vision

Oxfordshire creates opportunities and benefits for all communities and people within our region.

mission

The Oxfordshire Inclusive Economy Partnership is working together to create a more equal and sustainable region that creates opportunities and benefits for all people within the county.

We are working to tackle some of our region’s biggest problems to create a fairer environment where everyone can contribute and share in our success.

Principles

An inclusive economy can be defined in different ways.  The following statements have been used by other organisations.“
Growing prosperity that reduces inequality and is sustainable.” (Plymouth Inclusive Growth Group) “

An Inclusive Economy offers a genuine progressive conceptual frame in which greater consideration is given to social benefits that flow from, and feed into, economic activity.“ (CLES- the national organisation for local economies - https://cles.org.uk/).

Even these short statements can be impenetrable for some people. While the Oxford Inclusive Economy Partnership has not created its own definition of an inclusive economy, there is consensus that the following principles lie at the heart of the Partnership’s work:

·      Reducing inequality
·      Creating opportunity
·      Creating benefits for communities and citizens
·      Our focus is Oxfordshire – this is a county wide issue

Focus areas

We have set up 4 action focused working groups to deliver our vision:·      

‍Educational attainment - focusing on early years, educational attainment of GCSE English and Maths and better links between business and education to help shape career choices.

Inclusive Employment - focuses on both employers and employees.  Looking at how organisations can create better pathways into work whilst understanding the barriers people face to accessing employment

‍Social value and procurement - Spending money locally, initially from public sector organisations like our councils and our universities, puts money back into the local economy and creates opportunities for local businesses – we are looking at how we can grow the amount of money that is spent within our county, for our county.  We are also looking at how the businesses that benefit from this are investing into our local communities, through jobs, training or improving our environment.

‍Place shaping - Investing in places that need it most.  Communities need to be part of our work to ensure that money spent in our county helps address some of our biggest challenges – health, environment, housing – we need to ensure that we can answer these questions - what are the benefits that can be created for local people?  How are the benefits of economic activity and growth shared locally?  

We will be working with projects across Oxfordshire that the partnership can support, grow or amplify their work as well as creating a repository of case studies, information and signposting related to the inclusive economy.  

Our aim is to work together to create a more equal region that creates opportunities and benefits for all people within the county.    

Our focus is on tackling areas that really need attention, which will have impact and will really make a difference.  

The working groups seek to find, and build upon, specific initiatives or specialist organisations who are already successful in tackling some of the issues of inclusivity.  

These initiatives are most likely to be focused on how we can grow capacity or reach of such programmes by gaining support (whether in kind, in funding, or by way of making connections) of our Membership, and others.

related resources