̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Public policy

Major new policy school at Cambridge set to advance ‘good growth’

fpjl2 — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 09:18:50 +0000

The Bennett School of Public Policy opens this autumn, and is already leading work on two of the most pressing policy problems of our time: implementing AI and revitalising post-industrial regions.

Aim policies at ‘hardware’ to ensure AI safety, say experts

fpjl2 — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 11:28:30 +0000

Chips and datacentres – the “compute” driving the AI revolution – may be the most effective targets for risk-reducing AI policies, according to a new report.

Policies for People and Planet

plc32 — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 17:05:17 +0000

Cambridge Zero symposium gathers researchers to examine the rules and incentives needed to combat climate change.

Services across England now lag far behind East Germany, as experts call for ‘universal basic infrastructure’ in UK

fpjl2 — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 10:34:16 +0000

A new report outlines the dismal state of England’s physical and 'social' infrastructure – from public services in health and education to the parks, cinemas and train stations that prop up communities – when compared to similar regions in what was once East Germany.

̽��ֱ��report’s authors call for a “universal basic infrastructure” (UBI) if the UK is to ‘level up’ its regions and lift itself out of 'flatlining' productivity rates. This UBI would see a minimum level of public and private sector services covering everything from broadband to bus routes.

Researchers matched eleven parts of England such as Manchester and Peterborough with German areas close in population and productivity, primarily in the former Soviet bloc – as this region was a central case study in the UK government’s flagship 2022 ‘Levelling up’ White Paper.

̽��ֱ��report, led by the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, found that in 2021, German towns, cities and regions have on average twice as many hospitals and pharmacies per 100,000 people as their English counterparts.

Places in Germany have over 11 times more mental health centres and practitioners, and eight times more further education providers, than equivalent parts of England, according to 2021 data.*

In 2020, German areas also have twice as many railway stations per 100,000 people as matching English areas, although England averages almost four times more bus stops than Germany.

“Access to physical and social infrastructure across England is highly variable, and shortfalls in provision affect both declining and growing areas,” said report co-author Professor Diane Coyle from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy.

“But even England’s wealthier areas are falling short of equivalent places in Germany, and have seen notable declines in a wide range of types of infrastructure over much of the last decade.”

̽��ֱ��report shows that areas such as Cambridge and Manchester have more healthcare facilities per 100,000 people, for example – as well as more banks, museums and restaurants – compared to areas such as Bolton, Rochdale and Stevenage.

In fact, Cambridge, one of the country’s wealthiest locations outside of London, has over twice as many banks and building societies, on average, and over six times as many further education providers, as Oldham, Central Bedfordshire and Rochdale.

However, the team also found that many elements of “social infrastructure” right across all eleven English areas have tumbled since 2014, regardless of regional wealth and average rates of income.

̽��ֱ��availability of public transport, GP practices, hospitals, mental health care, police stations, banks, cash machines, post offices, primary and further education facilities, theatres, swimming pools, museums, shopping centres, and chemists have declined across almost all English areas analysed in the report.

All local authorities analysed in the report reduced at least one type of health service between 2014 and 2023. For example, Blackpool, Central Bedfordshire, Stevenage and Stoke-on-Trent all decreased their number of clinics, GP practices, hospitals, and dental treatment centres.

Even in Cambridge the number of further education facilities per 100,000 people halved between 2014 and 2023, and GP practices per capita fell by over 14%.

̽��ֱ��number of police stations per capita fell in all places except Bolton, and the number of public parks and gardens reduced in four out of the five areas with data. Contrary to public perception, however, the number of libraries increased across most authorities in the report.

“Universality across the nation is key when it comes to the infrastructure that facilitates most aspects of our daily lives,” said report co-author Stella Erker from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy.

“ ̽��ֱ��community assets we should all have access to, not just schools and doctors but parks, trains, pubs and gyms, are the foundation for human wellbeing, which in turn underpins economic growth.”

̽��ֱ��researchers point out that even rapidly expanding places in England are seeing social infrastructure go in the opposite direction – an impediment to desperately needed house-building.

For example, Bedford sits in the ‘Ox-Cam-Arc’ – an economic boom region encompassing Oxford, Cambridge and London – and is growing at three times the national rate, expanding by nearly 18% between 2011 and 2021.

