Partnering with the Local Enterprise Partnership

We are working with the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) to design and build three new sites, as well as joining its Digital Development, Strategy & Hosting Framework as the lead supplier.

As an independent digital agency that’s proud to be born and bred in the North East we’re really pleased to be working for the LEP, an organisation that is a public, private and education sector partnership with a mission to grow our region’s economy through its Strategic Economic Plan. It acts as a champion for the region, bringing public and private investment into the area, something we are passionate about too.

The three sites that we are creating for the LEP are:

• North East Ambition
• Challenge North East
• Data and Evidence Hub

North East Ambition

North East Ambition is a program that supports schools and colleges in the North East, helping them achieve Good Career Guidance benchmarks by 2024. The site we have built provides information for the education sector as well as the business sector, describing how they can work together with the aim of improving skills and career prospects across the area.

The site holds extensive information and resources including a searchable directory of providers and organisations which can help to inspire and provide young people with an insight into the world of work. There is also an audit tool that gives Careers Leaders the opportunity to analyse their school’s strengths and weaknesses in careers provision. Site users can also browse and register for a range of supporting events. This site has already been completed and you can visit it here.

Challenge North East

Challenge North East is an open innovation programme led by the LEP to help solve some of the region’s most pressing practical problems relating to COVID-19. The aim of the programme is to identify areas of shared concern in the North East, inviting solutions from innovators and then funding their development.

The new site will help the North East business community to understand, set and solve challenges via Open Innovation with the ultimate goal that it becomes sustainable and self-seeding. Site visitors will be able to post their own open innovation challenges or search / filter existing challenges. There is also supporting content in the form of a toolkit and knowledge hub with information on the general principles of Open Innovation, templates and how to guides.

Data and Evidence Hub

The Data and Evidence Hub’s purpose is to provide charts and commentary on the latest data about North East transport and economic performance covering information about transport, as well as recent employment, skills, business, innovation trends and the impact of COVID.

The new site will provide a platform that makes a rich and wide range of data available to an equally wide range of audiences. This will allow anyone from interested members of the public to data scientists to find and interrogate the data that provides the economic evidence base for the LEP’s Strategic Economic Plan.

Digital Development, Strategy and Hosting Framework

The LEP’s Digital Development, Strategy and Hosting Framework pretty much does what it says on the tin and will be the mechanism via which it procures digital services in future. As the lead development agency on the framework we’re looking forward to working with the LEP on a variety of different digital projects in the future.