Information, intelligence and insights from the genecon team

The Barnsley Futures Levelling Up Fund Round 2 bid, which Genecon supported, has secured £10.2m to transform cultural and well-being facilities in the town centre. Specifically, the funding will be used to deliver: The creation of a new Northern Academy for Vocal Excellence (NAVE) to deliver outstanding singing tuition to young people and serve as […]

  Residential buildings are estimated to consume almost a third of the UK’s energy supply and be responsible for 16% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions (source). Since the 1990s the UK government has delivered a variety of large-scale housing retrofit programmes (and the decarbonisation of the UK’s energy supply) as a mechanism for achieving […]

  Understanding crime, including where it comes from and how people engage with it is important. It helps us understand places and address issues that may arise from crime and how to prioritise safety.    Whether inside or outside, at home, or in the public domain, when people feel safe and not at risk of harm, […]

  Environmental, social and governance (ESG) represents a tripartite prism through which to take decisions, to capture value or to define a new corporate (or other) strategy. At its root it is about tackling the various externalities; structures or conditions, which serve to promote or reinforce an unequal or dominant form of control (however this […]

The ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) movement began in the late 20th century as a rejoinder to a narrow focus of business on bottom-line profit (Economy). It is a movement that places equal value on the environmental impacts of a business, the effects it has on the social fabric of its employees and the communities […]

A recent policy focus from Central Government has been to reverse the persistent decline of the town and city centres. To achieve this, funding streams such as the Future High Streets Fund (FHSF), Towns Fund and Levelling-up Fund (LUF) allowed Local Authorities to bid for funding to deliver capital projects that increase footfall and dwell […]

How local government finance works – what is the outlook and implications for future capital schemes? Since the austerity agenda that began with the Conservative – Lib Dem coalition government in 2010, local councils have become used to annual reductions in central government funding. Steadily reducing grants have placed increasing financial pressure on councils, along […]

Western donors spent US$179bn on international aid in 2021 and have transferred between 0.25% and 0.5% of their Gross National Income (GNI) into aid for decades[1]. The UK Government cut its aid budget to £11.4bn in 2021 – over double the £4.8bn allocated to the second round of the Levelling Up Fund (LUF2). We highlight […]

Are economic clusters the answer to good green growth? The benefits and drawbacks of economic clusters by Dr Jason Frost   Internationally, clustering is a tried and tested method, with examples of success in countries such as Singapore, Taiwan, Israel, as well as regions such as Hamburg, or Silicon Valley and even Hollywood. A recent […]

Whilst it is generally accepted that having significantly fewer and non-polluting electric cars on our heavily congested roads is desirable, the practicality of achieving this is also generally accepted as being an unlikely reality in the near future.   Despite there being a substantial increase in the number of electric cars being sold in the […]