Download as PDF: West Midlands RIEP – Learning to deliver

The Learning to Deliver (L2D) programme provides coordinated support to all the local strategic partnerships (LSP) in the West Midlands. Its support activities are many and varied, and include an improvement support grant to each LSP, a dedicated improvement adviser, a range of briefings and ‘how to’ guides, and a variety of learning and development activities. Underpinning all these activities is a theory of change. The programme recognises that effective responses to the challenges facing LSPs demand ‘whole system’ approaches. These involve all those with a key part to play in agreeing the nature of the issue (or opportunity), and considering how each can support the other in making a difference.

The issue

The Learning to Deliver (L2D) programme was established in April 2007 by the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership (RIEP), Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands, together with a consortium of other regional organisations. The programme aims to provide support to the region’s Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) and was set up to reflect a variety of shared perceptions

Although LSPs have been operating for some years, they were still facing major challenges in establishing their capacity to deliver.

For regional bodies, LSPs represented a critical element in regional delivery chains. For example, Advantage West Midlands (AWM), the Regional Development Agency, saw the economic development activities of LSPs and their Local Area Agreements (LAAs) as crucial for the delivery of the Regional Economic Strategy: regional performance was therefore in part dependent on LSP performance.

Such support as was available for LSPs, across any of the policy areas covered by their LAAs, was not adequately tailored to their needs. In addition, existing support mechanisms were ‘…coming at them in a scattergun fashion’, as LSP directors reported to David Galliers, the RIEP Assistant Director responsible for LAA Support. There may have been support on offer in particular policy fields, but it was not properly joined up in the way LSPs were being encouraged to operate, and therefore lacked effectiveness.

In light of the experience of running the programme in its first year, the RIEP had become aware of the lack of rigour that characterised LSPs’ delivery planning mechanisms. Contact between LSPs was limited, and there were relatively few opportunities for LSP staff and partners to share experiences and learn from each other.

What L2D does

Underpinning principles

From its origins in 2007, L2D has developed into a complex, multi-layered, integrated programme of support. Although there are various distinct components the programme as a whole is based on some core underlying principles:

• dedicated and flexible local support
• providing a platform for shared learning including peer reviews and peer-to-peer challenges;
• an explicit focus on delivery and improved LAA outcomes
• a coherent theory of change running through all aspects of the programme,
• A theory of change: systems thinking

Support from L2D is available throughout the whole range of policy fields covered by the national indicators. Specialist workstreams provide assistance in tackling economic development, climate change, equalities, cohesion and community empowerment.

Increasingly, a common theme infuses all aspects of the programme: the recognition that the challenges facing LSPs lie beyond the scope of individual partners and do not offer easy solutions. Effective responses demand ‘whole system’ approaches, involving all those with a key part to play in agreeing the nature of the issue and considering how each can support the other in making a difference – in ways not confined to service or sector silos.

Whole system approaches can be seen as a set of principles for effective partnership working and improving service delivery – emerging in part from the development of systems thinking concepts. There are important implications both for LSPs, their partners and for the way effective improvement support is delivered.

• It is futile to try to control complex systems, where the impact of activities is subject to many factors.
• You need to seek answers by moving up a level, focusing on connections between systems.
• It is important to develop and exercise leadership at all levels, with influencing skills and understanding of partners and of interlocking systems crucial.
• It is also important to understand how far decisions at a macro level can have a major impact on whether improvements in micro systems (at team/ project level) take root and spread.
• Feedback in systems is crucial. This allows partners to anticipate unintended consequences of policies and ensures that there is a good flow of communication between the frontline and strategic decision makers.
• All available resources (mainstream as well as project budgets) should be harnessed in pursuit of shared goals.

As the programme develops it is trying to show how whole systems approaches underpin improved performance in all the key policy fields, whether these relate to child protection, tackling the effects of the recession or dealing with street crime.

Lead Local Improvement Advisers

The delivery of the programme is based on a team of Lead Local Improvement Advisers (LLIAs), one of whom is allocated to each of the region’s 14 upper tier LSPs. The LLIAs’ main functions include the following:

• To support LAA risk assessment, helping to diagnose barriers and identify opportunities for improving LAA outcome delivery
• To advise LAA partners on drawing up and managing their improvement support plan
• To join up support provided by other agencies where possible
• To provide relevant locality skills and knowledge development (for example, through workshop facilitation or coaching) required to deliver the improvement support plan.

