Guidance

Interventions list for England

Published 13 April 2022

Places are encouraged to review the interventions and identify activities that would support UKSPF objectives in their area, including any interventions that are best delivered at a larger scale in collaboration with other places, or more locally. When a larger geographic delivery is more appropriate, we strongly encourage delivery of interventions at this scale. Places should also consider how implementation of the interventions they chose can be adapted to suit local characteristics, reflecting the distinct opportunities and challenges that different communities face.

Please note - at Spending Review 2021, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) received funding to replace EU funding for LEADER and the growth programme elements of the Rural Development Programme for England. Defra will set out later this year how additional funding for rural areas can be used by eligible local authorities to deliver small scale capital grants for rural community infrastructure and grants for businesses, including for farm diversification. Defra is working closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to make sure there are synergies with UKSPF, while reflecting rural needs.

1. Communities and place

Objectives:

• Strengthening our social fabric and fostering a sense of local pride and belonging, through investment in activities that enhance physical, cultural and social ties and amenities, such as community infrastructure and local green space, and community-led projects.
• Building resilient, safe and healthy neighbourhoods, through investment in quality places that people want to live, work, play and learn in, through targeted improvements to the built environment and innovative approaches to crime prevention.

Interventions

• E1: Funding for improvements to town centres and high streets, including better accessibility for disabled people, including capital spend and running costs.
• E2: Funding for new, or improvements to existing, community and neighbourhood infrastructure projects including those that increase communities’ resilience to natural hazards, such as flooding. This could cover capital spend and running costs.
• E3: Creation of and improvements to local green spaces, community gardens, watercourses and embankments, along with incorporating natural features into wider public spaces.
• E4: Enhanced support for existing cultural, historic and heritage institutions that make up the local cultural heritage offer.
• E5: Design and management of the built and landscaped environment to ‘design out crime’.
• E6: Support for local arts, cultural, heritage and creative activities.
• E7: Support for active travel enhancements in the local area.
• E8: Funding for the development and promotion of wider campaigns which encourage people to visit and explore the local area.
• E9: Funding for impactful volunteering and/or social action projects to develop social and human capital in local places.
• E10: Funding for local sports facilities, tournaments, teams and leagues; to bring people together.
• E11: Investment in capacity building and infrastructure support for local civil society and community groups.
• E12: Investment in community engagement schemes to support community involvement in decision making in local regeneration.
• E13: Community measures to reduce the cost of living, including through measures to improve energy efficiency, and combat fuel poverty and climate change.
• E14: Funding to support relevant feasibility studies.
• E15: Investment and support for digital infrastructure for local community facilities.

2. Supporting local business

Lead Authorities should consider segmenting their business population, focusing on specific interventions that will best meet local business need. This can be informed by early engagement with local business representatives.

Objectives:

• Creating jobs and boosting community cohesion, through investments that build on existing industries and institutions, and range from support for starting businesses to visible improvements to local retail, hospitality and leisure sector facilities.
• Promoting networking and collaboration, through interventions that bring together businesses and partners within and across sectors to share knowledge, expertise and resources, and stimulate innovation and growth.
• Increasing private sector investment in growth-enhancing activities, through targeted support for small and medium-sized businesses to undertake new-to-firm innovation, adopt productivity-enhancing, energy efficient and low carbon technologies and techniques, and start or grow their exports.

Interventions

• E16: Investment in open markets and improvements to town centre retail and service sector infrastructure, with wrap around support for small businesses.
• E17: Funding for the development and promotion (both trade and consumer) of the visitor economy, such as local attractions, trails, tours and tourism products more generally.
• E18: Supporting Made Smarter Adoption: Providing tailored expert advice, matched grants and leadership training to enable manufacturing SMEs to adopt industrial digital technology solutions including artificial intelligence; robotics and autonomous systems; additive manufacturing; industrial internet of things; virtual reality; data analytics. The support is proven to leverage high levels of private investment into technologies that drive growth, productivity, efficiency and resilience in manufacturing.
• E19: Increasing investment in research and development at the local level. Investment to support the diffusion of innovation knowledge and activities. Support the commercialisation of ideas, encouraging collaboration and accelerating the path to market so that more ideas translate into industrial and commercial practices.
• E20: Research and development grants supporting the development of innovative products and services.
• E21: Funding for the development and support of appropriate innovation infrastructure at the local level.
• E22: Investing in enterprise infrastructure and employment/innovation site development projects. This can help to unlock site development projects which will support growth in places.
• E23: Strengthening local entrepreneurial ecosystems, and supporting businesses at all stages of their development to start, sustain, grow and innovate, including through local networks.
• E24: Funding for new and improvements to existing training hubs, business support offers, ‘incubators’ and ‘accelerators’ for local enterprise (including social enterprise) which can support entrepreneurs and start-ups through the early stages of development and growth by offering a combination of services including account management, advice, resources, training, coaching, mentorship and access to workspace.
• E25: Grants to help places bid for and host international business events and conferences that support wider local growth sectors.
• E26: Support for growing the local social economy, including community businesses, cooperatives and social enterprises.
• E27: Funding to develop angel investor networks nationwide.
• E28: Export Grants to support businesses to grow their overseas trading, supporting local employment.
• E29: Supporting decarbonisation and improving the natural environment whilst growing the local economy. Taking a whole systems approach to invest in infrastructure to deliver effective decarbonisation across energy, buildings and transport and beyond, in line with our legally binding climate target. Maximising existing or emerging local strengths in low carbon technologies, goods and services to take advantage of the growing global opportunity.
• E30: Business support measures to drive employment growth, particularly in areas of higher unemployment.
• E31: Funding to support relevant feasibility studies.
• E32: Investment in resilience infrastructure and nature based solutions that protect local businesses and community areas from natural hazards including flooding and coastal erosion.

