Centre for Growth and Opportunity

Verian’s Centre for Growth and Opportunity will support Government in their mission to drive economic growth and unlock opportunity for all.

Growth and Opportunity are critical Government missions. To thrive the UK needs to have sustained economic growth and foster opportunity for all. As part of the Labour Party Manifesto, the Government outlined its mission driven approach and identified its intention to ‘Kick Start the Economy’ (Mission 1) through a new industrial strategy, a renewed partnership with business, a National Wealth Fund, a New Deal for Working People, and through housing and infrastructure renewal amongst other measures. They also committed to ‘Break Down Barriers to Opportunity’ (Mission 4) with a focus on providing children and young people with the best start in life, raising school standards and reforming further and higher education to improve skills for young people, adults and employers.

Verian has a long history of supporting the UK Government on topics of growth and opportunity, from our National Survey of Registered Business, which we have undertaken since 2017; work on Government’s digital transformation, such as HMRC’s Making Tax Digital; the design and evaluation of significant welfare to work initiatives, such as the formation of Jobcentre Plus, the New Deals, Universal Credit; key work in housing and communities, such as the Supported Housing Improvement Programme, which we have evaluated since 2021; and extensive work in education and skills on apprenticeships, workforce skills and the experiences of children and young people, for example, delivering the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England since 2004.

The development of our Centre supports us to consider the current policy challenges faced in relation to growth and opportunity, drawing on the evidence and insight we hold across multiple relevant areas: business, trade, education, skills, welfare, employment, taxation, housing, communities and innovation and science, considering both our deep knowledge within these areas and how they intersect to understand the bigger picture. We will also use our muti-disciplinary research expertise and our best practice in ethics and audience engagement, to access and understand the experiences, behaviours, motivation and needs of people from across society. Importantly this includes best practice engaging audiences who are disadvantaged, vulnerable, or seldom heard, such children and young people, older people, disabled people, as well as professionals working in a range of industries, including education and business who can be harder to reach. Through our Centre will use this collective expertise to support government in their mission to drive economic growth and unlock opportunity for all.