Councillor Chris Penberthy (Cabinet Member for Housing, Cooperative Development and Communities) introduced the item and highlighted:

a)     The programme aimed to improve the lives of 20% of the population in Plymouth who were identified as being in poverty;

b)    The ambition was to reduce the number of people who entered poverty, and to alleviate the impact on those who were living in poverty;

c)     The programme was linked to the Plymouth Plan;

d)    It was important to link with partners across the city to work together;

e)     It was important that this work was informed by lived experiences;

f)      Rather than focusing on small projects, the focus would be on the impact Plymouth City Council (PCC) and partners had on children and young people when tackling poverty, aiming to stop children and young people from suffering through poverty.

Nick Shaw (Public Health Registrar) added:

g)     It was important to create an environment where people:

                         i.         Didn’t fall into poverty;

                       ii.         Could lift themselves out of poverty;

                      iii.         Could experience less harm through poverty;

h)    It was also important to look at strategies, plans and initiatives through these ‘lenses’;

i)      The team had worked with partners across the system to gather ideas on how to reduce poverty in Plymouth, as well as using previous work and data to influence future projects;

j)      The  guiding principles for the programme were:

                         i.         A whole system approach;

                       ii.         For life course;

                      iii.         Trauma informed;

                      iv.         Co-produced;

                       v.         Linked to Thrive Plymouth;

k)     Emerging themes included:

                         i.         Maximising of income for local people;

                       ii.         Community strengthening;

                      iii.         Optimising transport links;

                      iv.         Optimising the local economy;

                       v.         Improving access to and quality of homes and housing;

l)      Moving forward, the team would work with some smaller groups of system representatives to make sense of the data through the three poverty ‘lenses’ and to generate themes to develop the framework;

m)   The team would map existing plans, strategies and services against the themes to highlight strengths and weaknesses within the system;

n)    An appropriate set of metrics for each theme would be developed and work would also be measured against UK Government Child Poverty strategy;

o)    There would be formal recognition of the Child Poverty Cabinet Advisory Group role in this programme from the perspective of the impact of poverty on children.

Councillor Chris Penberthy (Cabinet Member for Housing, Cooperative Development and Communities) added:

p)    This work would be carried out in line with the new economic plan;

q)     The average wage for men was higher than that for women in Plymouth, by about 21%, which would have knock-on short and long term negative effects on women;

r)     With regards to the national median wage, 50% of men in Plymouth earnt more, and 50% earnt less, whereas 20% of women earnt more and 80% of women early less in Plymouth;

s)     50% of women working in Plymouth earnt less that the FTE (full time equivalent) of the National Living Wage;

t)     Skills development and community development was important to ensure that women felt they had the opportunity to be aspirational, without it negatively impacting another area of their lives, to improve these statistics;

u)     A working group was being put together to work together for improvement in this area.

The Cabinet agreed to note the report.