Wellbeing for Communities - Green New Deal
Wellbeing for Communities - Green New Deal
Organisations involved
Lead partner - Sustainability West Midlands. Supporting partners - RegenWM, Localise West Midlands, Government Office, Advantage West Midlands, West Midlands Leaders Board.
Summary
The problem being addressed - how can we ensure that public investment by stimulating the economy in 'green' projects helps to tackle 'worklessness' and unemployment as well as create a long-term low carbon infrastructure such as greenspace, retrofited houses, and walking and cycling routes?
Update on the progress of the project
Green New Deal 2008-9
Sustainability West Midlands supports the regional coalition led by Localise West Midlands around the concept of a Green New Deal
Green New Deal 2009-10
Sustainability West Midlands, Localise West Midlands and RegenWM deliver a 'mini-summit on worklessness and green solutions'. This is hailed by the key speaker, Colin Hines, the leader of the national Green New Deal, as the most significant regional event on this agenda. The event generates a range of follow on activity.
The results of the event are used to inform recommendations to the Economic Inclusion Panel on the business case for a regional coordinator on good practice around worklessness and green solutions around greenspace, retrofit for housing, and graduate brokerage into green jobs.
Sustainability West Midlands hosted an event with institutional investors representing £2 billion looking for longer term 'green' investments. This is now being taken forward by Advantage West Midlands and the Sustainable Housing Action Partnership.
We are investigating a range of support events with Social Enterprise West Midlands to help medium and large size social enterprises access energy and waste advice and move into the new markets of helping people back into work while delivering a green project.
We have ensured that the worklessness issues have been fed into the wider Green Jobs and Skills work we are involved in with partners. For example this work informed our City Region Leaders summit and the follow up projects around procurement and retrofit.
(This project activity delivers our Business plan objectives around 3.5 supporting Green New Deal programme)
Links and contact information
Email us at enquiries@swm.org.uk if you would like more information