Guidance

Interventions list for Northern Ireland

Published 13 April 2022

We have engaged with departments across the Northern Ireland Executive so the UK Government can develop a list of interventions aligned to each of the three UKSPF investment priorities. We plan to build on this engagement in the coming months.

The UK Government will take a role in convening partners from across Northern Ireland to develop the UKSPF Investment Plan, considering the investment interventions across the three investment priorities set out below. We will refine the plan in consultation with stakeholders in a way that reflects the needs of Northern Ireland’s economy and society. This group could include representatives from Northern Ireland Executive Departments, local authorities, businesses and the community and voluntary sector.

The plan will be used by the UK Government to inform investment decisions for UKSPF in Northern Ireland, working closely with local partners.

This plan will be developed considering existing funds supported by the UK Government in Northern Ireland, including Peace Plus, the New Decade, New Approach Deal and the Levelling Up Fund. The drafting of the plan will be carried out in consideration of wider Northern Ireland Executive funding and strategies as well as strategies developed in partnership across local authority and City and Growth Deal geographies, such as each local authority’s community plan.

1. Communities and place

The following, among other relevant plans and strategies, will be considered as the UKSPF plan for Northern Ireland is developed:

• Draft NI Programme for Government draft Outcomes Framework 2021
• Infrastructure 2050 – Draft Investment Strategy for NI
• Community Plans
• Local Development Plans
• High Street Task Force – Report and Recommendations
• Draft Green Growth Strategy for NI
• Draft Environment Strategy for NI
• Regional Development Strategy
• Energy Strategy – Path to Net Zero Energy
• Active Ageing Strategy
• Health and Well-being 2026: Delivering together
• Active Living – Sport and Physical Activity Strategy for Northern Ireland
• Tourism Recovery Action Plan
• Volunteering Strategy and Action Plan

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 access to amenities, such as community infrastructure and local green space, and community-led projects.
• Building resilient, healthy and safe neighbourhoods, through investment in quality places that people want to live, work, play and learn in, through targeted improvements to the built and natural environment and innovative approaches to crime prevention.

Interventions

• NI1: Funding for improvements to town centres and high streets, including better accessibility for disabled people, including capital spend and running costs.
• NI2: 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.
• NI3: Creation of and improvements to local green spaces, community gardens, watercourses and embankments, along with incorporating natural features into wider public spaces.
• NI4: Enhanced support for existing cultural, historic and heritage institutions that make up the local cultural and heritage offer
• NI5: Design and management of the built and landscaped environment to ‘design out crime’.
• NI6: Support for local arts, cultural, heritage and creative activities.
• NI7: Support for active travel enhancements and measures to improve connectivity in the local area, including undertaking active travel needs assessments at the local level.
• NI8: Funding for the development and promotion of wider campaigns which encourage people to visit and explore the local area.
• NI9: Funding for impactful volunteering and/or social action projects to develop social and human capital in local places, for example addressing climate change.
• NI10: Funding for local sports facilities, tournaments, teams and leagues; to bring people together, including the preparation of strategies promoting sport and physical activity at the local level.
• NI11: Investment in capacity building and infrastructure support for local civil society and community groups.
• NI12: Investment in community engagement schemes to support community involvement in decision making in local regeneration.
• NI13: Community measures to reduce the cost of living, including through measures to improve energy efficiency, and combat fuel poverty and climate change.
• NI14: Funding to support relevant feasibility studies.
• NI15: Investment and support for digital infrastructure for local community facilities.

2. Supporting local business

The following, among other relevant plans and strategies, will be considered as the UKSPF plan for Northern Ireland is developed:

• NI Programme for Government draft Outcomes Framework 2021
• Skills for a 10x Economy - A Draft Skills Strategy for Northern Ireland
• Infrastructure 2050 – Draft Investment Strategy for NI
• Community Plans
• Local Development Plans
• Draft Green Growth Strategy for NI
• Energy Strategy – Path to Net Zero Energy
• Innovation Strategy for Northern Ireland 2014-2025
• Tourism Recovery Action Plan