Yet the town has seen local services weaken, with reductions per capita in everything from bus stops and rail facilities to GP capacity, primary schools, and local banks and cashpoints, since 2014.

̽��ֱ��report calls for “provision presumptions”: thresholds at which existing services cannot be reduced. Coyle, Erker and their co-author Prof Andy Westwood from the ̽��ֱ�� of Manchester argue that a minimum UBI level should be tied to an area’s population growth.

Added Westwood: “Achieving a minimum level of universal basic infrastructure is an ambitious but necessary goal if we want to create economic opportunity across the country. It would prevent the current ‘postcode lottery’, and serve as a catalyst for growth in ‘left behind’ areas, as well as places that are growing rapidly but too often without adequate infrastructure and services.”

Full list of towns, cities and areas analysed in report as follows:
England: Bedford, Blackpool, Bolton, Cambridge, Central Bedfordshire, Manchester, Oldham, Peterborough, Rochdale, Stevenage, Stoke-on-Trent.
East Germany: Bautzen, Cottbus, Erfurt, Halle an der Saale and Rostock. ̽��ֱ��report also used data from Hagen in the Ruhr, a post-industrial town in the west of Germany.

*In 2021, German places averaged at 45 mental health centres and practitioners per 100,000, compared to 4 in English places. In 2021, German places averaged at 14 further education providers per 100,000 population, compared to 2 providers in the English places.

Per capita access to hospitals, mental health services, and further education facilities in German towns and cities – primarily in the former GDR – now outstrip equivalent areas in England, often several times over, according to research.

Even England’s wealthier areas are falling short of equivalent places in Germany

Diane Coyle

Bjoern Wylezich/Getty

Intercity 2 train at Warnemünde station in Rostock, one of the parts of eastern Germany look at in the report.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Heads reveal how ‘overwhelming’ Government guidance held schools back as COVID hit

tdk25 — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 12:05:57 +0000

̽��ֱ��research compiles data gathered from almost 300 heads and other school leaders in June 2020, as schools were beginning to reopen after the first wave of closures. It documents leadership teams’ struggles with overwhelming and disorganised information dumps by the Government and the Department for Education (DfE), which were often issued with barely any notice and then continually updated.

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and ̽��ֱ�� College London, calculate that between 18 March and 18 June 2020, DfE released 201 policy updates for schools. This included 12 cases in which five or more documents were published in a single day for immediate interpretation and implementation.

Asked about the main challenges they faced, heads repeatedly cited ‘changing updates’, ‘clarity’ and ‘time’. 77% of executive heads and 71% of headteachers complained about “too many inputs and too much information”. In follow-up interviews, participants referred to being “inundated” with Government updates, which often contradicted earlier guidance.

Peter Fotheringham, a doctoral researcher at the ̽��ֱ��’s Faculty of Education and the study’s lead author, said: “We expected the biggest challenge for school leaders during lockdown would be student welfare. In fact, time and again, the message we got was: ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, nothing is being shared in advance, and it’s overwhelming.’”

“It was uncanny how often the term ‘avalanche’ was used to describe the ridiculous amount of information they were getting. Policy measures were also typically announced to the public before official guidance even arrived, so parents were on the phone before heads even had a chance to read it. We think that with some simple fixes, a lot of this could be avoided in the future.”

̽��ֱ��study invited a random sample of heads and other school leaders in England to complete a simple, anonymous questionnaire about what information had informed their schools’ responses to the pandemic, and any associated challenges and opportunities. 298 leaders responded, 29 of whom were later randomly selected for follow-up interviews.

Asked to rate the importance of different information sources on a scale of one to five, school leaders perceived guidance from the DfE (average score 4.1) and Government (4.0) as most important – ahead of sources such as Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), unions, or the media.

Many, however, expressed deep frustration with the lack of notice that preceded new Government guidance, which they often heard about first through televised coronavirus briefings or other public announcements. “Society at large is being given information at the same time as schools,” one head told the researchers. “There is no time to put our thoughts in place before parents start calling.”

