Consultancy services for WMCA's Inclusive Communities Strategy

The Commonwealth Games Legacy Enhancement Fund (CWGLEF) has been divided into four 'pillars' (i.e., funding areas) of which one is an Inclusive Communities Pillar. This pillar focuses on areas ranging from equality, inclusive economy, health & wellbeing, creating connected communities and affordable housing etc. Various programmes have already been launched under this pillar since 2022 such as The Homelessness Taskforce, The Race Equalities Taskforce and Community Engagement. These programmes help build a shared understanding of inclusive communities between stakeholders and foster greater community confidence in the WMCA, by strengthening our approaches to power and participation, capacity building and investment into communities.

One of the key delivery strands for the Inclusive Communities pillar is the development of an Inclusive Communities Strategy focused on social mobility, social infrastructure, social capital, and social inclusion (the four overlapping Inclusive Community concepts). The Strategy should:

 Articulate an overarching vision and shared regional priorities for promoting inclusive communities.  Be co-produced with WMCA stakeholders, including our communities and add value to existing work.  Provide evidence on the value of inclusive communities to key regional strategies and wider WMCA priorities.  Support WMCA in making the case for inclusive communities within the Single Settlement by outlining the key drivers and priorities for culture and alignment with national and regional policies now and in the next five years.  Identify the key performance indicators that will be used to identify if the strategy delivers the vision and goals and support how the WMCA monitors progress over its duration.

The WMCA is seeking to appoint a Consultant / Delivery Partner to work with us to better understand the four social concepts to support the growth of our Inclusive Communities framework. The key phases (deliverables) required by the successful consultant for this contract are-

I. Phase 1 (Discovery): development of a delivery plan, development of test and learn projects and a Phase 1 Report II. Phase 2 (Prototyping): collection of data from monitoring the test and learn projects. III. Phase 3 (Strategy Development): producing and sharing an Inclusive Communities Draft Strategy IV. Phase 4 (Final Strategy): to submit a final strategy and deliver local community events to launch the strategy.