3. People and skills

Lead local authorities and partners must note that the Fund will focus on communities and place and local business interventions in 2022-23 and 2023-24, alongside support for people through the Multiply adult numeracy programme. This complements residual employment and skills funding from the European Social Fund. UKSPF investment to support people and skills will follow from 2024-25, when the funding pot reaches its full extent.

This means that places will be able to select people and skills interventions from 2024-2025 onwards, unless they meet the voluntary sector considerations outlined below.

Alignment with current provision

UKSPF will be the main source of funding to support employment provision for economically inactive people.^{[footnote 1]} To reduce levels of economic inactivity, local areas should ensure investment in employment support is tailored to local needs. This should facilitate the join-up of mainstream provision and local services, through the use of keyworker support and community interventions to improve employment outcomes for economically inactive people, including engagement with integrated care systems where appropriate. 

To maximise outcomes and avoid duplication local areas should collaborate with a range of local partners to consider the provision already available locally as well as through the Jobcentre Plus network and the Adult Education Budget.

Lead local authorities should consider current European Social Fund interventions for people and skills, emerging people and skills needs and proposed Multiply interventions, when developing a local investment plan.  This will then inform proposed people and skills support from 2024-25 onwards. 

Alignment with Multiply

Each place should also read the Multiply prospectus for England which seeks proposals for adult numeracy interventions for 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25, operating at upper-tier or Mayoral Combined Authority/London scale. They should take account of the aims, objective and priorities of Multiply when developing local plans for people and skills interventions.

Voluntary and community sector provision

Lead local authorities have the flexibility to fund targeted people and skills provision in 2022-23 and 2023-24 where this is a continuing priority for 2024-25 and may be at significant risk of ending due to the tail off of EU funds. This flexibility may only be used where provision is currently delivered by voluntary and community organisations, having regard for the focus of the Fund and available funding.

Objectives:

• Boosting core skills and support adults to progress in work, by targeting adults with no or low level qualifications and skills in maths, and upskill the working population, yielding personal and societal economic impact, and by encouraging innovative approaches to reducing adult learning barriers.
• Reducing levels of economic inactivity ^{[footnote 1]} through investment in bespoke intensive life and employment support tailored to local need. Investment should facilitate the join-up of mainstream provision and local services within an area for participants, through the use of one-to-one keyworker support, improving employment outcomes for specific cohorts who face labour market barriers.
  • Expected cohorts include, but are not limited to people aged over 50, people with a disability and health condition, women, people from an ethnic minority, young people not in education, employment or training and people with multiple complex needs (homeless, care leavers, ex/ offenders, people with substance abuse problems and victims of domestic violence).
• Supporting people furthest from the labour market to overcome barriers to work by providing cohesive, locally tailored support, including access to basic skills.
• Supporting local areas to fund gaps in local skills provision to support people to progress in work, and supplement local adult skills provision e.g. by providing additional volumes; delivering provision through wider range of routes or enabling more intensive/innovative provision, both qualification based and non-qualification based. This should be supplementary to provision available through national employment and skills programmes.

Interventions

Supporting economically inactive people to overcome barriers to work by providing cohesive, locally tailored support including access to basic skills

• E33: Employment support for economically inactive people: Intensive and wrap-around one-to-one support to move people closer towards mainstream provision and employment, supplemented by additional and/or specialist life and basic skills (digital, English, maths* and ESOL) support where there are local provision gaps.

This provision can include project promoting the importance of work to help people to live healthier and more independent lives, alongside building future financial resilience and wellbeing. Beyond that, this intervention will also contribute to building community cohesion and facilitate greater shared civil pride, leading to better integration for those benefitting from ESOL support.

Expected cohorts include, but are not limited to people aged over 50, people with a disability and health condition, women, people from an ethnic minority, young people not in education, employment or training and people with multiple complex needs (homeless, care leavers, ex/offenders, people with substance abuse problems and victims of domestic violence).

*via Multiply.

Supporting people furthest from the labour market through access to basic skills

• E34: Courses including basic skills (digital, English, maths (via Multiply) and ESOL), and life skills and career skills** provision for people who are unable to access training through the adult education budget or wrap around support detailed above. Supplemented by financial support for learners to enrol onto courses and complete qualifications.

Beyond that, this intervention will also contribute to building community cohesion and facilitate greater shared civil pride, leading to better integration for those benefitting from ESOL support.

**where not being met through Department for Work and Pensions provision.

• E35: Activities such as enrichment and volunteering to improve opportunities and promote wellbeing.
• E36: Intervention to increase levels of digital inclusion, with a focus on essential digital skills, communicating the benefits of getting (safely) online, and in-community support to provide users with the confidence and trust to stay online.

Skills to progress in work and to fund local skills needs

• E37: Tailored support to help people in employment, who are not supported by mainstream provision to address barriers to accessing education and training courses. This includes supporting the retention of groups who are likely to leave the labour market early.
• E38: Support for local areas to fund local skills needs. This includes technical and vocational qualifications and courses up to level 2 and training for vocational licences relevant to local area needs and high-value qualifications where there is a need for additional skills capacity that is not being met through other provision.
• E39: Green skills courses targeted around ensuring we have the skilled workforce to achieve the government’s net zero and wider environmental ambitions.
• E40: Retraining support for those in high carbon sectors.
• E41: Funding to support local digital skills.

1. Economic inactivity refers to those without a job who have not sought work in the last four weeks and/or are not available to start work in the next two weeks although in practice many people who are inactive will have been so for a long time. For UKSPF, people and skills investments the term includes people not in work who are on and off benefits, with the exception of Universal Credit, Jobseekers Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance claimants who are in the all work related requirements legal conditionality groups (i.e. Light Touch and Intensive Work Search). ↩ ↩²