Follow-up guidance, either from DfE, Local Education Authorities, or MATs, tended to lag behind. ̽��ֱ��study finds this meant heads had to interpret key policies – such as those concerning safety measures, social distancing, in-person tuition for the children of key workers, or schools reopening – before further information arrived which sometimes contradicted their judgements.

One survey response read: “It is quite clear that cabinet does not communicate with the DfE before making announcements, leaving everyone scrabbling to develop policies in the dark, while parents and students look to the College for immediate guidance.”

̽��ֱ��sheer volume of information being released also represented a major challenge. During the three-month period concerned, DfE published 74 unique guidance documents; each of which was updated three times on average. ̽��ֱ��net result was that school leaders received an average of three policy updates per day, for 90 days, including at weekends.

“A critical problem was that there was no way of telling what had changed from one update to the next,” Fotheringham said. “Leadership teams literally had to print off different versions and go through them with a highlighter, usually in hastily-organised powwows at 7am.”

“These things are very, very time-consuming to read, but have highly technical consequences. Even a small change to distancing rules, for example, affects how you manage classrooms, corridors and play areas. ̽��ֱ��release process made the translation of such policies into action incredibly difficult.”

̽��ֱ��study concludes that introducing simple measures, such as signalling in-line changes to policy updates, ‘would have a high impact’ on school leaders’ ability to implement policy during any future disruption. Fotheringham added that “numerous mechanisms” were available to DfE to sharpen its communications with heads – not least a direct-line email system to school leaders, which could have been used to give them advance warning about new guidance.

̽��ֱ��findings also underline the value of schools’ wider networks within their communities and of the professional connections of school leaders themselves. Heads repeatedly described, in particular, the benefits they experienced from having opportunities to collaborate and share ideas with other school leaders as they tried to steer their schools through the crisis. Investing in further opportunities to do this beyond the ‘traditional’ structures offered by local authorities or MATs would, the authors suggest, prove beneficial.

̽��ֱ��study warns that the challenges faced by school leaders in the spring of 2020 appear to echo those encountered both internationally and in the UK during previous school closures – for example, amid the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, when 74 UK schools had to close.

“We frequently describe COVID as unprecedented, but school closures are a common public health measure,” Fotheringham said. “Previous cases have provided plentiful evidence that Government communications with schools can be a problem. ̽��ֱ��findings of this study would suggest we haven’t yet learned those lessons.”

̽��ֱ��study is published in the British Educational Research Journal.

Headteachers and school leaders have described how an ‘avalanche’ of confused and shifting Government guidance severely impeded schools during the critical first months of COVID lockdown in a new study.

It was uncanny how often the term ‘avalanche’ was used to describe the ridiculous amount of information they were getting

Peter Fotheringham

Elisa Ventur

Overworked woman

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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‘Overwhelming’ international support for more government action on environment

fpjl2 — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 10:07:10 +0000

Ahead of COP26, a survey experiment taking in the UK, US, Brazil, India, China, Indonesia and Poland finds huge support for more action from governments to protect the environment.

People in England’s poorest towns ‘lose over a decade of good health’, research finds

fpjl2 — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 08:28:44 +0000

Populations in England’s poorest towns have on average 12 fewer years of good health than those in the country’s richest towns, according to new research from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Bennett Institute.

̽��ֱ��study shows that the number of hospital admissions for self-harm in the most deprived towns is – on average – almost double that of the most affluent, with alcohol-related admissions over 75% higher than in the least deprived towns.

Lung cancer is twice as prevalent in the most deprived towns, and child obesity in the poorest towns stands at an average of 23% by the end of primary school, compared to around 12% in the wealthiest.

In fact, researchers say the overall life expectancy of town-based populations is “moving in a worse direction” compared to cities – with female life expectancy now higher in English cities than towns for the first time this century.

“ ̽��ֱ��previous pattern of rising life expectancy has stalled or gone into reverse in many English towns,” said Prof Mike Kenny, report coauthor and Director of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy. “Declining fortunes and debates over Brexit have highlighted the chasm that divides many town inhabitants from those in cities.

“However, on some key health measures, inequalities between towns are much greater than the average difference between towns and cities. People in England’s most deprived towns lose over a decade of good health compared to the populations of wealthy towns.”

