Impact case study database

The contributions of research conducted by Lynch and Scott to the evidence base on vulnerable populations have initiated and informed policy discussions and educated the next generation of police/public protection professionals.

The researchers have been invited to directly engage with national decision makers to provide evidence and recommendations. In 2017, Lynch and his collaborators were invited to give evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee Inquiry for Communities and Local Government and Work and Pensions based on their work on supported housing ( Lynch, Hobson & Dooley, 2017). This evidence confirmed that changes due to austerity were resulting in a process of residualisation as support shrinks to the most vulnerable tenant-clients which leads to increased reliance on dwindling provision and consequently exacerbating vulnerability. In the research on community assets, their work has informed one council’s engagement with local communities because for example it “ has helped parish councils understand their own ‘place’ and specifically which assets/infrastructure is there as they start to plan for how to spend money secured through the Community Infrastructure Levy.” This work will now explore the extent to which the findings can be transferred to other local authorities and scaled up. Outputs from Lynch’s research on youth forums has provided evidence of the change in attitudes between young people and police, improving relations and de-escalating potentially difficult encounters. Restorative Gloucestershire use the research outputs “ when conducting public outreach activities together with the Gloucestershire Constabulary, when initiating community forums and in sensitising and training on the issues of young people and promoting restorative practice interventions.”

In 2019, Scott and his collaborators were invited to two Government run events to discuss their research conclusions on how to assess the scale and nature of non-compliance in the labour market. The two events drew in representatives from the Director of Labour Market Enforcement (DLME), BEIS (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), EAS (Employment Agencies Standards Inspectorate), GLAA (Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority), HMRC NMW/NLW (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs National Minimum/ Living Wage Unit) and the Home Office. Recommendations made by Scott and collaborators on how to assess non-compliance in the labour market were directly cited in the DLME’s (Director of Labour Market Enforcement) UK Labour Market Enforcement Strategy 2019-20: *“Therefore, following the scoping work undertaken for this Strategy (*Cockbain et al. 2019) , I recommend that Government supports me in meeting my obligations under the Immigration Act 2016 by providing the necessary investment to undertake robust research in 2019/20 into measuring the scale and nature of non-compliance in the labour market” (HM Government, 2019: 64-65). Following the release of this strategy report, the DLME again emphasized the research approach recommended by Scott and his collaborators (HM Government, 2020: 46). In January 2020, Scott and his collaborators received further DLME funding to continue their work. Specifically, they were asked by government to start assessing the scale and nature of precarious work in the UK using the Understanding Society Survey. This research was commissioned as part of the DLME’s statutory duty to report on the scale and nature of non-compliance in the UK labour market as set out in the Immigration Act, 2016. Evidence of the impact of Scott’s work for the DLME has been provided by the head of the UK Director of Labour Market Enforcement (DLME) secretariat, who states that: “What we found particularly strong was the distillation of a wide array of technical concepts into concise arguments and conclusions. The works provided have always met the requirements and expected standards, if not exceeded them. We therefore have a high degree of confidence in the work provided” (Harrison, 2020). Most recently, the DLME (2020) cited Cockbain et al. (2019) as their preferred framework for future research in the area of labour market non-compliance and will shape future policy and government plans for future research streams. It has been confirmed that this work will have “recurring utility in the lead up to and on introduction of the planned Single Enforcement Body – including its design, remit and research priorities – thus having a significant impact on the wider machinery of government”.

As part of his focus on labour exploitation, Scott has specifically researched migrant labour in the global food industry. He has been a member of a large research consortium (GLARUS) based out of Norway (NTNU, Trondheim) that has carried out a three-country case-study (centred on the UK, Norway and USA). This research has produced a state-of-the-art review of ‘international labour migration and food production in rural Europe’ that has recently been taken up by the European Commission DG AGRI (EC, 2019, 2020) who noted that: “ Dr Scott and co-author's [Professor Rye] study represented an important piece of departure for our readings as well as a trigger for further ideas. This was due to the encompassing nature of their analysis, which thoroughly and critically reviewed the existing literature, as well as provided suggestions for future avenues for research” (Scipioni, 2020). Alongside the European Commission, DEFRA has also connected to Scott’s work, noting that it: “has been very helpful, and has indeed furthered Defra’s understanding of the UK seasonal labour market and the roles played by its actors” (Dobinson, 2020). Most recently, and based on his food industry labour research, Scott’s work was cited in the key 2020 report ‘Mapping the UK Food System – a report for the UKRI Transforming UK Food Systems Programme’ (Hasnain et al., 2020).