Future Towns Consultancy

The York, North Yorkshire and East Riding Enterprise Partnership (YNYER LEP) wishes to procure a consultant to help us develop a deeper understanding of the future role that our towns can play in supporting productivity growth across the LEP area, how the nature of these places are likely to change in the wake of unprecedented technological change, and what opportunities and challenges this presents in terms of place-making. This work will guide our future policy, including the content of our Local Industrial Strategy.

There has been a focus on the future of cities in the digital age as their economic and social role expands alongside progress in technology and mobility. However, there has been limited attention paid to the future role of market and smaller towns during this period of massive change.

To this end, the LEP is currently undertaking separate data analysis to improve our understanding of how the towns across the LEP area function and the challenges they face. This will benchmark the towns in terms of socio-economic data and town centre health, and group the towns based on their challenges and role.

This work may identify gaps in our evidence base that will need to be filled by carrying out more targeted research and analysis. We now require a second more conceptual piece of work to identify future trends in how people will work, live, shop and behave, in the towns in areas such as ours, given technological and societal changes.

The LEP wishes to procure a consultant to undertake this piece of work, in response to this brief. Using examples of good practise from the UK and beyond, this piece of work should take the data and groupings from the LEP's initial towns work and identify how our towns will need to evolve and change to ensure that they remain successful and distinctive places in the 21st century.

In particular, we are keen to improve their productivity and ensure they are appealing, healthy and relevant places to live and work, with active and appealing town centres. This work should take account of the key themes within the Government's national Industrial Strategy.