“There is an overriding need for policies to address the large and widening gaps in the health and opportunities of many towns. These policies should be integral to post-pandemic economic recovery agendas,” Kenny said.

̽��ֱ��team found a “strong geographical context”: most of the healthiest towns are in the South East, while most of the unhealthiest towns are situated in former industrial areas of Northern England.

Towns with the longest life expectancy include Frimley in Surrey, and Filton near Bristol. Populations with the shortest lives, on average, were found in Thurnscoe, near Barnsley, and Oldham.

Two seaside towns at either end of the country, Blackpool in the Northwest and Jaywick in East Anglia, had the highest levels of self-harm. Another coastal town, Newbiggin-by-the-sea, near the former collieries north of Newcastle, had the highest child obesity rates. Eccles and Salford on the outskirts of Manchester are the towns with most alcohol-related hospital admissions.

Hertforshire contains a number of England’s healthiest and wealthiest towns, such as Radlett and Harpenden, while many of the country’s unhealthiest towns – scattered across the north – are also those with the largest populations.

̽��ֱ��provision of public green spaces – so important for physical and mental health, and never more so than during the recent coronavirus lockdown – was another dividing line between wealthy and unhealthy towns.

̽��ֱ��most affluent towns are on average twice as likely as the most deprived towns to have a common or municipal park within their “built-up area boundary”, according to researchers.

They also found that the most deprived towns had – on average, per capita – 50% more fast food shops than the most affluent towns.

“More deprived towns are much less likely to have a green town centre and much more likely to have high numbers of fast food outlets than their wealthier counterparts,” said Ben Goodair, the report’s lead researcher. “Both these factors contribute significantly to the widening of geographic health inequalities in England.”

“There is every chance that the coronavirus pandemic will make the inequalities we see in our research even worse,” said Goodair. “Many deprived towns have an older age profile, and are more susceptible to the worst effects of the virus, as well as low employment prospects that will be reduced even further by the economic consequences of lockdown.”

̽��ֱ��report only looked at COVID-19 data up to mid-April, but found a slightly higher death rate was already visible in the more deprived towns during the early phase of the pandemic.

Added Kenny: “ ̽��ֱ��current government has said it is committed to ‘levelling up’ England’s regions. Tackling the factors damaging the health of the poorest towns will have to go much further than the hospital walls, including boosting skill levels, promoting local employment and building community resilience.”

Cambridge researchers find major health inequalities – as well as a geographic divide – between the most and least deprived English towns. They say that life expectancy in cities is now overtaking towns for the first time.

̽��ֱ��previous pattern of rising life expectancy has stalled or gone into reverse in many English towns

Mike Kenny

Clive Varley

Abingdon street in central Blackpool, the English town with the highest rate of hospital admissions for self-harm.

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Opinion: Climate change, pandemics, biodiversity loss – no country is sufficiently prepared

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 14:53:32 +0000

There’s little that the left and the right agree on these days. But surely one thing is beyond question: that national governments must protect citizens from the gravest threats and risks they face. Although our government, wherever we are in the world, may not be able to save everyone from a pandemic or protect people and infrastructure from a devastating cyberattack, surely they have thought through these risks in advance and have well-funded, adequately practiced plans?

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is an emphatic no.

Not all policy areas are subject to this challenge. National defence establishments, for example, often have the frameworks and processes that facilitate policy decisions for extreme risks. But more often than not, and on more issues than not, governments fail to imagine how worst-case scenarios can come about – much less plan for them. Governments have never been able to divert significant attention from the here and happening to the future and uncertain.

A recent report published by Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk argues that this needs to change. If even only one catastrophic risk manifests – whether through nature, accident or intention – it would harm human security, prosperity and potential on a scale never before seen in human history. There are concrete steps governments can take to address this, but they are currently being neglected.

̽��ֱ��risks that we face today are many and varied. They include:

Tipping points in the environmental system due to climate change or mass biodiversity loss.
Malicious, or accidentally harmful, use of artificial intelligence.
Malicious use of, or unintended consequences from, advanced biotechnologies.
A natural or engineered global pandemic.
Intentional, miscalculated, or accidental use of nuclear weapons.

