Challenge 5: Knowsley Council

Claire Hogan: 
Today, we're in Shakespeare North Theatre which is in Prescot, an area of Knowsley. The council won council of the year. This is challenge number five, in this year's Local Government Challenge. 

Justin Thompson: 
We've just set a council plan recently, which is focused on inequalities and social regeneration. So the theme we thought to give to the contestants was about ambition in young people and how that’s sustained into their careers. 

Helen Potter: 
I think it is a really difficult challenge but there are lots of similarities in this question to the issues that face Telford & Wrekin Council. We had the Exec Director, and the councillor come into the room. So that was really good we could start to chat to them just to get more of an understanding of the borough and the people and the communities of Knowsley. 

Amy Lipley: 
Today I'm feeling quite positive and actually a little bit sad that it’s the last challenge. So far, the team have had lots of meetings, lots of chats, with some really interesting people. What I've learned about this issue, in this challenge, is that there are discrepancies between the deprived and the affluent in Knowsley. 

Adeel Hussain: 
Following on from our initial meeting we moved over to the studio and Gemma gave us a presentation on the insights and rich data they have gathered over the last few years. One of the biggest things that we really want to spend some time on is just getting all of our ideas out on paper. 

Shohum Dave: 
After lunch we were invited to sit down with stakeholders from the community, I got the chance to engage with business leaders. They were both lovely people, and they had so much insight as to how you can try and tackle these challenges. A lot of the solutions that they were speaking to was about having preventative measures in place. 

Harriet Vitty: 
I think what I have learned this morning so far is how young people's aspirations grow and then suddenly go away again and how local government can put in infrastructures and support to ensure that young people who then grow up into adults within the employment market are aspiring as high as they possibly can. 

Mike Campbell: 
Meeting the youth cabinet was really inspiring. They’re group of young people who are involved through the Merseyside Youth Association. They sit on the Knowsley Youth Cabinet, and they spoke to us about things that they are hoping to achieve in the future. The children who have stability in their life and have a clear direction they want to go in have lots of options and the schools are really able to help them explore those options. But where there is perhaps less of that role model or stability in the family, then things could be harder. 

Adeel Hussain: 
Growing up I can remember not having the aspirations or ideas of where I wanted to go or what future career I would have. It was quite late on in life that I fell into local government and that’s what has turned into a career but there’s many young people out there that just don't have that fortune. That luck. We need to do something about that.  

Michael Barrett: 
It's been a really busy challenge here in Knowsley and both teams are now finalising their proposals and presentations for this afternoon. There's a lot of tension building in the air because at the end of this challenge we’ll find out who our four finalists are who will go forward to compete for a scholarship at the LGA Annual Conference. 

Virginia Ponton: 
This is a really meaningful challenge about enabling young people and breaking intergenerational cycles. Our cohort have come from a range of different professional and community backgrounds, and they have been able to bring in their personal stories to this challenge. 

Angelo Da Costa: 
I learned what the social and economic issues are here in Knowsley. Predominantly around youth employment and young people tend to go to university in other cities and tend to stay there. The retention of young people is something that I’ve learned that's very important.  

Jess Finnin: 
We had a really great opportunity to have an ideas testing session with key stakeholders. It went really well. The opportunity is there for everybody and for people to be a BOSS. The BOSS acronym is Believe, it’s opportunities, its support and succeed. It was really important to us that we localise this as much as possible and we're really lucky to have Harriet on the team who is herself a very proud scouse. BOSS itself has some cultural meaning and we really wanted to implement it. 

Aoife O’Gorman: 
We’ve just come out of the tech test. It was in one of the studio theatres here so that's quite a different environment to be in instead of a council chamber but also quite fun. We've got tiered seating there were steps. Seems fairly straightforward. We've managed to get our presentation up on the screen, it's looking good. Some officers from the council were quite positive about the diagram that Shohum has pulled together.  

Rebecca Dentith: 
Today as the team it’s really been reviewing the final report. Making sure that it's got that cohesive voice running through it and we feel that we're ticking off the key deliverables. I've been working on the slide format so, making sure that we are presenting our key ideas. 

Helen Potter: 
We're proposing a broad range of ideas for Knowsley to take forwards to really harness the ambition of young people and improve their education and employment. Including a partnership approach, some ideas around Ted talks that we can give to really inspire and give ideas to young people and parents and a number of other ideas around the partnership, all working together. 

Adeel Hussain:
Knowsley has for many decades had a narrative of deprivation and I think now is the time to change that narrative. Team Ascend’s idea is to create a destination passport that will live with them throughout their career journey. To bring in stakeholders’ partners to showcase the talent that's available within the area. To bring skills and employment onto the table and work with businesses to ensure that there's the meaningful delivery of social value impact within this area. 

Cllr Jayne Lonergan: 
The winning team we chose was Ascend. It was a close run thing but we went for Ascend because we felt that it really chimed with Knowsley. We felt that it could be something that we could actually look into and adopt. Part of the report and the presentation focused on BOSS which really resonated with the judges. We thought that would be something that young people of Knowsley would buy in to. 

Helen Potter: 
The best thing about this challenge for me was the way we came together and did a really good presentation. I think as we’ve reflected what we could have done, was really emphasised the residents voice even more in our proposals. 

Adeel Hussain:
I'm feeling over the moon. The challenge was so intense but up until the very last minute, the whole team pulled together and just made sure that we were able to deliver the right pitch with our proposal. So absolutely made-up. 

Michael Barrett: 
We've just announced the four finalists for the scholarship of the 2025 Local Government Challenge. And they are Jess from Havering Council. Rebecca from North Yorkshire Council. Mike from Waltham Forest Council. And Harriet from Liverpool City Council. We're looking forward to seeing the four finalists at the LGA's Annual Conference. 

Knowsley is a metropolitan borough in the North West. Located within the Liverpool City Region, Knowsley is home to almost 160,000 people with the population growing each year with more people choosing to stay and move to Knowsley. This growth has come after decades of population decline, with the population at its lowest in 2011 with 148,000 residents.  

Local authorities play a pivotal role in reducing inequality and creating opportunities for residents to achieve their career aspirations and unlock their earning potential. However, the cycles of poverty can limit access to education, training and employment opportunities, stifling upward mobility and long-term economic independence.   

In Knowsley, children have high levels of aspiration, but as they age and reach adulthood these levels of aspiration decrease. Many residents work hard, often having more than one job, but earnings are low.  The council want to see young people’s aspirations nurtured and support them into adulthood by obtaining higher paid jobs.