Inequality is a growing problem in the United Kingdom (UK) with austerity measures continuing to hit the poorest hardest. The pandemic shone a light on rising inequality in the UK. It also brought about large-scale cross-sectoral working to respond to the pandemic in a way that was previously almost unimaginable. Now, as the country experiences a cost-of-living crisis, the scale of inequalities is predicted to worsen. This is especially true for people already disadvantaged by poverty, or disability, or for Black and minority ethnic communities and migrants. Like other post-industrial cities and regions across the UK, Glasgow continues to be affected by persistent deprivation, income and education inequity, poor health, and declining natural environments. For decades, researchers from a broad range of disciplines have been measuring and describing inequalities to help policymakers find answers. But often the problems needing to be addressed are driven by a complex interaction of factors, including a lack of affordable housing, insecure and poorly paid work, inadequate access to social support, and needing solutions which transcend the sectorised nature of policymaking. The challenge here is to create a new innovative policy partnership with the experience and foresight to design policies that mutually benefit multiple sectors and support shared goals. Our aim in Phase 1 is to bring together an exciting new partnership in the Glasgow City Region, the Glasgow City Region Future Look Network. This Network will work together in finding solutions that will lead to an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable future that satisfies the needs of various parts of the policymaking system, whilst working towards inclusive and equitable goals aligned with community priorities. To achieve our aim, we will bring together stakeholders from policy, practice, research, private sector, and the community within the Glasgow City Region through a series of meetings and workshops focused on the following three priority areas: 1. Productivity, employment, and skills 2. Health and social deprivation 3. Empowering communities We will host three stakeholder dialogues, one focussed on each priority area, which will each include a core workshop. These dialogues will aim to understand different stakeholders' aspirations for the future and share thinking on ways to overcome current challenges in aligning policies to achieve this future vision. Information from the three dialogues will then be brought together to create a policy system map that explores the interrelationships between the three priority areas. We will also review existing data providers and datasets, local evidence, and tools, to see how this might contribute to new thinking on developing solutions to the identified challenges, and where additional new evidence is needed. In order to drive forward change within the priority areas, we will host a roundtable event with senior leaders in policy, academia, and practice to review the project findings and identify innovative and actionable solutions to take forward. This will form the basis of our Phase 2 proposal. This network and associated activities will help secure buy-in from partners and senior leaders across the Glasgow City Region to support this future work.

Connect2 is a 138 million investment programme in walking and cycling infrastructure at 79 sites across the UK that provides a unique opportunity to determine the impact of infrastructure provision on walking and cycling and to assess the impact of other interventions including promotional activities. The challenge is to ensure this opportunity is used to fill evidence gaps, assess transferability and influence policy. The aim of this project is therefore to measure and evaluate the travel, physical activity and carbon impacts of interventions to improve the connectivity of infrastructure for walking and cycling. To achieve this aim we have developed an interdisciplinary consortium of eight institutions with expertise in energy, environmental, physical activity, public health and transport research, as well as computerised urban modelling. Our objectives are: (1) to develop and refine measurement instruments and evaluation frameworks for assessing the effects of these interventions on travel activity, physical activity and carbon emissions; (2) to apply these methods in longitudinal population-based studies at a purposive sample of up to six Connect2 case study sites; (3) to determine the likely benefits of additional promotional interventions using a randomised controlled trial at one Connect2 site (provisionally the Road to Nowhere scheme in Glasgow); and (4) to enhance and collate data at all Connect2 sites to develop strategic evaluation measures. Our methodological approach will be informed by the realist approach to evaluation which advocates determining not simply whether an intervention has worked but also understanding why it is effective (or not), in what ways, for whom and in what circumstances. We will therefore collect data on context, mechanisms and outcomes using a longer self complete household questionnaire, to which we anticipate a total of approximately 10,000 useable responses from the main case studies; a shorter user intercept questionnaire, developed in conjunction with Sustrans; and more detailed objective measures from subsets of our study cohorts. The main outputs will be an improved set of measurement and evaluation tools at the strategic and more detailed, local levels, validated using a heterogeneous set of Connect2 case studies; evidence on the impacts of infrastructural and promotional interventions, which will inform policy and practice; and strategic benefit and cost measures which will inform and influence government policy and appraisal of infrastructural interventions. These outputs will have significant generic benefits for central government, local authorities, active travel users and academia.

