WIGAN Council is taking inspiration from a fellow north west authority’s economic strategy that has been dubbed a success story for "Corbynomics".

Town hall officers revealed this week they are looking at the so-called Preston Model to keep as much public funds as possible within the local economy.

The success of the scheme in the Lancashire city has seen its Labour run authority gain plaudits from the national party’s key figures, with leader Jeremy Corbyn praising it as "inspiring innovation".

Wigan has asked for advice from the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (Cles) – which has worked with Preston City Council – for tips on how it can improve its own "social value" strategy.

The policy determines how an authority can reap community benefits from its procurement of services, such as encouraging local firms to bid for contracts.

Kathryn Rees, assistant director for reform and transformation, told a town hall committee this week: “Cles has been really innovative and they’re the ones who have been working with Preston.

“We’ve asked them for what they think we can do more of.”

The Preston Model, launched by its city council in 2013, has seen public services now spend £74m more in Preston and £200m more in wider Lancashire, according to a report tabled for the confident council scrutiny committee.

City council bosses established partnerships with "anchor institutions", with all agreeing to procure more goods and services from local firms, rather than outsourcing.

This method of "community wealth building" is now being looked at by other local authorities.

Ms Rees said: “They talked about their anchor organisations; who are your big players in your borough and can you get those to work together around social value?

“For Preston, it was the university, the hospital, the police force. I think there’s an opportunity for us as a council to work with the hospital and the college to say why don’t we collectively make this a priority?”

Councillors were told Wigan has made progress in terms of social value in its procurement activity, comparing favourably to Greater Manchester averages in terms of spends going to borough based businesses.

Training has been offered to officers in the town hall’s procurement team to help "maximise" the social value aspects of their contract decisions.

And a "social value weighting" is taken into account when evaluating procurement contracts, the report adds.

But officers are looking at ways to expand on their current work.

“We will take the opportunity to examine and refine our approach as we develop the Deal for the Future 2030.

“We will work with Cles to ensure we build on our assets to make social value and community wealth development a core component of the Deal 2030,” the report said.

Ms Rees told the committee: “We think we can do more about being really clear about our social value priorities because sometimes through procurement we’ll say to companies you tell us what you consider as social value.

“Perhaps we can be a bit more prescriptive and say, actually, in Wigan, what we really want is x, y and z.”