Public procurement is firmly in the spotlight in the Covid-19 crisis. Local authorities (LAs) spend around £100bn (or 47% of their total budget) annually on procurement (IoG,2018). In the Covid-19 crisis, it is crucial that this money delivers the maximum benefit for communities - whether providing for public health (including testing-tracking-tracing responsibilities), for social care (including care home provision), or as one of the key economic levers through which the local economy is to be restarted. Ineffective procurement arrangements present risks for the delivery/continuity of public services in the crisis. Where rapid scaling-up of services is necessary, the limits of some LAs' capacities (and their supply-chains) are often being tested as costs, staff and supply shortages increase. LAs must simultaneously act to protect essential supply-chains where demand has collapsed (e.g. transport, facilities management). Such challenges require smart and agile procurement responses to build strong, effective and efficient relationships and generate positive impacts for local communities. This study will investigate these urgent issues, and how gains might be achieved in the response to Covid-19. The team will examine emerging opportunities to maximise the impact of, and leverage additional value from LA procurement. With extensive involvement and support from key stakeholders, this project will examine what is working well, less well, why, and with what effects and implications. It asks how, and how effectively, are LAs using procurement to address the challenges posed by Covid-19? What are the successes to be celebrated? Where are the tensions that need to be managed? Where is the system at risk of breaking down? What opportunities are there for improved procurement performance? The project will encourage reflection on the ability of the 'procurement ecosystem' to respond in a crisis; clarifying critical-success-factors and pressure-points and discussing what to do next. The project will seek to identify potential leverage from an accumulation of 'positive-sum' gains. Reports here identify a long list of such potential gains, resulting from strategic, entrepreneurial and, particularly, relational approaches that strengthen the system and promote resilience. In the absence of these approaches the system may still operate - but at risk of being substantially underpowered. Impact from the study will derive from important project findings regarding effective crisis strategies; effective 'workarounds' to maintain safety, continuity and resilience (including creative commissioning processes, using the flexibility in existing procurement legislation, and combining complementary capabilities amongst supply-chain partners); and effective ways in which trust, openness and collaboration are emerging to drive innovative ways to aggregate and channel resources.

The Northern Health Futures (NortHFutures) hub aims to create a world-leading healthcare technology (health-tech) development ecosystem. This will address unmet health needs and inequalities by supporting: inclusive digital skills training and sharing; research, innovation and entrepreneurship, enabled by digital design. Based in the North East and North Cumbria (NENC), with national and global reach, NortHFutures will support underserved communities, as it is known that national disparity of investment in NENC negatively impacts population health and wellbeing, and that a 'levelling up' of investment is needed to stimulate socio-economic and cultural growth for all, to encourage living and ageing well. NortHFutures builds upon the joined-up NENC approach to people-powered digital health innovation, as our regional Integrated Care Board (ICB) uniquely involves local authorities, communities, and citizens. Academic team members have a research track record that is stakeholder-involved and civic- and community-engaged. They are world-leading on understanding (i) health inequalities from medical, social, and design perspectives, and (ii) the opportunities for enrichment and enablement related to ageing well, connecting rural and urban populations, and pioneering applications of data science. In the pilot phase, we draw on this specialist expertise to address evidenced unmet health needs in NENC, (which have national and global importance): children and young people's health and nutrition; mental health and wellbeing; development of digital surgical pathways (for monitoring patient journeys beyond the hospital); living well with multiple long-term conditions. We combine the strengths and resources of 6 universities (Newcastle, Cumbria, Durham, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside), bringing regional investment in NIHR services, facilities and Applied Research Collaborations, plus National Innovation Centres for Ageing (NICA), Data (NICD) and Rural Enterprise (NICRE), National Horizons Centre (NHC), EPSRC Digital Economy programmes in data and digital citizens, and Health Data Research UK, the UK's national institute for health data science. NortHFutures supports new planned Centres, including Northumbria's Centre for Health & Social Equity and Cumbria's new campus and medical school. These University offers combine with an extensive partner network, including: ICB-NENC, 7 NHS Trusts, NHS Business Services Authority, Department of Health and Social Care, Health Education England; VCSE organisations delivering community-based services; industry partners - from SMEs to global tech giants; civic bodies such as Local and Combined Authorities; existing health research networks (e.g. AHSN-NENC, Newcastle Health Innovation Partnership); and innovation accelerators (e.g. Innovation SuperNetwork). Through an integrated, regional approach uniting this consortium for the first time, NortHFutures ambitiously aims to establish global leadership in Digital Health. To deliver this we will develop a supportive community infrastructure. We will co-design a digital brokerage service to connect and amplify partners' work, to offer and consume expertise, services and facilities (supporting acceleration of health-tech companies at differing tech-readiness levels). We will pioneer a Live Digital Health Databank, to explore, and train for, advanced healthcare data analytics, combining live data flows with care records (e.g. Great North Care Record). This will support personalised health diagnostics and interventions, giving our hub a unique value proposition to companies wishing to explore advanced data technologies. We will invest in Extended Reality pilots, to open up possibilities for clinical practice and service delivery. Our approaches will embed Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), and Patient and Public Engagement (PPIE) throughout, to deliver health-tech that supports care beyond the hospital and is co-designed with end-users.

