10: Leading in Place: The Value of a Holistic Approach to Driving Social Mobility and Regional Development

Creating opportunity requires a structural framework which is not targeted at an individual but is harnessed by the alignment of social, economic and educational components to drive prosperity for a region (Social Mobility Commission, 2024). The interplay of these components is complex and the current inequality of opportunity and the differential in regional prosperity across England highlight the importance of understanding place.

Place-based interventions are widely accepted as crucial in understanding and improving public health outcomes (Marmot et al., 2020), but the landscape of the impact of widening access interventions for place within the UK Higher Education (HE) system is not so profound.