Loughborough: Looking to the future

Read the full report Loughborough: Looking to the future

The origins of the Jobs Foundation go back to a conversation in 2020, when the two of us talked about the crucial role that businesses play in giving people a step up in life, through jobs and training. We kept circling back to this subject, and in 2022, we realised that there was a need for a charity that distilled the best practice from companies who excel at getting people from disadvantaged backgrounds into work, so companies who wish to introduce dedicated schemes to do this, can do so without going through the process of trial and error. The Jobs Foundation was granted charitable status in 2023 and launched later that year. This report is the second instalment of our foundational research, which will be published in full later this year, and will guide us as we grow the charity over the coming years.

When we first began working on the Jobs Foundation, very few people were aware of the crucial need for a charity that helps get people into work. Fast forward to 2024, and it is front and centre of the policy debate. But missing so far has been the crucial role of business to make this happen, by creating and providing jobs, which is why Nick Tyrone's report, which looks at the role that businesses play in their local communities, is so groundbreaking.

Loughborough: looking to the future is the second in a series of reports that will examine the role of employment as a means of helping people escape from poverty, alongside looking at business as a societal good. It takes a deep dive into a British town through the lens of jobs and business - the town in question being the East Midlands town of Loughborough. It was chosen due to several factors. One is that it is a classic “swing seat”, the type of constituency that goes to the election victors. The town's vote is always up for grabs.

The second reason we chose the town as an area of study is that it is geographically in the middle of the country, as well as tending to trend in the centre of most economic measures, such as median salary. It is Middle England, both theoretically and literally. The final reason for looking at Loughborough is that it has a host of large employers, combined with a university and a thriving SME culture which makes it stand out as a place to both understand what drives towns in Britain (and conversely, what holds them back), as well as looking at what part institutions play in that equation.

Our next report will focus on a coastal community, with an in-depth look at Hartlepool. This will include sections on Cromer and Redcar for comparisons, homing in on the problems that are common to all of Britain's coastal communities. This will be followed by a report on the rural economy through the lens of a particular county, Pembrokeshire. Our core belief is that successful societies require successful businesses, and this foundational research will assist us in our journey to support businesses to do even more good for their local communities in future.

Read the full report Loughborough: Looking to the future