Each of these global catastrophic risks could cause unprecedented harm. A pandemic, for example, could speed around our hyper-connected world, threatening hundreds of millions – potentially billions – of people. In this globalised world of just-in-time delivery and global supply chains, we are more vulnerable to disruption than ever before. And the secondary effects of instability, mass migration and unrest may be comparably destructive. If any of these events occurred, we would pass on a diminished, fearful and wounded world to our descendants.

So how did we come to be so woefully unprepared, and what, if anything, can our governments do to make us safer?

A modern problem

Dealing with catastrophic risks on a global scale is a particularly modern problem. ̽��ֱ��risks themselves are a result of modern trends in population, information, politics, warfare, technology, climate and environmental damage.

These risks are a problem for governments that are set up around traditional threats. Defence forces were built to protect from external menaces, mostly foreign invading forces. Domestic security agencies became increasingly significant in the 20th century, as threats to sovereignty and security – such as organised crime, domestic terrorism, extreme political ideologies and sophisticated espionage – increasingly came from inside national borders.

Unfortunately, these traditional threats are no longer the greatest concern today. Risks arising from the domains of technology, environment, biology and warfare don’t fall neatly into government’s view of the world. Instead, they are varied, global, complex and catastrophic.

As a result, these risks are currently not a priority for governments. Individually, they are quite unlikely. And such low-probability high-impact events are difficult to mobilise a response to. In addition, their unprecedented nature means we haven’t yet been taught a sharp lesson in the need to prepare for them. Many of the risks could take decades to arise, which conflicts with typical political time scales.

Governments, and the bureaucracies that support them, are not positioned to handle what’s coming. They don’t have the right incentives or skill sets to manage extreme risks, at least beyond natural disasters and military attacks. They are often stuck on old problems, and struggle to be agile to what’s new or emerging. Risk management as a practice is not a government’s strength. And technical expertise, especially on these challenging problem sets, tends to reside outside government.

Perhaps most troubling is the fact that any attempt to tackle these risks is not nationally confined: it would benefit everyone in the world – and indeed future generations. When the benefits are dispersed and the costs immediate, it is tempting to coast and hope others will pick up the slack.

Time to act

Despite these daunting challenges, governments have the capability and responsibility to increase national readiness for extreme events.

̽��ֱ��first step is for governments to improve their own understanding of the risks. Developing a better understanding of extreme risks is not as simple as conducting better analysis or more research. It requires a whole-of-government framework with explicit strategies for understanding the types of risks we face, as well as their causes, impacts, probabilities and time scales.

With this plan, governments can chart more secure and prosperous futures for their citizens, even if the most catastrophic possibilities never come to pass.

Governments around the world are already working towards improving their understanding of risk. For example, the United Kingdom is a world leader in applying an all-hazard national risk assessment process. This assessment ensures governments understand all the hazards – natural disasters, pandemics, cyber attacks, space weather, infrastructure collapse – that their country faces. It helps local first responders to prepare for the most damaging scenarios.

Finland’s Committee for the Future, meanwhile, is an example of a parliamentary select committee that injects a dose of much-needed long-term thinking into domestic policy. It acts as a think tank for futures, science and technology policy and provides advice on legislation coming forward that has an impact on Finland’s long-range future.

And Singapore’s Centre for Strategic Futures is leading in “horizon scanning”, a set of methods that helps people think about the future and potential scenarios. This is not prediction. It’s thinking about what might be coming around the corner, and using that knowledge to inform policy.

But these actions are few and far between.

We need all governments to put more energy towards understanding the risks, and acting on that knowledge. Some countries may even need grand changes to their political and economic systems, a level of change that typically only occurs after a catastrophe. We cannot – and do not have to – wait for these structural changes or for a global crisis. Forward-leaning leaders must act now to better understand the risks that their countries face.

Gabriel Recchia, Research Associate, Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, and Haydn Belfield, Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

This article is republished from ̽��ֱ��Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Two Cambridge risk researchers discuss how national governments are still stuck on "old problems", and run through the things that should be keeping our leaders awake at night.

Risks arising from the domains of technology, environment, biology and warfare don’t fall neatly into government’s view of the world

Gabriel Recchia and Haydn Belfield

Markus Spiske

Banner from a climate strike in Erlangen, Germany

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