Wellbeing economy toolkit: supporting place based economic strategy and policy development

Wellbeing Economy Toolkit

Informed by the Clackmannanshire pilot, the Wellbeing Economy Toolkit has been developed by the Scottish Government and refined through engagement with a range of key stakeholders. These include SLAED, the Improvement Service, SIPHER, Public Health Scotland and local councils. This diagnostic toolkit is designed to aid decision-making and prioritisation of economic interventions for facilitating the transition to a wellbeing economy, taking account of particular place (local and/or regional) characteristics. It builds on the inclusive growth approach to economic development by incorporating stronger measures of, and approaches to, improving environmental sustainability, and sets the role of the economy in context as being in service to the wellbeing of people, place and planet.

Figure 1. Overview of the wellbeing economy diagnostic process

Stakeholder participation throughout the process

1 Wellbeing Economy Story

2 Understanding Drivers

3 Consult and engage

4 Prioritise

5 Operationalise

6 Monitor and evaluate

Rooted in the NPF and the international UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are embedded in the NPF, the process begins by building understanding of wellbeing outcomes in a local area, considering both short-term and long-term outcomes. Taking a broad view of the economy, it asks how the economic system and economic activity can serve to improve these outcomes and avoid negatively impacting them. It does this by firstly following a participative, evidence-led, systems-based approach to identify drivers of those outcomes, the strength of those connections, and how they interrelate. It moves on to prioritising these drivers, identifying existing and proposed economy-wide policies, investments and interventions that would have the greatest impact across wellbeing outcomes, within the context of available levers and deliverability.

The following sections set out a stage-by-stage guide to this process, illustrated in Figure 1, including a description of each stage, actions, links to further resources (Annex E) and a closer look at how these stages were carried out in the Clackmannanshire pilot.