What Works Scotland will be a collaborative centre bringing together staff from the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, other academics and key non-academic partners. Its aim is to support the use of evidence to plan and deliver sustained and transformative change based on agreed outcomes at all levels with a particular focus on the local. There is a particular focus on promoting the systematic use of evidence in the design, reform and delivery of public services. Examination of what works and what does not will take place in the context of the Scottish model, an approach to policy development that, while not unique, differs considerably from elsewhere in the UK. The team has adopted a demand led and collaborative approach and will work with a range of third sector organisations, different levels of central and local government and with Community Planning Partnerships to generate an evidence culture involving feedback, improvement methodology and expert support. The Christie Commission identified a range of problems facing Scotland including demographic change, economic and fiscal challenges, inter-institutional relationships and endemic long-term 'wicked issues'. It has also been estimated that in Scotland over 40 per cent of public service expenditure is the result of preventable issues. The Scottish model of public service delivery aims to ensure that services are designed for and with communities. This 'deliberative public policy analysis' demands that communities and those who design services are aware of best practice and evidence. The Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) are key to the delivery of these services with a focus on 'voice' through participatory, collective, decision-making, planning and delivery in the context of targets set by National Government. A key challenge for each CPP is to articulate its Single Outcome Agreement and relate this to both the outcomes set out in the National Performance Framework. However, a common criticism of the CPPs is that the implementation of the model so far has been limited and patchy. The focus of WWS will on the four key questions identified in the call: - How can we take what we know from individual projects and interventions and translate this into system-wide change? - What is working (or not working), and why, at the different levels of delivery and reform and at the interface between those levels? How do we identify actions which can be taken in communities, at CPP and the national levels to improve impact? - What does the evidence (including international) say about large-scale reform programmes that have succeeded or failed and the impact they had in a system-wide context? - Why do results vary geographically and between communities, and how can we balance local approaches with ensuring spread of what works? A wide range of methods - qualitative and qualitative - will be employed. The capabilities approach will provide the overarching framework. Originally developed by Amartya Sen, capabilities are in widespread use across the globe and underpin the work of a variety of organisations. It is a useful corrective to top down economic evaluations and fits well with the Scottish deliberative approach. We will develop the Capabilities framework and combine it with the outcomes-based National Performance Framework, ensuring that the Scottish model is intellectually grounded and contributes to broader international debates on these matters. We will have 3 workstreams: evidence into action; outcomes and capabilities; and spread, sustainability and scaling up. We will employ a range of methodologies including case studies collaborative action research, contribution analysis, elite interviews and content analysis, cost effectiveness and evaluation. WWS will focus on four case studies of key CPPS and work with them to help them change their core business processes within priority areas in four CPPs and will aim to achieve lasting impact.

The Urban Big Data Centre aims to promote innovative research methods and the use of big data to improve social, economic and environmental well-being in cities. Traditionally, quantitative urban analysis relied on data designed for research purposes: Census and social surveys, in particular. Their qualities are well understood and the skills needed for extracting knowledge from them widely shared by social researchers. With the arrival of the digital age, we produce an ever increasing volume of data as we go about our daily lives from physical sensors, business and public administrative systems, or social media platforms, for example. These data have the potential to provide valuable insights into urban life but there are many more challenges in extracting useful knowledge from them. Some are technical, arising from the volume and variety of data, and its less structured nature. Some are legal and ethical, concerning data ownership rights and individual privacy rights. Above all, there are important social science issues in the use of big data. We need to shape the questions we ask of these data with an informed perspective on urban problems and contexts, and not have data drive the research. There is a need to ask questions about the data themselves and how they affect the resulting representations of urban life. And there is a need to examine the ways in which these data are taken up by policy makers and used in decision making. UBDC is a research centre which brings together an outstanding multi-disciplinary team to address these complex and varied challenges. We are a unique combination of four capacities: social scientists with expertise from a range of disciplinary backgrounds relevant to urban studies; data scientists with expertise in programming, data management, information retrieval and spatial information systems, as well as in legal issues around big data use; a data infrastructure comprising a substantial