Local Treasures: Completing the Toolkit

About the project

Local Treasures believes that work is good for you, especially as you age. Work keeps you fit and healthy, financially independent and socially included.

As people get older, the way they want to work changes. For a wide variety of reasons, such as caring responsibilities, health and hobbies, demanding more flexibility. Most work opportunities do not allow complete flexibility, which means many older adults leave the workplace for good in their 50s and 60s.

Local Treasures exists to provide completely flexible work opportunities for the over 50s, doing gardening, cleaning, handymen services, companionship, dog walking and more. The jobs are accepted by the worker via our proprietary automated matching platform. Local Treasures operates in towns across Hampshire. Over the past few years, they have been building a toolkit to launch and operate Local Treasures from anywhere in the UK.

The toolkit encompasses a fully automated matching platform, a digital and local marketing programme and a customer support and benefits programme. There is one final tool outstanding to complete the toolkit:

* worker support and benefit programme.

This Innovate UK project allows us to Complete the toolkit by developing technical innovation for the final tool. It can be split into three parts:

1. Ambassador support: A blend of tech innovation with real, in-person support in each town
2. Job security: Technical solution to incentivise longer term client bookings
3. Health: Innovation linking work done with activity points and insurance

We will launch into 3 large towns across the UK for the duration of this project and in doing so, will provide 225 older adults with flexible, local work opportunities.

In completing the toolkit project, they will ensure they deliver a tried and tested toolkit to launch Local Treasures. Enabling them to scale town by town across the UK and to provide thousands more older workers with access to flexible work.