About
The North Midlands OPE Region was awarded funding through the Opportunity Development Fund (ODF) initiative to develop a shared project pipeline for the North Midlands. The focus of this work was to identify and consider opportunities for potential property projects to address inequalities across the key thematic areas of Housing, Education and Health.
Over the summer of 2022, the OPE programme worked with the health sector to secure the capacity and expertise to help us shape and deliver a pipeline of estate-driven opportunities.
In collaboration with and support of the Integrated Care System (JUCD), Community Ventures was appointed by OPE to work across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
The programme lead was Peter Jones, Community Ventures/Southern Derbyshire LIFTCo/GRT Nottingham LIFTCo and the project manager was Caroline Hayler with Helen Parker leading on communications and stakeholder engagement. Many of you will be familiar with the work that Peter has led in both Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
By bringing together various partners and stakeholders, we sought to identify and develop a focused pipeline of projects that support the objectives of the levelling agenda and tackle identified inequalities. We worked with partners at the PLACE level to assess the health, housing and education inequalities across each area from which we identified a pipeline of potential projects to address those inequalities.
In particular, we were looking to identify projects which bringing together services and estate reconfiguration from across the Public Sector, which might not be viable in isolation but can be delivered as part of a wider pan-organisation project.
Such projects will not only deliver improved services and make more efficient use of the Public Sector estate, but they will also be a tangible demonstration of the value of Public Sector collaboration. As identified above, we established networks across the North Midlands based upon the PLACE areas to take forward this work.
These networks helped facilitate debate, encourage collaboration, and bring together ideas and pipeline projects to make the best use possible of your current knowledge and challenges, through a better understanding of any relevant data individual organisations may hold.
With this in mind, we held a series of workshops across the region with key stakeholders based in twelve PLACE areas across Derbyshire (eight PLACE areas) and Nottinghamshire (four PLACE areas) with the aim to:
This work enabled us to get ahead of the curve and enable the North Midlands to be ready to take advantage of future funding opportunities which benefitted those populations.