The evaluation of L2D in its first year suggests that the availability of this dedicated resource is a crucial element of the package.

“It was clear that Local Strategic Partnerships were progressing at different speeds and had different needs reflecting their particular stages of development. This had significant implications for their support needs and, whilst many valued opportunities to share learning at a regional level, their real need was for bespoke support tailored to fit their local issues.”

Local improvement support plans and improvement grants

Each of the localities receives an improvement support grant (ISG), which may be used to structure local learning and development activities, subject to the submission of a satisfactory, peer-reviewed improvement support plan. LIAs are available to help develop the plan, encouraging partners to adopt a rigorous process of analysis based on the five-step model set out below.

Each of the 14 upper tier councils receives £50,000, and the 24 district councils £7,000, to help finance the activities identified in the improvement support plan. Examples of improvement activities being undertaken this year include:

• a coordinated multi-agency training programme to improve the delivery of sexual health services for young people in Coventry
• the development and delivery of a plan to assess and reduce the level of anti-social behaviour in Stoke
• improving the collection, management and use of ward data in Walsall, and developing ways of integrating data into performance management frameworks to ensure they support resource planning and strategic commissioning.

Learning and development events

The programme provides regular learning events covering a wide range of policy, delivery and improvement issues. These include rapid briefings (for example on new policy developments), peer review joint learning activities, virtual learning events (‘webinars’) as well as more conventional seminars. Examples of events this year include:

• use of customer insight and client journeys in tackling worklessness
• family based interventions
• neighbourhood working – developing strategies for practical involvement
• communicating climate change
• workshops for elected members.

Know-how products

The programme team produces a regular series of written briefings both online and as hard copy. These include regular bulletins, signposting developments in policy and practice relevant to partners’ roles in driving change and improvement. Other know-how products, include:

• engaging with ethnic communities
• locality planning and LAAs
• tackling the effects of the recession.

The impact

The programme is only in its second year and as a result hard evidence of its impact remains limited. However, David Galliers has observed some changes in the way LSPs and their partners are approaching their tasks.

• It is starting to question the role of the LSP: if they are not delivery agents what are they? As more support becomes available in a locality, what is the partnership’s role in relation to capacity building? In particular, how do the LSPs (with their small staff teams) direct all the support on offer to the hundreds of people from different partner organisations who could benefit from it?
• It has promoted Government Office and other regional bodies to question why people from different agencies are not talking to each other. For example, lead officers from across the regional agencies (including GOWM, the Audit Commission, the RIEP and the L2D LIAs) are starting to see the value of regular locality meetings to share perceptions of progress and performance.
• It has prompted questions about the relationship between regional and national support activity. To quote Galliers: “As L2D is an expression of devolved responsibility, it throws up questions about the role and function of national organisations.”

LSP coordinators support the view that the programme has made an impact, initially on them and the way they approach their tasks, and increasingly on the outcomes from the LAA as well. Alan Turley, coordinator of the Stoke-on-Trent LSP, said that in the early days in particular, the programme reassured him that he was operating on the right lines.

“I get a lot of confidence from it. When you are doing new things you have to know that you are doing it the right way.”

In particular, he values the chance to share the experiences of other LSPs, and the challenges and coaching he receives from his LLIA. The impact is also starting to be seen in LAA outcomes.

“People in Stoke are now starting to argue about why things are working well – a few years ago that would not have happened, as we were too busy complaining about how bad things were. In a number of areas – NEETs, first-time entrants to the youth justice system, the rate of teenage pregnancy – in all these areas we have seen huge improvements, admittedly from a very low base. You can’t attribute all these improvements simply to L2D – a lot of people have been involved. But L2D has made an important contribution in kick-starting these changes.”

The evaluation of the first year programme emphasised the difficulty of assessing impacts at such an early stage, concentrating on the ‘direction of travel’. Nevertheless, it reported that the economic development component of the programme was already showing signs of:

“Assisting local planning and delivering a variety of practical outcomes”, for example:

• Increased involvement of businesses as partners in LAA delivery processes
• Improved collaboration between all partners and a framework for the new seamless service
• Improved cross-theme partnership working about the use of the Working Neighbourhoods Fund and the approach to commissioning; and
• Increased focus on Worklessness and improvements to practice.

