Message posted on 20/02/2019

JOB: Actively anticipating the unintended consequences on air quality of future public policies (ANTICIPATE)

Post: Research Fellow

Location: Guildford, UK

Salary: £32,236 to £35,211 per annum

Full-time, Fixed Term until 12th February 2022

Closing Date for applications: Wednesday 20 March 2019

‘Actively anticipating the unintended consequences on air quality of future public policies’ (ANTICIPATE) is a project funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for three years. It will bring together policy analysts and policy makers from UK central government, devolved administrations and local and regional authorities, stakeholders from business and civil society organisations, and academics and researchers to review forthcoming policy initiatives for their consequences for air quality.

UK public policies have significant environmental, economic, social and political consequences over both near and distant time horizons, with potential impacts for years to come. Policy decisions are therefore required to be resilient to a wide range of future scenarios, necessitating an integrated approach to policy appraisal beyond the confines of single Departments, and across all tiers of national and local Government. ANTICIPATE will address this need, contributing to more robust and resilient policy making through improved awareness of the positive and negative consequences outwith the core areas of intended impact.

Poor air quality is considered by the UK Government to be "the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK". As well as human health, air pollution also has wider implications for the natural environment and for the economy. The draft Clean Air Strategy outlines ambitions for tackling this public health challenge by reducing UK air pollution, improving the environment and achieving economic growth. In recognition of the multiple interrelated sectors and transboundary relationships, its strategic goals are explicitly aligned for co-delivery with three core Government strategies: UK Industrial Strategy, Clean Growth Strategy, and 25 Year Environment Plan.

ANTICIPATE will enable an in-depth and systems based analysis of four policies selected from these headline Government Strategies, as well as a key health strategy, the NHS Long Term Plan. A horizon scanning exercise, followed by scoping discussions with policy makers, will be used to identify suitable policies, that is, those that are at an early stage in development and that are likely to have implications for air quality. We will aim to include a broad range of policies, from those with clear links to air quality to those whose impact is less obvious, and include both nationally and locally focused ones. For each of the selected policies, workshops will be organised with participation from policy analysts, stakeholders, and air quality researchers to explore the policy proposals and their potential impacts on air quality, either perverse or beneficial or both, with an emphasis on identifying implications that had previously been unremarked or under emphasised. The workshops will also identify synergies and conflicts with other policies with implications for air quality.

Through these workshops, ANTICIPATE will investigate novel applications of social science tools and techniques to enable rethinking and improvement of prospective policy ideas at the appraisal stage. The process will build a diverse, interdisciplinary network of stakeholders to apply a wide range of perspectives and expertise to the policies, probing implementation, possible outcomes, and the potential mitigation of adverse impacts and realisation of beneficial outcomes. The workshops may reveal issues and evidence gaps which will be shared with other researchers engaged in the Clean Air Programme and more widely to enable the academic research community to respond. A set of briefing papers focused on the conclusions from each individual policy exploration will be proactively disseminated to stakeholders from across the UK policy and research landscape.

Throughout the project, activities will be monitored and evaluated, enabling improvement of the process on subsequent iterations as well as feeding into the production of guidance on applying an effective policy exploration process. At the end of the project a Manual will be produced providing guidance on appropriate use of methods for assessing the implications of future policy, bridging the gap between academic research and policy formulation. This will be available in multiple formats to ensure it is accessible to a range of potential beneficiaries ranging from other academics to local and national decision makers.
Prof. Nigel Gilbert (University of Surrey) is the Principal Investigator, with Co-Investigators Dr Suzanne Bartington (University of Birmingham), Dr Ian Hamilton (UCL), and Dr Sarah Moller (University of York).

To apply, please see https://jobs.surrey.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?id=5849



Professor Nigel Gilbert, CBE, ScD, FREng, FAcSS, Professor of Sociology,
University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK. +44 (0)1483 689173
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