Call for evidence

South-West Coastal Local Policy Innovation Partnership

As one of 10 Stage 1 LPIPs that have been awarded in the UK, we will be invited to apply (September 2023) to be one of the four second stage LPIPs, each of which will receive up to £4.8m over 36 months to expand work to understand, analyse and develop interventions with respect to local priorities. This fund could be used to support research analysis, work by VCSE organisations, leading-edge innovations by cross-sector partnerships etc. This could be a sizeable investment for us to join up learning about how to address the interlinked (and what often seem intractable) challenges facing our coastal communities.
We have a very short timetable to get ready for this September bid. During June and July, we will be holding a series of workshops with policy, practice, VCSE and citizen partners to co-design a programme of work. To support this, the core team is drawing together evidence, which will be openly available on the SWC LPIP Observatory and Evidence Hub (OEH).
To assist us in the gathering of this evidence, we are issuing a call for:
  • Evidence from previous community engagement/consultation exercises
  • Reports from our VCSE partners who are often at the front line of responding to community needs but who do not always have a channel to evidence their contribution
  • Strategy documents and reports from local (and wider) public (local authority, NHS, educational academies), private (businesses) and partnership (LEPs) who have explored coastal challenges, whether from an understanding of problems or development of solutions
  • Research findings from local (and wider) academic partners who have explored coastal challenges, whether from an understanding of problems or development of solutions
  • On the ground research by community researchers (who will be trained as part of the programme) to sense test the evidence we are gathering from multiple sources
In addition to collating existing evidence, we are bringing together data (at the highest level of granularity) to support priority setting. This will be openly available (to citizens, community groups and organizations) and we will welcome additional variables to this data set (accepting that some of these will have to be anonymised).
We will bring these data together in an Observatory and Evidence Hub (OEH). This will not only create and embed new forms of coastal datasets. We will collate evidence of local action to share evidence of what works – and doesn’t work. This is extremely important to both prevent local providers from reinventing the wheel and provide evidence to commissioners about the value of investing in local solutions in a more sustainable way than, as is often the case, distributing very short-term funding.
We will also facilitate connections between organisations working on similar challenges with a hope of supporting the development of a critical mass (always difficult in dispersed coastal and rural communities), shared learning and advocacy platforms. Regardless of whether the SWC LPIP achieves Stage 2 status, our partners agree that finding a way of collating and curating data on the significant range of grassroots activity is a worthy aim in its own right.

More details on the specific calls for evidence are displayed below

Previous community engagement or consultation exercises
Within the SW LPIP project, we have proposed including a programme of citizen engagement and deploying citizen researchers. It is important we understand the norms and perspectives of people and not decide what we think people need. However, our VCSE colleagues feel that many communities feel that they have already been subject to engagement and/or consultation exercises without anything really changing.
Against this background, we have decided to collect and analyse information from existing consultation and engagement exercises to pull together some themes about what our communities are telling us. We know that there have been many such exercises throughout the Peninsula and would be really grateful if organisations (members of integrated care partnerships including local authorities, local economic partnerships, locality partnerships and other alliances as well as VCSE organisations) could send us either raw transcripts – which will be analysed confidentially and securely, as per the University of Plymouth’s Information Governance and Information security policies - or summary documents.
We will share our summary analysis on the Observatory and Evidence Hub (OEH).

VCSE partners
Gathering evidence from the VCSE sector
To support the bid preparation, the SWC LPIP is gathering evidence to present to a series of stakeholder workshops which will be used to identify priorities. Part of this evidence is on existing VCSE activity. There is growing recognition that VCSE organisations are the ‘experts’ in understanding and responding to the complex needs of local communities and that we should more systematically try to understand what this sector is trying to achieve, how it goes about it, some of the factors that help or hinder organisations in their work and how they are capturing their impact.
VCSE partners are often at the front line of responding to community needs but do not always have a channel to evidence their contribution. This may be because a reliance on short term funding does not provide sufficient capacity for ‘report writing’, or because small VCSE organisations lack the ‘expertise’ they think they need to ‘evaluate’ their projects.
As partners, we do not want to add to your busy diaries. Therefore, if you have existing reports that you are happy to share, please send them to swcoastallpip@plymouth.ac.uk. These could pertain to work you have done over the past five years. Let us know which material you are happy to be openly available in the Observatory and Evidence Hub. This will be an open repository where we will be posting project reports, academic papers, the results of our consultations, mapped data etc. Equally, let us know which material you are sharing for the researchers only to analyse (confidentially and securely, as per the University of Plymouth’s Information Governance Policies and IT Information Security Policy.
If you do not have existing reports on the projects you are running, the LPIP has prepared a short template for you to fill in. We truly believe that the collection and curation of this information is a valuable exercise in terms of facilitating connections between organisations working on similar challenges, sharing learning, growing advocacy platforms and providing evidence to commissioners about the value of investing in local solutions in a more sustainable way.
Please use the online template or the downloadable Word document to provide details of your projects. If you run a range of activities, please use the template as many times as required. Please send this information back to swcoastallpip@plymouth.ac.uk.

Strategic analysis and priority setting
A wide range of partners (local authorities, NHS bodies, education providers, environmental authorities, charities, partnerships, businesses and VCSE organisations) are exploring coastal challenges, whether from an understanding of problems or the development of solutions.
To help us ‘map’ the policy landscape, please send any relevant strategy documents to swcoastallpip@plymouth.ac.uk and let us know which material you are happy to be openly available in the Observatory and Evidence Hub and which material you are sharing for the researchers only to analyse (confidentially and securely, as per the as per the University of Plymouth’s Information governance and Information security policies.
We will share our summary analysis on the Observatory and Evidence Hub (OEH).

Research evidence on coastal challenges and solutions
We know that that research partners (whether based in universities, public sector departments, think tanks, charities or VCSE organisations) are conducting some fantastic work on the particular challenges facing our local coastal communities. If you have published (or unpublished) reports or are happy to write a brief summary of your research aims, methods and findings, please send this material to swcoastallpip@plymouth.ac.uk.
Let us know which material you are happy to be openly available in the Observatory and Evidence Hub and which material you are sharing for the researchers only to analyse (confidentially and securely, as per the University of Plymouth’s Information governance and Information security policies.
We will share our summary analysis on the Observatory and Evidence Hub (OEH).
In addition, as part of putting our September bid together, we need to identify areas for research, intervention development, piloting and evaluation. We can put these ideas into the Phase 2 bid. If you would like to propose ‘projects’, please send a one-two page proposal and we will discuss these in our final workshop when we identify areas we are applying for Phase 2 investment.