City-REDI, in collaboration with KPMG, hosted their event ‘Bricks, Concrete and Steel – A look at Birmingham’s future commercial and residential property and local infrastructure development’ this month as part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Festival of Social Sciences.
The Dynamic Economic Impact Model (DEIM) is being developed by KPMG and City-REDI for the West Midlands Combined Authority. As part of the development, a set of core elements of research have taken place including:
- An assessment of the housing supply and requirements for the forecast
- An assessment of the skills in the population, and the skills required in the forecast
We see these issues as interlinked and in economic terms solutions should aim to tackle both. Although scenarios and modelling are still underway, the underpinning work has found that there is a gap in the supply of housing and the supply of skills needed to achieve the forecasts in the strategy. Although the WMCA will be continuing to develop the strategy and projects to achieve the forecasts, at this point in the research it is useful to reflect on these basic findings. The ESRC Festival of Social Sciences encourages universities to engage the wider research, policy and private sector communities to develop the research and ensure it has real impact, affecting change in the world we live in.
With that in mind the event organised by City-REDI and KPMG was aimed at exploring these two issues through a round table discussion with policy makers, academics, developers and practitioners. They were asked to identify barriers and opportunities and how change could be facilitated.
A summary report of the discussion can be found here:
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All slides can be downloaded here:
Rebecca Riley City-REDI
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Andy Argyle and Mike Froom KPMG
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Prof John Bryson City-REDI
If you would like to get in touch and find out more about the work please email info-cityredi@contacts.bham.ac.uk