data collection and secure data management and analysis systems; and an academic group with strong connections to policy, industry and civil society organisations developed over the course of phase one and wider work. In the second phase, our objectives are to maximise the social and economic benefits of activities from phase one. We will do this in particular through partnerships with industrial and government stakeholders, working together to produce analyses which meet their needs as well as having wider application. We will continue to publish world-leading scientific papers across a range of disciplines. We will work to enhance data collections and develop new methods of analysis. We will conduct research to understand the quality of these new data, how well they represent or misrepresent particular aspects of life, and how they are and could be used by policy makers in practice. Lastly, we will build capacity for researchers and others to work with this kind of data in future. Our work programme comprises four thematic work packages. One focuses on understanding the sustainability, equity and efficiency of urban transport systems and on evaluating the impacts on these of infrastructure investments. There is a particular focus on public transport accessibility as well as active travel and hence health outcomes. The second examines the changing residential structure of cities or patterns of spatial segregation, and their consequences for social equity, with a particular focus on the re-growth of private renting. The third studies how urban systems shape skills development and productivity and, in particular, how the combination of home and school environments combine to shape secondary educational attainment. The fourth explores how big data are being taken up by policy makers. It asks what the barriers are to more effective use of these data but also whether they distort the picture of needs which a public body may form.

This project will be a collaboration with community partners to co-design and evaluate new approaches to consultation. Consultation, the engagement of communities in public service decision making becoming an increasingly important part of local and regional life, with moves to help communities be more active and connected to their wider environment. This encouragement of ground up activity reflects a groundswell of new community, friends and special interests groups forming across the UK. It is also recognised by national government with legislation such as the Localism Bill (2011) laying out a sweeping agenda for empowering communities, e.g. giving residents the power to instigate local referendums on any local issue. Public bodies have always been involved in consultation with their communities and there is a strong desire for this to increase in the future and to support communities in playing a larger, more active role in society. This need (and desire) for more consultation coincides in dramatic reductions of Council funding. In the last 3 months one of the public sector partner departments we work with has been reduced from 22 to 4 people. Clearly new consultation practices are needed to accommodate both the opportunity presented by the demand for more consultation and a quite different funding landscape. Leapfrog will help create and evaluate these new models, working initially with test beds in Lancashire and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and then more broadly across the UK. Lancashire has closely packed overlapping communities that are hard to engage, e.g. with low rates of English literacy. The Highlands and Islands communities are very geographically dispersed and isolated and are strongly motivated to innovate by the hardships they face in terms of communications and access. Working across these two test-beds will stress test our new consultation approaches and help make them more robust when applied in other parts of the UK. We will develop these new approaches through a process of co-design. This involves collaboration with communities and public sector partners where all parties play an active role in the creative process (Cruickshank et al 2013). Communities will engage in a co-design process that results in a range of new consultation tools that specifically meet their local needs. For us a tool is something that, with skill, can be used to make wonderful, diverse, creative things (just like a real physical tool). In this proposal we are developing tools to help all people create their own amazing consultation processes. Our consultation tools will be used by communities directly, they will also be exchanged with other communities who will be encouraged to appropriate and adapt these tools to fit their own needs. Tools could be physical, digitally downloaded and printed or entirely digital in nature. We will use these tools to develop toolboxes containing a themed set of tools (e.g. consultation without writing, for groups with low levels of English literacy). We will produce at least 50 of each of the 5 toolboxes we produce. We will seed these toolboxes in at least 80 communities and public sector bodies across the UK. Underpinning all our actions, from co-design to innovation in local consultation to widely distributed toolboxes will be a series of new evaluation frameworks. These will be used to understand the real value and impact of the new tools. With strong guidance from Gareth Williams, our applied ethicist, these evaluation frameworks will be designed to be unobtrusive but also to examine activities in terms that make sense and are seen as valuable to communities. Rather than evaluation being something that is 'done to' communities this will also be a collaborative, mutually beneficial shared process. Cruickshank, Coupe and Hennessy, 'Co-Design: Fundamental Issues And Guidelines For Designers: Beyond the Castle Case Study', Swedish Design Research Journal no 2, 2013. page 4