Stakeholder Mapping and the Knowledge Platform

Launched in April 2026, ReYorkshire focuses on increasing the reuse of products and materials from industrial, commercial, construction and agricultural activities across North Yorkshire. One of the first workstreams under the programme covers stakeholder mapping and the team has now completed its first deliverable, compiling a report on the key material and product streams, circular economy activity and organisations, strategic priorities, networks, research, guidance and case studies in the region.

This report also summarises the approach and work undertaken in relation to data collection and synthesis, primarily via a ReYorkshire Knowledge Platform, with a focus on the sectors of construction, community, agriculture and manufacturing. Given the importance of aquaculture to the region, this is included as part of ‘agriculture’, which also includes the wider food and bio-economies given their strategic regional priority. 

The platform details 289,382 organisations across the wider Yorkshire postcode areas. 76,005 are registered in the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority (YNYCA) area, of which 71,492 are companies, 3,828 charities, 480 community interest companies and 205 mutual societies!

This core data on stakeholders in the region has been combined with information relating to resource flows, primarily waste data from the Environment Agency, which shows the flow of materials into and out of permitted facilities located in the region. 

Permitted sites in the region reported receiving 3.36 million tonnes of waste in 2024 (98.9% non-hazardous) and removing 1.72 million tonnes. 

The largest received streams were soils and stones (749k tonnes) and mixed municipal waste (621k tonnes). 

A knowledge gap that needs to be focussed upon in next steps is to better assign resource flows with stakeholder types. Hopefully, this can be done with help from SUEZ, a major resource management company with over 15 years of company specific waste arising data from across the UK. 

Other data sources, such as Valuation Office Agency's business-rates listings, local authority brownfield registers and the national renewable-energy survey, illustrate how the Knowledge Platform can add layers of information and act as a data integrator. 

This is the first stage of proving the utility of the platform, through running simplified queries relating to sector, geography and resource flows. Appendices to the first report detail the methodology and outputs, alongside example charts and maps automatically created through queries to the platform. Inevitably, there are multiple caveats and assumptions that need further work to improve confidence in the querying outputs. These form a large part of the next steps of the platform’s development.  

Case studies are important to include in future analysis since these are essentially examples of the symbiosis opportunities we are trying to facilitate as part of the ReYorkshire project. 

Numerous published sources have been interrogated using AI to create a list of 3,131 circular-economy case studies in three collections, fashion and textiles (571 studies), waste management (434) and education and Government services (401). 

These will be further refined and tagged to fit better with our stakeholder types (e.g. linked to SIC – standardised sector codes) and material/resource types (e.g. linked to EWC/ other standardised material codes). 

Subsequently, the platform will be able to establish good quality connections between stakeholder types using these ‘symbiosis opportunities’ as a form of algorithm. Improving the accuracy in the likely resource flows from and into stakeholder types will facilitate more automated mapping of unique opportunities, and the number of potential instances in the region. 

Where relevant, we have obtained extracts from regional reports and other data sources. For example, ‘Creating a Competitive, Carbon-Neutral Circular Economy in York and North Yorkshire: Strategy and Action Plan 2019-2030’, provides an excellent overview of the broad stakeholder base in the region spanning local authorities, businesses, academia, industry bodies, charities and community groups. 

It also flags up the regional priorities for circular economy interventions across the various sectors, including cross-sectoral recommendations. Local networks have also been evaluated to act as conduits to groups of stakeholders, whilst learning from the good work that has already been undertaken and is very active in many cases.