Decision details

York has been allocated £5.1m from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to deliver an agreed Investment Plan submitted in August 2022 and approved by Government in January 2023. This Plan included funding to support over 16’s who are, or are at risk of becoming, economically inactive. The York UKSPF Partnership Board have identified an emerging issue for young people who are in the Further Education (FE) system at York College and Askham Bryan College. Young people in FE have moved from a school setting and may not have strong links with the teaching and pastoral staff at college, leading to a high risk that they might leave courses in the early weeks of an academic year. This project seeks to address that problem by increasing provision for such people, training college staff in life coaching and mentoring, and providing opportunities for the young people to explore what might be their best options.
Following discussion at the November 2023 York UKSPF Partnership Board, York College were invited to submit a proposal for a project, working with Askham Bryan College, to put innovative provision in place to help address these issues. The Colleges presented their proposal to the Partnership Board at its April 2024 meeting and have received the support of the Board for their project.
At its meeting on 12th October 2023, CYC Executive agreed that the revised investment plan is implemented by extending the current delegation to the Corporate Director of Place in consultation with the Executive Member for Economy and Transport and taking advice the York SPF Partnership Board.
In order to implement this project, a formal decision from the Corporate Director of Place is therefore now required to formally allocate £169k to York College from the 2024-2025 York UKSPF funding.

Decision: To commission York College and Askham Bryan College’s Futures Foundation 4U project, with York College as the accountable body, and allocate £169k from the York UKSPF Investment Plan (intervention E33) to the work.

Three options have been considered:
• Option 1: do nothing
• Option 2: commission a project through York College and Askham Bryan College
• Option 3: run a competitive process to select a provider

Option 1: do nothing – this is a recognised issue which the Partnership Board have expressed their desire to fund activity to address.
Option 3: run a competitive process to select a provider – the success of this project depends upon working with young people already in the colleges, and its legacy will be changes to the mainstream provision in the two settings. Procurement of a provider would both introduce a significant delay when there is limited time to put support in place, and require a third party to integrate with existing college systems, introducing additional and unnecessary costs for no clear policy advantage.