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

• NI16: Investment in open markets and improvements to town centre retail and service sector infrastructure, with wrap around support for small businesses.
• NI17: 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.
• NI18: Supporting Made Smarter Adoption: Providing tailored expert advice, matched grants and leadership training to enable manufacturing SMEs to adopt industrial digital technology solutions including AI; 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.
• NI19: Increasing investment in research and development at the local level. Investment to support the diffusion of innovation knowledge and activities, in both economically important and emerging areas. Support the commercialisation of ideas, encouraging collaboration and accelerating the path to market so that more ideas translate into industrial and commercial practices.
• NI20: Research and development grants supporting the development of innovative products and services, with a particular focus on low carbon goods and environmental services, and climate resilience.
• NI21: Funding for the development and support of appropriate innovation infrastructure at the local level.
• NI22: Investing in enterprise infrastructure and employment/innovation site development projects. This can help to unlock site development projects which will support growth in places.
• NI23: Strengthening local entrepreneurial ecosystems and supporting businesses at all stages of their development to start, sustain, grow and innovate, including through local networks.
• NI24: 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/high growth potential firms through the early stages of development and growth by offering a combination of services including, e.g., account management, advice, resources, training, mentorship, coaching and access to workspace.
• NI25: Grants to build strategic partnerships with key entrepreneurial ecosystems in other countries, and to help places bid for and host international business events and conferences that support wider local growth sectors.
• NI26: Support for growing the local social economy, including community businesses, cooperatives and social enterprises.
• NI27: Funding to develop angel investor networks.
• NI28: Export Grants to support businesses to grow their overseas trading, supporting local employment and investment.
• NI29: 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.
• NI30: Business support measures to drive employment growth, particularly in areas of higher unemployment.
• NI31: Funding to support relevant feasibility studies.
• NI32: 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

The following, among other relevant plans and strategies, will be considered as the UKSPF plan for Northern Ireland is developed:

• NI Programme for Government draft Outcomes Framework 2021
• Skills for a 10x Economy - A Draft Skills Strategy for Northern Ireland
• Community Plans
• Local Development Plans
• Generating our Success - the Northern Ireland strategy for youth training
• Active Ageing Strategy

Objectives

• Boosting core skills and supporting 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 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 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 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

• NI33: Employment support for economically inactive people^{[footnote 1]}: Intensive and wrap-around one-to-one support to move people closer to mainstream provision and to gain and retain employment, including wraparound support to people undertaking apprenticeships, 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 projects promoting the importance of work to help people to live healthier and more independent lives, alongside building their future financial resilience and wellbeing.

Expected cohorts particularly 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

• NI34: Courses including basic skills (digital, English, maths and ESOL), and life skills provision** for people who are not economically inactive, including the most vulnerable in society and who are unable to access other training 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 Northern Ireland Executive Departments provision

• NI35: Funding for work experience, including internships and activities such as enrichment and volunteering to improve opportunities and promote wellbeing.
• NI36: Interventions 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 address local skills needs

• NI37: 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.
• NI38: Support for local areas to address 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 met through other provision.
• NI39: Green skills courses targeted around ensuring we have the skilled workforce to achieve the government’s net zero and wider environmental ambitions, with a particular focus on vulnerable or low-income groups who will be disproportionately affected by climate change.
• NI40: Retraining support to those in employment to address skills shortages, including those in high carbon sectors.
• NI41: Funding to support local digital skills.
• NI42: Promotion of STEM subjects for women/girls and provision of ongoing support to increase uptake of STEM subjects for women/girls.

Multiply

• NI43: Courses designed to increase confidence with numbers for those needing the first steps towards formal qualifications.
• NI44: Courses for parents wanting to increase their numeracy skills in order to help their children, and help with their own progression.
• NI45: Courses aimed at prisoners, those recently released from prison or on temporary licence. 
• NI46: Courses aimed at people who can’t apply for certain jobs because of lack of numeracy skills and/or to encourage people to upskill in order to access a certain job/career.
• NI47: Additional relevant maths modules embedded into other vocational courses.   
• NI48: Innovative programmes delivered together with employers – including courses designed to cover specific numeracy skills required in the workplace.
• NI49: New Intensive and flexible courses targeted at people without Level 2 maths in Northern Ireland, leading to an equivalent qualification (for more information on equivalent qualifications, please see Qualifications can cross boundaries (PDF, 974KB)).
• NI50: Courses designed to help people use numeracy to manage their money.
• NI51: Courses aimed at those 19 or over that are leaving, or have just left, the care system
• NI52: Activities, courses or provision developed in partnership with community organisations and other partners aimed at engaging the hardest to reach learners – for example, those not in the labour market or other groups identified locally as in need.

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). ↩