SCR LEP priority areas

The priority areas for Sheffield City Region LEP (SCR) are as follows. Below each priority area is a list of individuals within the voluntary and community sector who are interested in working in partnership to deliver collaborative projects within the priority area.

If you would like to get in contact with one of these individuals to discuss working in collaboration with them or if you would like to be added to one of the lists email information@one-em.org.uk.

Some organisations on the lists below are looking for partners to collaborate in delivering specific projects. For further information on these projects click on the organisation’s name.

For further information on LEPs and to view their strategies visit www.oneeastmidlands.org.uk/leps.

• Activity supporting new businesses for growth (1)
• Actively supporting new businesses for growth (2)
• Better skills and labour market
• Social inclusion

Activity supporting new businesses for growth (1)

This covers EU priorities:

1. Innovation
2. ICT
3. SME Competitiveness
4. Low Carbon

Enterprise culture and pre-start engagement that will include:

• A comprehensive package of activities in schools and colleges including high profile competitions and programmes, support for in-school business, and proactive support for young entrepreneurs emerging from these activities;
• A high level proactive campaign to encourage more of the self-employed to incorporate and grow their businesses with appropriate support through the 'business in a box' initiative.

Information and support - Targeted business support for start-ups providing a tiered approach to start-up companies that provide different types of support depending on their need and potential. This will include:

• A start-up product available to all firms, including social enterprises, as part of the knowledge hub that provides essential advice on how to set up and sustain a company and builds on the good practice, e.g. in coaching and mentoring, already established in many SCR districts;
• A business in a box that will provide the self-employed in SCR with the toolkit and support they need to become VAT / PAYE businesses;
• A business 'adoption' service that sees existing successful businesses taking responsibility for the development of a fledgling company by providing investment, accommodation and on-going development support.

Actively supporting new businesses for growth (2)

This covers EU priorities:

1. Innovation
2. ICT
3. SME Competitiveness
4. Low Carbon

Accommodation and facilities - establishing SCR as the most effective start-up zone in the country. This will build upon the best practice established across the SCR and, amongst other things, would provide flexible leases, affordable rents and rates for start-up and early stage tenants, and access to appropriate business support. This initiative will not be limited to the public sector; neither would there be any limit on the number of facilities. The key will be that providers will have to meet a minimum threshold of quality of offer and support in order to become part of this supported network.

Driving up quality by exploiting knowledge and intellectual assets - the development of specific initiatives with universities and university centres to increase the level of support available to entrepreneurial students, including development capital, incubation facilities and bespoke support.

Better skills and labour market

This covers EU priorities:

8. Employment
9. Social Inclusion (ESF)
10. Skills

Progress to work - programme seeks to reduce youth unemployment, building on the Youth Contract to create a formal partnership with JCP. Through this they can model a localised approach to employment services, better identification, tracking and assessment of disengaged and unemployed young people from 16 to 24, improved interventions to increase their job readiness and stronger connections to the labour market through job opportunities generated by other aspects of the ESIF and the SEP.

SCR education challenge - that maximises the potential of young people and their future contribution to productivity and growth. Within this model ESF will support:

• Piloting approaches to business focused curriculum;
• Developing partnerships and opportunities to embed work-related and experiential learning and creates a skills passport that identifies and records the competences and experiences that businesses value; and
• To establish a single, electronic youth portal for SCR designed to inform course and career choice on the part of students and those who guide them, as well as better connecting them.

Skills bank - this programme is centre to their determination to give more purchasing power to employers who use the skills system. The Skills Bank is proposed as a single repository of skills funding on which employers can draw to meet their skills needs.

Social inclusion

Cross cutting theme covering the EU priority:

9. Social Inclusion

Utilising a five percent allocation to social inclusion allocation, they will look to implement a Community Grants programme that will address specific challenges as they affect specific communities, for example digital inclusion and financial inclusion, which can often be concentrated in small neighbourhoods and such interventions can develop an embedded coterie of informed local people able to sustain the results through informal networks. This approach also offers opportunities to test and approach innovation.

Community Grants provide a mechanism for tackling emerging challenges and for addressing communities with specific barriers and drawing on experience and knowledge of the communities themselves or on the specialist expertise within the third and public sectors.

SCR will establish a call for proposals and/or commissioning framework whereby communities and those organisations closely associated with them can seek funding in response to challenges and opportunities provided by other specialist interventions or the need for specialist support.

Support for social enterprise to enable communities to create or tailor services directly to their needs and to increase the range of employment opportunities for local people.

Support for social enterprise, which will enable the region's communities to pilot social innovation and grow this into new businesses, which can retain spending within the host community.