October Signpost

Welcome to our first monthly Signpost — pulling together some of the policy-focussed research across the University of Leeds.

Each month we’ll bring you a brief introduction to the work of researchers already active in engaging with policy, as well as some whose work lends itself to informing policy development.

Research England Policy Support Fund

Over the summer we’ve been celebrating the successes of research teams who were awarded funding from the Research England Policy Support Fund 2021–22, through our two-part seminar series.

In the first of these, we heard Dr Frin Bale speak about her work on shared ground heat exchange for the decarbonisation of heat, looking at how heat pump technology can be applied in a micro-network, particularly useful for terraced houses and flat blocks. This project identified a gap in provision for mid-scale shared ground heat exchanges in the UK Government’s Heat and Buildings Strategy, which the team looked to address.

Professor Ben Walmsley shared the research of the Centre for Cultural Value on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the cultural sector, and on culture, health and wellbeing. The Centre for Cultural Value do three main things — build an evidence base to inform understanding of culture, work with the cultural sector to evaluate activities and provide training and upskilling, and inform policy professionals. This research focussed on creating research-informed recommendations for cultural policy, and the team have since produced How to…shape cultural policy through research to increase confidence in engagement with policy across the sector.

We also heard from Dr Jenny Armstrong from Water@Leeds, who presented the West Yorkshire Flood Innovation Programme (WY FLIP) Roadmap. The roadmap facilitated collaboration between local authorities, industry, the third sector and academia to increase West Yorkshire’s flood resilience. This allowed the development of flood resilience strategies across local authority boundaries to create a region-wide approach.

In the second session, Professor Pippa Chapman explained how the work of her team revealed potential opportunities for carbon storage through hedgerow planting across the UK. This research, which involved soil sampling under hedgerows and in neighbouring fields to determine relative carbon sequestration, shows potential for hedgerow planting to help the UK meet its net-zero targets. You can find out more about this research on the Priestley International Centre for Climate’s website

We heard from Dr Anne Velenturf about the extensive work being done the Yorkshire Circular Lab to promote and sustain circular economy initiatives. A circular economy looks to increase sustainable consumption by increasing sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling materials, and reducing the use of new resources. The lab offers support in setting up circular initiatives, and have created a map for existing ones across Yorkshire and the Humber in five categories: food, textiles, furniture, digital and electronics, and underutilised goods.

And Dr Chris Keyworth shared his work to evaluate the ability of healthcare professionals to keep Making Every Contact Count (MECC) after changes to healthcare delivery due to Covid. Through the project Dr Keyworth and his team trialled a web-based resource, based on developing if-then plans, to help healthcare workers deliver concise behaviour change interventions (for example, to increase people’s physical activity, or help them quit smoking) as part of their interactions with patients. After one month, more patients were receiving interventions and healthcare professionals also reported they were spending more time on Making Every Contact Count. The team is now talking to Health Education England with a view to making this resource available as part of the Making Every Contact Count toolkit.

Research from across University of Leeds

This summer, Energy Leeds released a report highlighting how local authorities in the North of England can facilitate low-carbon infrastructure transition.

Priestley International Centre for Climate released new findings that show propane as a possible answer for sustainable air conditioning.

And Iyiola Solanke of the Co-POWeR research consortium shared a policy brief outlining a number of recommendations for protecting wellbeing and resilience in BAME families and communities during a public health emergency.

Coming up

Policy Leeds is currently working with Research England to deliver this year’s Policy Support Fund. With a number of academics already having submitted applications for this, we’re looking forward to seeing more opportunities for policy-research collaboration.

Get in touch

If any of the above research is of interest, please feel free to get in touch with the named researchers. If you would like Policy Leeds to facilitate an introduction, or you have a specific research requirement not related to the above, please contact PolicyLeeds@leeds.ac.uk