenges
- The greatest challenge for our clients has been the lack of temporal economic data. To overcome this, we worked with a variety of non-traditional data suppliers to create real-time metrics for individual cities. Through these metrics, visualized using Power-Bi, we have been able to provide city and town leaders with a dashboard of how their city has been impacted and is now recovering.
- It has been important for a wide range of stakeholders to have a voice on the priorities for economic recovery. To enable this, we worked diligently with our clients to ensure all local stakeholders were heard using a range of online surveys, virtual town hall meetings and online consultations.
- Finally, it has also been important for our clients to share the recovery strategies widely and ensure full transparency. We have been able to create products that are visually stimulating on screen, and also speak to political audiences.
Solutions
- Very soon after the pandemic broke, Hatch Urban Solutions established a team to support clients during the pandemic. The team includes macroeconomists, microeconomists, mapping specialists and ex-government policy advisors. This has enabled the team to work between the national and local levels of government to unlock funding sources.
- The team has built an in-house macroeconomic model that estimates sectoral losses at the local level. This has enabled cities and towns to make priorities in terms of short-term public spending and longer-term private investment.
- By employing diverse and well thought through stakeholder engagement protocols we were able to ensure that everyone that makes up a local economy had a voice.
Highlights
- Several of our clients succeeded in securing significant UK government investment packages, designed to overcome COVID, in the latest round of government funding.
- We are now working with them to leverage private investment into a wide range of projects.