This policy briefing explores how the Liverpool City Region has sustained employment policy innovation across decades of national change. Drawing on programmes such as the City Strategy Pathfinder, Youth Employment Gateway, and Households into Work, it shows how trust-based relationships, boundary-spanning roles, and collaborative governance have acted as an ‘invisible thread’ maintaining local capacity for innovation, learning, and co-production despite shifting national frameworks.
“The Liverpool City Region provides a rich case through which to examine the dynamics of place-based employment policy, particularly the role of local networks and trust-based relationships.”
Sue Jarvis, Co-Director, Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place
Policymakers should prioritise collaborative capacity, investing in cross-sector leadership and systems that enable data-sharing and joint working. They should invest in boundary-spanning roles, such as one-to-one employment advisors who build trust and connect fragmented services; provide flexible funding that allows tailored responses to individual needs; and strengthen co-production by giving service users a voice in shaping their employment journeys.
Meet the Author
Sue co-leads the University of Liverpool’s Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place, which is at the forefront of debate on local and regional economies. A former director at Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and Knowsley Council, Sue has senior leadership experience of delivering public services, including complex programmes where activities are undertaken by partners across multiple agencies and geographies.
Sue’s expertise spans the policy domains of employment and skills, local economic development, regional devolution and communities in their places.
At the Heseltine Institute, Sue leads stakeholder engagement to align academic research with policymaking to explore critical public policy challenges and choices facing cities and city regions. Her role includes working as an academic advisor to the Liverpool City Region All-Party Parliamentary Group, evaluating the impact of national policies on local prosperity and leading key agendas for civic engagement. Sue also delivers a diverse portfolio of research and consultancy, influencing and impacting place-based policy and has considerable experience of writing for policy and practitioner audiences.
Sue is currently a co-investigator in the NIHR-funded Health Determinants Research Collaboration Liverpool, leading the knowledge mobilisation programme.
