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Poverty in Leeds

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How does poverty play out in the economic powerhouse of Yorkshire, the retail and tourist success story, the regenerated and rebuilt city, that is Leeds?

Well, here are some figures, collated by the Leeds Initiative and published on their website.

  • In Leeds there are 29,695 children aged under 16 who are living in poverty – 22.9% of all children in this age range
  • There are 33,295 dependent children aged under 20 who are living in poverty (22.1% of the children / young people in this age range)

33000 children, 1 in 5 of our children, living in poverty.

Poverty is not distributed evenly across the City, and these averages hide pockets of child poverty that are as high as anywhere in the UK.

On October 14th we are holding an Innovation Lab where the people of Leeds are invited to come and think about how poverty works in the city and what we can do to disrupt it, personally and collectively.  We would love for you to join us….http://povertyinleeds.eventbrite.com/

West Riding House – another story of win/win in Leeds?

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West Riding House in Leeds

I met yesterday with a tenant of the ‘affordable’ West Riding House, an iconic 1970s office block in Leeds City Centre, which I believe is owned by Moorfield (a UK ‘real estate’ investor, developer and private equity fund manager, with some £3 billion currently under management) and Holbeck Land .

It caught my eye because several organisations I know have recently moved in, some of whom are extremely cost and value conscious.  The building has become ‘affordable’ because it is cheaper, I am told, for the owner of the building to encourage occupancy at a low rent in order to avoid paying business rates on an unnoccupied building.  A nice win/win.  The owners save a few bob  and the organisations get refurbed office space in the heart of the city centre that usually they could never afford.

Except of course there are losers.

Other landlords (generally owners of more modest estates on the edge of the city and in the doughnut of despair) are losing their rents; the communities in which these organisations used to be based are losing much needed trade.

And the Council are losing out on the rates, presumably.

When, and if, the economy picks up and office space becomes more valuable these new tenants will probably have to move back out or face increased rents.  I just hope that the buildings that they have left behind are still in a reasonable condition.   And if they have fallen into disrepair as resources are sucked from the suburbs into the centre, never mind, perhaps we can negotiate an asset transfer project to bring them back to the community.

I am sure for many tenants the decision to move into West Riding House is a simple, straightforward and commercial one, driven by their business aims and intended social impacts, and their ability to exploit short term notice periods.  For others it must have been a much more difficult judgement.

In these hard times we all have to do what we can to get by.  But we need to understand how the system in Leeds, and every other city, can suck resources into the centre and leave the fringes further marginalised.

Meanwhile Time

All over the city there are similar examples of landlords agreeing low rents that allow ‘unusual suspects’ access to resources that they usually could never afford, to do exciting projects that would probably never get off the ground in better economic times.

The key question for me?

Strategically are these projects just about meanwhile time, merely setting up a low cost ‘holding pattern’ until ‘normal’ levels of economic activity resume?  Or are they ‘hotbeds’ in which we can incubate a generation of new social and cultural entrepreneurs who will help Leeds make a real transformation?  Time will tell of course, although those that own the assets are pretty clear about the ‘meanwhile’ nature of these arrangements.

With the recent Resolution Foundation Report suggesting how the poor have ‘missed out’ on the benefits of economic growth over the last 30 years, I can’t help but think in the medium term, unless we are careful, this is a phenomena in which those that are used to winning will get to win again.

Danone Think Tankery

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Last week saw a trip down to London to join a dialogue with

  • Myriam Cohen-Welgryn, Danone Vice-President Nature,
  • Laura Palmeiro, Vice-President Nature Finance,
  • Bernard Giraud, Vice-President Sustainability and Shared Value Creation and
  • Laurence Foucher Danone New Media Manager.

The Danone team were joined by

There was no clearly mapped out process or agenda relying instead on getting some interested people into a convivial setting and seeing where the conversation went.  In both cases I suspect that some real learning accrued on both sides.

Once again Danone showed an incredible openness in sharing with us some of their projects and challenges relating to food security, poverty alleviation, health and sustainability and showed how several projects had moved on from our last round of discussions with them.  Highlights for me included investments from their 100m Euro ‘Nature Fund’ to support the development of Cooperatives of  Ukrainian Farmers to supply the high quality milk required to keep the Danone Production lines in full swing.  Danone invested in milking equipment to be shared by small farmers through the cooperative structure and animal welfare standards and husbandry.  These investments were made with no requirement to tie framers into contracts with Danone.  Also Danone say that paying these farmers cooperatives a fair price for milk ensures the long term stability of supply which is more important to them than any short term profits that might be gained through price squeezing.

I was also intrigued by  their research into the fatty acid content of milk and how this can be correlated with the production of methane allowing accurate offsetting of methane production based on the actual methane production of each herd.  Now I am not an expert on off-setting and have a lay persons suspicion of how much can be achieved through this methodology.  Can we possibly plant enough mangrove, mangoes and other carbon fixing crops to ever truly offset production?  The whole conversation about carbon trading was one that left me a little cold.  I am far from convinced that putting a price on carbon is really the way forward.  Especially now that it can be speculated upon.  I am of the school that thinks the next great bubble to burst will be the carbon market….I hope I am wrong and am certainly no expert in this field.

But perhaps most impressive part of the conversation for me was around needing to re-connect consumers to the production process, the reality of farming and food production.  A simple realisation that for Danone, and the rest of us, ‘Nature IS our business’ and simple tools for ensuring that this realisation is that the heart of innovation in the company.  So for example they are using a wonderfully simple compass to provide a test for new developments:

N = Nature – will the development respect nature?

S = Social – will the development lead to improvements in society?  Fair wages, good governance etc

E= Economic – will the project work economically? (I was impressed by Danone’s willingness to flex their normal investment rules to allow projects that would only work with a more generous interpretation of ‘payback periods’)

W= wellbeing or health – the Danone mission is to improve health for the greatest number of people through food.  If the project does not fit the mission then it will not move forward.

My guess is that this compass will be well understood throughout the business and used to assess new business developments and ensure that balances and tensions are effectively managed.

It is a strange phenomena for me to rub against a corporate whom I like, respect and trust.  Generally I am always lifting up the carpets looking for where the dirt has been hidden.  And still questions remain for me at least about the bottling and distribution of mineral water in rich countries (Danone are behind both Evian and Volvic I believe).  But whenever I meet Danoners – be they ‘top brass’ or ‘frontline’ I am always impressed by their passion, openness (‘we have many challenges and we don’t have the answers but we will experiment…’) and commitment to co-invention of ideas and thinking through conversation.

I am already looking forward to the next conversation…when we hope to get some more skeptics involved