Along the well-to-wake value chain from upstream processes associated with fuels production and supply, components manufacture, and ships construction to the operation of ports and vessels, the UK domestic and international shipping produced 5.9 Mt CO2eq and 13.8 Mt CO2eq, respectively in 2017, totalling 3.4% of the UK's overall greenhouse gas emissions. The sector contributes significantly to air pollution challenges with emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and particulate matters, harming human health and the environment particularly in coastal areas. The annual global market for maritime emission reduction technologies could reach $15 billion by 2050. This provides substantial economic opportunities for the UK. The Department for Transport's Clean Maritime Plan provides a route map for action on infrastructure, economics, regulation, and innovation that covers high technology readiness level (TRL 3-7). There is a genuine opportunity to explore fundamental research and go beyond conventional marine engineering and naval architecture and exploit the UK's world-leading cross-sectoral fundamental research expertise on hydrodynamics, fuels, combustion, electric machines and power electronics, batteries and fuel cells, energy systems, digitization, management, finance, logistics, safety engineering, etc. The proposed UK-MaRes Hub is a multidisciplinary research consortium and will conduct interdisciplinary research focussed on delivering disruptive solutions which have tangible potential to transform existing practice and reach a zero-carbon future by 2050. The challenges faced by UK maritime activity and their solutions are generally common but when deployed locally, they are bespoke due to the specifics of the port, the vessels they support, and the dependencies on their supply chains. Implementation will be heavily dependent on the local community, existing infrastructure, as well as opportunities and constraints related to the supply, distribution, storage and bunkering of alternative fuels, in decarbonising port handling facilities and cold-ironing, with the integration of renewable energy, reducing air pollution, to land-use and increased capacity and capability, and the local development of skills. The types of vessels and the cargoes handled through UK ports varies and are related to several factors, such as geographical location, regional industrial and business activity and wider transport links. Therefore, UK-MaRes Hub aims to feed into a clean maritime strategy that can adapt to place-based challenges and provide targeted technical and socio-economic interventions through a novel Co-innovation Methodology. This will bring together Research Exploration themes/work packages and Responsive Research Fund project activity into focus on port-centric scenarios and assess possibilities to innovate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, 2040 and 2050 timeframes, sharing best practice across the whole maritime ecosystem. A diverse, and inclusive Clean Maritime Network+ will ensure wider dissemination and knowledge take-up to achieve greater impact across UK ports and other maritime activity. The Network+ will have coordinated regional activity in South-West, Southern, London, Yorkshire & Lincolnshire, Midlands, North-West, North-East, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. An already established Clean Maritime Research Partnership has vibrant academic, industrial, and civic stakeholder members from across the UK. UK-MaRes Hub will establish a Clean Maritime Policy Unit to provide expert advice and quantitative evidence to enable rapid decarbonisation of the maritime sector. It will ensure that the UK-MaRes Hub is engaging with policymakers at all stages of the hub activities.

EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Resilient Decarbonised Fuel Energy Systems Led by the University of Nottingham, with Sheffield and Cardiff SUMMARY This Centre is designed to support the UK energy sector at a time of fundamental change. The UK needs a knowledgeable but flexible workforce to deliver against this uncertain future. Our vision is to develop a world-leading CDT, delivering research leaders with broad economic, societal and contextual awareness, having excellent technical skills and capable of operating in multi-disciplinary teams covering a range of roles. The Centre builds on a heritage of two successful predecessor CDTs but adds significant new capabilities to meet research needs which are now fundamentally different. Over 80% of our graduates to date have entered high-quality jobs in energy-related industry or academe, showing a demand for the highly trained yet flexible graduates we produce. National Need for a Centre The need for a Centre is demonstrated by both industry pull and by government strategic thinking. More than forty industrial and government organisations have been consulted in the shaping and preparation of this proposal. The bid is strongly aligned with EPSRC's Priority Area 5 (Energy Resilience through Security, Integration, Demand Management and Decarbonisation) and government policy. Working with our partners, we have identified the following priority research themes. They have a unifying vision of re-purposing and re-using existing energy infrastructure to deliver rapid and cost-effective decarbonisation. 1. Allowing the re-use and development of existing processes to generate energy and co-products from low-carbon biomass and waste fuels, and to maximise the social, environmental and economic benefits for the UK from this transition 2. Decreasing CO2 emissions from industrial processes by implementation of CCUS, integrating with heat networks where appropriate. 3. Assessing options for the decarbonisation of natural gas users (as fuel or feedstock) in the power generation, industry and domestic heating system through a combination of hydrogen enhancement and/or CO2 capture. Also critical in this theme is the development of technologies that enable the sustainable supply of carbon-lean H2 and the adoption of H2 or H2 enriched fuel/feedstock in various applications. 4. Automating existing electricity, gas and other vector infrastructure (including existing and new methods of energy storage) based on advanced control technologies, data-mining and development of novel instrumentation, ensuring a smarter, more flexible energy system at lower cost. Training Our current Centre operates a training programme branded 'exemplary' by our external examiner and our intention is to use this as solid basis for further improvements which will include a new technical core module, a module on risk management and enhanced training in inclusivity and responsible research. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Our current statistics on gender balance and disability are better than the EPSRC mean. We will seek to further improve this record. We are also keen to demonstrate ED&I within the Centre staff and our team also reflects a diversity in gender, ethnicity and experience. Management and Governance Our PI has joined us after a career conducting and managing energy research for a major energy company and led development of technologies from benchtop to full-scale implementation. He sharpens our industrial focus and enhances an already excellent team with a track record of research delivery. One Co-I chairs the UoN Ethics Committee, ensuring that Responsible Innovation remains a priority. Value for Money Because most of the Centre infrastructure and organisation is already in place, start-up costs for the new centre will be minimal giving the benefit of giving a new, highly refreshed technical capability but with a very low organisational on-cost.

The decarbonisation of industrial clusters is of critical importance to the UK's ambitions of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. The UK Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC) of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) aims to establish the world's first net-zero carbon industrial cluster by 2040 and at least one low-carbon cluster by 2030. The Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) has been formed to support this Challenge through funding a multidisciplinary research and innovation centre, which currently does not exist at the scale, to accelerate decarbonisation of industrial clusters. IDRIC works with academia, industry, government and other stakeholders to deliver the multidisciplinary research and innovation agenda needed to decarbonise the UK's industrial clusters. IDRIC's research and innovation programme is delivered through a range of activities that enable industry-led, multidisciplinary research in cross-cutting areas of technology, policy, economics and regulation. IDRIC connects and empowers the UK industrial decarbonisation community to deliver an impactful innovation hub for industrial decarbonisation. The establishment of IDRIC as the "one stop shop" for research and innovation, as well as knowledge exchange, regulation, policy and key skills will be beneficial across the industry sectors and clusters. In summary, IDRIC will connect stakeholders, inspire and deliver innovation and maximise impact to help the UK industrial clusters to grow our existing energy intensive industrial sectors, and to attract new, advanced manufacturing industries of the future.