Coastal Communities are on the Edge

Coastal Communities are on the edge and all those levelling up policies we hear politicians talking about are at risk of failing them.  Government must turnaround decades of inequality, a new report warns.

The Coastal Communities Alliance report warns levelling up’s focus on regions means “massive challenges” faced by some smaller, remote parts of the country are “hidden” & likely to be missed by the UK Government.

So, what are the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities  doing to help?

Here’s our story

We wrote to the Dept for Levelling Up back in 2017. We’d got a great idea for levelling up that we wanted to share with them but got no response.

Fortunately, the MP, Scott Mann, did listen to us. He gave us a leg up with an intro to the wonderful Job Centre Plus folk down here in Cornwall – and that seemed like a great place to trial this idea.

At the same time, we were working on getting  a grant from Cornwall Council as part of the People Hub Scheme to put the idea into action.

Ah yes, the idea

As you know we’re Workforce Transformation Experts by trade – but we’re also red hot at Life Coaching people into careers they love too.

That’s why, for the past 2 years and until the end of this year, we’ve dedicated part of our business to training up people from  Cornwall in remote and hybrid working skills

Once trained, we aim to match them with some of the lovely businesses we know either in Cornwall or the rest of the UK. We’re grant funded so we don’t charge recruitment fees.

So, we’ve got on with our version of levelling up down here.  We placed shed loads of underemployed talent into good remote roles last year – bringing longer term prosperity into coastal areas of Cornwall.

It’s not been easy. The pandemic didn’t help, and we encountered some difficult operational challenges along the way.  A couple of people who should have know better, let us down badly. However, the support from the team at the People Hub has been amazing.

Outcomes

1. For the people we’ve trained and placed it means they can afford mortgages, plus:

2. Younger people get the chance to remain in the local area rather than move away to find work and the

3.  Over 50’s get access to a new purpose that fits around their other responsibilities.

4.  People with disabilities or parents benefit too from access to more relevant opportunity

We want to continue this work into 2024 and beyond and share our formula with other parts of the UK. We want to help those Coastal Communities are on the edge, to be able to prosper and benefit from our pilot. But will government funding be available now that EU funding is running out in December. It may already be too late for the good work to continue!

So, here’s a shout out to the Local Government Association Coastal Special Interest Group and the Coastal Partnerships Network.  Why not talk to us to learn how it is done down here in Cornwall?

We call it Smart Working!