South West has 619,000 off work sick. A £60m fund wants ideas

Somewhere in the South West, a business, a charity or an inventor working alone may already have an idea that’s worth a share of £60 million. The Government has opened the door for them to bid.

Around 619,000 people in the region are out of work because of long-term sickness. The new Pathways to Work Innovation Fund is asking organisations here, and across the UK, for their most ambitious ideas to help get people into work and keep them there.

What the fund is looking for

The fund was first announced in July and opened for bids on Monday (28 September). It is open to public, private and voluntary sector organisations anywhere in the UK, and applications close on Monday 26 October.

The Government says the ideas could range from AI-powered job-matching tools to prosthetics, digital therapies for mental illness and new ways to support people living with ill health.

It sits within the Government’s wider £3.5 billion drive to change the support available to disabled people and those with health conditions. The fund is also backed by Sir Charlie Mayfield, the former John Lewis boss.

Almost 800 organisations took part in an agenda-setting first event. It was the first in a series being held across the country to get local business leaders involved.

“This is fixable”

Sir Charlie Mayfield is the author of the Keep Britain Working Review and Co-Chair of the Keep Britain Working programme. He put a figure on the problem.

“Economic inactivity caused by health conditions costs our economy £212 billion a year,” he said.

“But this is fixable. We need ambitious, creative approaches to help disabled people and those with health conditions get into and stay in work.

“If you’re a business, a charity, or an innovator, this is your chance to bid for funding and test genuinely new ways of transforming employment support.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said the Government wanted to hear from the South West and beyond.

“We want the best ideas from business, charities and disabled people themselves across the South West and beyond, to help us transform employment support and make sure no talent is left behind,” he said.

“These ideas will help us support disabled people in work, helping them to thrive and fulfil their full potential, driving growth across every postcode.”

Who decides which bids win

An expert panel will help decide which bids get funding. The aim is to make sure disabled people’s experiences shape the outcome. The panel members are:

• Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Paralympian and Member of the House of Lords
• Andrew Greenway, Founder, Public Digital
• Angela Matthews, Director, Business Disability Forum
• Giles Barker, Workplace Disability Lead, Channel 4
• Jon Sparkes, Chief Executive of Mencap
• Mark Esho, entrepreneur, founder and co-owner of Easy Internet Services Ltd and Easy Internet Solutions
• Nabila Gardner, Director and Health and Wellbeing Coach of Ways of Wellbeing and member of the DWP Independent Disability Advisory Panel
• Adam Whitworth, Professor at the University of Strathclyde
• Mark Hodgkinson, Chair, The Valuable 500 Foundation

More advisers put forward by the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh Government are being appointed.

“We know that with the right support, disabled people can and do thrive in the workplace,” Tanni said. “This is a real opportunity to back the bold, creative ideas that can make that happen, and I would urge businesses, charities and innovators across the country to come forward with their best thinking.

“Helping shape this Fund matters to me because finding and keeping work matters enormously, not just for individual wellbeing and independence, but for society as a whole.”

The kind of ideas already on show

In July, the Work and Pensions Secretary chaired a tech roundtable where several organisations showed their work. Others were showcased when the fund launched. They include:

• Koalaa, which designs and makes comfortable, affordable prosthetics for all ages
• Ufi VocTech Trust, which funds platforms that make vocational training and job onboarding accessible to neurodivergent people and those with learning disabilities or health conditions
• Big Health, which offers digital therapeutics for common mental health conditions such as insomnia, anxiety and depression
• Beam, an AI caseworker platform that has supported more than 7,000 people with health conditions into work
• Cogniss, a no-code platform for building digital health and behaviour-change apps
• Ally Labs, which provides services and technology to support mental health and wellbeing
• Blum Health, which designs NHS-compliant software, AI tools and patient engagement platforms
• Radii Devices, a web-based platform that helps clinicians fit prosthetics well

The wider welfare changes

The Government says the fund comes alongside wider action to help the 2.8 million people across the country who are out of work because of sickness. It describes this as part of reforms to what it calls “the broken welfare system this government inherited”. The measures it lists are:

• Rebalancing Universal Credit to remove what it calls “perverse incentives” that push people away from work
• Introducing a Right to Try Work Guarantee, so anyone who can work can try it without fear of losing their benefits
• Investing £3.5 billion in tailored employment support for sick or disabled people
• Increasing face-to-face assessments for health benefits
• Tackling fraud and error in the benefits system, which the Government says will save £14.6 billion over this Parliament

How to bid

Potential bidders have been going to events around the country to hear from experts about the fund and how to put together a strong bid. Members of the fund’s Advisory Panel have been at these events to share their advice.

Full details of how to apply are in the Pathways to Work Innovation Fund applicant bid pack on GOV.UK.

Bids close on Monday 26 October.

📷A close-up photo of a disabled woman with a bionic prosthesis is typing on a laptop while sitting at a table. Online work, distance learning. The concept of the future, cyborg