Facing the Challenges for Yorkshire and Humber

Ten major challenges facing communities in Yorkshire and Humber have been identified in a key document aimed at helping steer crucial decisions on how and where to spend hundreds of millions of pounds in the region.

Organisations across Yorkshire and Humber have helped draw up the Integrated Regional Framework, one of the region’s key policy building blocks, which aims to pull together key initiatives affecting the five million people who live here.

The IRF, titled “Growing Together’’ and launched at yesterday’s Yorkshire and Humber Assembly AGM in Wakefield, will help provide the framework to help regional and local bodies plan their work in a more joined up way, enabling the best use of resources to benefit people right across the region.

While the Assembly, Yorkshire Forward and Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber will help steer the overall framework, local authorities, businesses and organisations in all sectors across the region will be responsible for co-ordinating delivery to local communities at ground level.

It identifies the ten challenges, sets out the direction the region needs to take and details what the region needs to do more of, or do differently in the future to make progress against that challenge. It will also form the basis for measuring how the region is progressing:

The challenges are: sustainable transport; climate change mitigation; climate change adaptation; productivity and innovation; higher level skills and education; housing markets and affordability; public health and obesity; violent crime; diversity and equality and regional growth.

The IRF, which has been produced following an extensive two year consultation with regional partners, merges existing frameworks Advancing Together and the Regional Sustainable Development Framework and sets out the key sustainable development issues facing the region.

The work has been geared towards a ‘challenge’ remit, encouraging the region to take further action to address these issues and to help regional bodies – including local councils, businesses and other agencies – plan their work in a more joined up way, allowing for a better use of resources.

Peter Box, Chair of the Assembly said “The IRF is about delivering a better future for this region and everyone who lives here.

“It has been produced in partnership with key stakeholders across the region- organisations and individuals who influence where resources are best channelled to tackle the important issues facing Yorkshire and Humber.

“And by being able to measure progress, we can best decide how and where that assistance should be targeted to bring real benefits to the whole region.’’

* Graduate photography student, Hannah Trigg, who won a competition organised by Yorkshire Culture on behalf of the Assembly to provide the images for the IRF, helped to launch the framework by highlighting how the pictures reflect the unique diversity of the Yorkshire and Humber region and the challenges it faces.

An electronic version of the IRF is available in our online library. If you require a hard copy, contact us.