Research and analysis

Bodmin Pilot – Cornwall County Council

Published 10 April 2024

Applies to England

Partnership for People and Place (PfPP)

The PfPP programme has piloted a new approach to cross-government working to improve local outcomes and efficiency of policy and programmes designed and delivered in place. PfPP funded 13 local government partners to deliver pilot projects focusing on hyper-local issues that could be tackled through better central or local government coordination. The overall objective of the PfPP programme was to test whether closer working between different central government departments and local places can bring measurable benefits to people who live there.

Local background – Cornwall

The Bodmin Pilot aimed to work in the most deprived areas of Bodmin to identify gaps in provision for skills development. The project targeted neighbourhoods within the lowest ranked 20% from the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019, with higher youth population than the rest of Cornwall, higher levels of no qualifications, lower life expectancy and social challenges.

Part of the Bodmin Pilot project was to create a joined up and tailored pathway to employment. This included aiming to achieve 50 referrals into the People Hub Cornwall, which offers free advice and support for anyone in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly who is looking for help getting into employment, job training or fully funded qualifications. The project specifically aimed to identify and engage individuals that would not have accessed traditional skills and employment pathways. By engaging with the local community and sharing knowledge with central government, the project aimed to build greater resilience, a stronger community and create lasting person-level impacts.

Central government involvement

The Bodmin Pilot team hoped to engage with central government to discuss solutions to mitigate barriers to people within the community accessing employment and skills pathways. Working with DLUHC, they identified central government departments to initially engage with including: DWP, DfT, Defra and DfE. The Cornwall pilot team faced challenges transitioning from initial contact with central government partners to more meaningful engagement. The Bodmin Pilot team acknowledged a lack of clarity around what their request was for central government partners, and a perceived lack of understanding between local and central government about what each other do and how they operate.

While the DWP Partnerships Team based locally were willing to engage in the pilot, there was limited feasibility of embedding them in the delivery of the Bodmin Pilot due to a perceived mistrust of DWP by community champions. However, discussions around the PfPP project have led to legacy work being designed and commissioned between Cornwall Council and the DWP Partnerships Team as detailed below.

Delivery plans	Meetings	Visits
DWP, DfT, Defra and DfE were listed in Cornwall’s initial delivery plan as departments with a potential interest in employment and skills pathways.	DESNZ, DWP, DfE, OHID, Defra were involved in ad hoc meetings with the project team.	DfE, and local DWP (JobCentre Plus) attended a project visit.

What was delivered?

Cornwall Council engaged Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change (CN4C), a charity and social enterprise, to lead a ‘community champions framework’. Their role was to identify and engage community champions to buy into the project who would eventually refer individual beneficiaries to the People Hub. Despite some challenges onboarding community champions, the project team successfully engaged with 7 community champions. From January 2023, these 7 champions began referring individuals into the People Hub.

Thirty-seven individuals were referred to the People Hub before the end of March 2023, out of an initial target of 50 referrals. The team were confident that community champions would continue to refer into the People Hub beyond the project timescales. As of the end of March 2023, these 37 referrals had led to 7 job starts and 8 people accessing in-work support. This exceeded project leads’ expectations, who had anticipated that individual outcomes would not be seen in the timescales of the project, instead following in the longer term.

The project involved a paid social media campaign to raise local awareness of the People Hub. The campaign was aimed at individuals in Bodmin and Liskeard, a nearby town with similar characteristics, using Facebook and Instagram. The Liskeard landing page received 1,308 page views by 992 users between November 2022 and February 2023.^{[footnote 1]} The Bodmin page received 304 views by 247 users between January 2023 and February 2023.^{[footnote 2]} The number of enquiries to the People Hub during the paid media strategy was 265, compared to 167 during the same period in the previous year.

Local communities

Thirty-seven individuals were referred into the People Hub as a result of the PfPP project, leading to 7 job starts and 8 people accessing in-work support.

The project established relationships between 7 community champions and the People Hub. The project team were confident that champions would continue to refer into the Hub beyond the timescales of the project, a potential sign of sustainability.

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Delivery partners & local government

PfPP provided the Cornwall Council team an opportunity to work in a new way through the community champions framework, collaborating more closely with local third sector organisations and key individuals in the community to reach individuals that they had not been able to engage with historically. These included community groups delivering creative outlets for young adults; social enterprises; grassroots community organisations; safe space organisations; community hubs for specific estates; community and arts organisations; and Christian groups.

Working at a hyper-local level allowed the project to work with stakeholders with in-depth knowledge of the local context. This included being able to identify beneficiaries to refer into the People Hub and allow the Council to establish relationships with community organisations that could lead to sustainable referrals, providing individuals with the support they need. Key individuals were important in building these relationships, particularly one representative from the People Hub. This individual connected with community champions and was seen as a trusted person, despite their concerns about the project more widely, which the Cornwall team felt was key to ensuring champions ultimately made referrals.

The personality and traits of the People Hub Connector working with the community champions played a significant, if not the most important role, within the success of the project. His passion and relentlessly positive outlook, ability to problem solve and to see the best in people must be commended and is directly linked to the trust that was built between the people of Bodmin and the People Hub.

[Pilot lead]^{[footnote 3]}

The project team reflected that there had been several learnings from the project that they would feed into subsequent work. For example, the need for sufficient time to engage with and gain buy-in from community organisations, and the need for hands-on engagement to ensure clarity of roles and responsibilities with these organisations.

