Solihull wins national award for cross-sector partnership work

The Compact Plus for Solihull was among the winners at this week’s national Annual Compact awards.

Sir Bert Massie, Commissioner for the Compact, announced the winners at a ceremony in London, held during Compact Week.

Solihull won the Local Compact of the Year award for its attempts to reinvigorate a Local Compact agreement that was largely ignored. The Compact Plus for Solihull 2008-2013 (pdf, 725kb), an agreement to improve relations between the Solihull Partnership and the third sector, was officially launched in December 2008.

Observatory collaborates with CSWP to develop new sub-regional strategy

The Observatory is pleased to continue our long standing links with the Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire Partnership (CSWP) through a forthcoming project aimed at exploring future economic prospects for the sub-region.

We were commissioned in 2007 to deliver an initial economic assessment for CSWP. This report provided CSWP with a review of the strengths and weaknesses in the wider socio-economic environment for the sub-region as well as outlining future opportunities and threats.

Sharing intelligence from Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire

Yesterday, I attended the Coventry, Solihull and Wawickshire Researchers’ Forum to demonstrate the Observatory’s Resource Catalogue and show how the data and intelligence in the catalogue might support the work that they’re engaged in, and also to encourage further contributions to the catalogue from members of the forum to help share their data and intelligence across the region and sub-region.

The Resource Catalogue is available through the Observatory’s website and collects research, data and policy documents from across the West Midlands to create a fully searchable database for policy makers, decision makers, researchers and anyone else to access. There are contributions from organisations across the public, private and third sectors and what is particularly useful is that almost all are free and available immediately via a web-link.

West Midlands Regional Integrated Economic Assessment published

The West Midlands is the first English region to produce a Regional Integrated Economic Assessment. The aim of the project is to provide an assessment of the performance of the West Midlands’ economy and of the factors which contribute to it. It also assesses the relative position of the different parts of the region.

The Assessment is made up of:

• An overarching regional summary (PDF, 1.7MB)
• Three thematic chapters:
  • Economic Structure and Output (PDF, 1.7MB)
  • Communities and Connections (PDF, 1.5MB)
  • The People of the Region (PDF, 0.6MB)
• Local authority area profiles for each of the 14 strategic authorities