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Central government

The PfPP pilot also allowed the Council team to establish a new connection with the local Jobcentre Plus (JCP) and their employment advisor in Bodmin. This relationship grew out of an existing relationship with the local DWP Partnerships team. While the JCP were unable to support delivery of this project, the project team used the strengthened relationship with the Partnerships team and the JCP to initiate legacy work following on from the PfPP project.

Four new initiatives were being delivered by Cornwall Council in partnership with DWP and 4 delivery partners over the 6 months following the Bodmin Pilot. The commissions focus on:

• Raising levels of aspiration within under 24s delivered by Real Ideas Organisation
• Military veteran-led confidence, motivation and enabling courses for over 25s delivered by Active Plus
• An intervention targeted at Bodmin’s transport through the provision of e-bikes delivered by Wheels to Work
• A ‘dress to impress’ campaign delivered by Konnect

Snapshot: Breakeven analysis

Breakeven analysis provides an estimate of the level of change in outcomes within each of the pilot areas that would be necessary for the pilot’s benefits to meet costs. Where there is an absence of medium- or long-term person-level outcomes data, a breakeven analysis can provide an indication of how many beneficiaries would need to achieve specific outcomes for the programme to achieve net positive economic value. Breakeven analysis has been completed on outcomes identified in each pilot’s Theory of Change, for which monetisable benefits could be estimated through the Understanding Society Survey.^{[footnote 4]} Based on the evidence available to date, it is likely that Bodmin Pilot will achieve breakeven in terms of person-level outcomes. This breakeven does not include other outcomes that could not be monetised, including system-level outcomes associated with establishment of a new model of community-driven support, improvements to place-based multi-partner support and improved data sharing.

Bodmin falls within the lowest 20% on the Index of Multiple Deprivation with a high proportion of residents without qualifications, facing lower life expectancy, or facing other social challenges. The Bodmin Pilot intended to support residents looking for help getting into employment, job training or fully funded qualifications through referrals into the People Hub. The project aimed to empower individuals in the area not receiving support and help them move towards employment and advance their careers. With consideration to the outcomes specified in the Bodmin Pilot’s Theory of Change, and in consultation with pilot leads, the following outcome was considered in scope for the breakeven analysis.

Outcomes specified in Bodmin Theory of Change	Outcomes used in breakeven analysis
Individuals are referred to the People Hub and receive advice and support resulting in employment.	The economic and social welfare benefits of employment. The economic value of the wage less the social welfare disbenefit of being employed.

The outcome targeted by the Bodmin Pilot was used in a breakeven calculator to estimate the number of beneficiaries that would need to be impacted for the pilot area to break even in cost.^{[footnote 5]} Reaching employment has an associated economic and social value of £15,029. Should 22 participants experience welfare improvements associated with finding work through the People Hub, total benefits would equal the cost of the programme.

Outcome: Employment Benefit
Value Per Beneficiary: £15,029
Number of Beneficiaries to Breakeven: 22

To date, Bodmin Pilot has received 37 referrals into the Hub, of which 7 individuals have accessed employment through the pilot. Accounting for deadweight (an estimate of the number of participants that would have found employment anyway), Bodmin would have to reach 147 beneficiaries to achieve breakeven. While Bodmin will not achieve breakeven within the life of the PfPP programme, these outcomes were achieved through 37 referrals during only 3 months of delivery. Assuming similar levels of referrals across the year, if the Bodmin Pilot remains operational for 12 months of delivery as originally planned we would expect 148 referrals in total.^{[footnote 6]} This would result in approximately 22 individuals accessing employment, which is at the threshold of the breakeven target of 22. 

Note that the application of the breakeven calculator to a full business case would require data to be collected that evidences the number of beneficiaries who experienced these outcomes, either through primary surveys (e.g. by replicating the Understanding Society or Community Life survey question on which this analysis was based in a survey on the target population) or administrative data (e.g. administrative records of the number of residents who take part in targeted initiatives).^{[footnote 7]}

1. This would represent 9% of the Liskeard population (10,902), should all users reside in Liskeard.  ↩

2. This would represent 1.5% of the Bodmin population (16,440), should all users reside in Bodmin. ↩

3. Quote sourced from Cornwall Council (2023) Partnerships for People and Place – Bodmin Pilot – Final Project Report. ↩

4. Following the methodology set out in HMTs supplementary Green Book guidance for wellbeing appraisal, changes in reported life satisfaction can be used to monetise the social welfare implications of a policy. ↩

5. The total cost of the Luton PfPP pilot was £323,729, which was covered by £248,000 in direct funding and administrative costs of £75,729. ↩

6. This also account for a deadweight of approximately 40%. The deadweight is used account for the likelihood that an individual would have found employment otherwise. ↩

7. It may also be possible to assess the wellbeing impacts of the programme through primary survey collection of life satisfaction questions. However, because this requires direct evidence through primary data collection before and after (outside of the scope of this evaluation), we do not provide breakeven analysis in the main body of this report. If it were possible to evidence how an intervention led to an improvement in life satisfaction (through direct primary survey questions compared to baseline levels of life satisfaction, recall 8.00 when converted to the 11-point scale) then a 1-point improvement in life satisfaction among 45 beneficiaries would lead to a breakeven in costs. Note the analyst should take care to ensure that the measure of life satisfaction refers to an 11-point scale, following the guidance set out in the Green Book Supplementary Guidance (2021). ↩