Similarly, the evaluation acknowledged that it is too early to comment on what has been achieved through grant funding for local improvement projects. However, it reported that:

“…respondents have been very positive about the availability of the grants and have offered examples of how they have enabled them to undertake additional work. For example:

• The grant facilitated purchase of performance management software, supporting processes together with training and support for implementation.
• The grant enabled the setting up of a voluntary sector network across two neighbouring LSPs to improve capacity and has strengthened relationships between the two Partnerships.
• The grant provided resources to review the LSP (and reflect on cross-cutting issues) and ensure it is fit for purpose.”

The practical support also helped individual participants develop awareness and understanding of the policy context within which LSPs and councils are working. A significant number of respondents reported being better informed about the issues facing LSPs and closer to the thinking coming from DCLG and Government Office. A smaller number also suggested they felt more confident ‘that they were doing the right things’ as a result of their participation.

The evaluation concluded that L2D “…has raised the profile of LAAs and their implications, increased awareness about the new regime and begun to foster different ways of thinking and working around a shared agenda.”

Barriers, challenges and lessons

The RIEP had a variety of barriers and challenges to face in establishing the programme.

• The RIEP encountered an unwritten division between support to local councils, and support to multi-agency partnerships in a locality. There are workstreams traditionally dedicated to local councils, which do not touch partnerships (and vice versa) and this constitutes a barrier to integrated support delivery in a locality.
• It has proved difficult to engage with senior politicians and officers at chief executive level. They may be interested on specific issues (waste disposal or climate change for example), but when issues to do with the LAA are raised the reaction frequently is: ‘This isn’t part of my day job.’ Yet for Alan Turley that is crucial: “Unless the chief executive is behind the LSP it can’t succeed.”
• As a result of a succession of high priority initiatives from central government, the programme has had to cope with a constant,and rapid changing policy agenda,. It has proved hard to establish one activity before another centrally driven priority comes along.
• As a consequence the capacity of LSPs and their partners to absorb the improvement support resources is severely tested. LSPs are generally very receptive to the support available, but clearly some struggle to engage because of a lack of resource.
• The programme is principally aimed at the LSP core team. However as it has moved into specialist areas (including for example, climate change or family-centred approaches) the audience has expanded to include a wider range of partners, who of course are themselves professional specialists. However, engaging specialist officers has not always proved easy. Their buy-in is often not as great as LSP officers and the incentives not necessarily so obvious.

Lessons

The experience of L2D, and in particular its development of a systems thinking approach, has generated some important lessons about the design and implementation of regional improvement support programmes.

• You are operating within a very large system, and need to recognise that it cannot be managed – influenced perhaps but not controlled. The RIEP is essentially a voluntary organisation that has no enforcement or inspection rights, so depends on securing the voluntary cooperation of local partners and stakeholders.
• It is necessary to take risks in the way in which you provide support. For example, there are occasions when you have to act rapidly – proving rapid briefings about new policy developments before the full implications are clear: this could be seen by some as risky.
• Partners are still not very good at communicating with each other, and in particular at using electronic media to talk to each other. The programme is using a variety of web-based tools to communicate and promote conversations between localities.
• Programmes like this have to remain dynamic and flexible to reflect and respond to the rapid pace of change within local government and partnerships.

Further information

David Galliers – RIEP programme manager:

email: David.galliers@westmidlandsiep.gov.uk

Download as PDF: West Midlands RIEP – Smarter public sector procurement through the Regional Procurement Hub

The Comprehensive Spending Review, undertaken by the treasury in 2007 (CSR07), requires all local councils to reduce their operating budgets by a total of three per cent over the period April 2008 to March 2011. In the West Midlands region this represents a total of £500 million of ‘cashable’ savings. Communities and Local Government is anticipating that some 60 per cent, or £293 million, of these savings in the West Midlands will be achieved through procurement efficiencies.

Research undertaken by the Regional Centre of Excellence in 2006 identified that achieving collaborative procurement on a regional basis was difficult without a regional catalyst. As a result, the West Midlands Regional Procurement Hub was set up as a regional platform to support collaborative procurement activities and is an internet-based solution.

The issue

Why is smarter procurement an issue?

Public sector efficiency is best described as the ability to translate a given level of financial resource into the best possible outcomes for those people who use public services, with the least possible waste. The Comprehensive Spending Review in 2007 (CSR07) challenged councils in England to improve public sector efficiency by both:

• continuing the improvement of public services. And,
• making significant financial savings.

This challenge placed emphasis on the public sector providing more efficient, improved public services for people in the most cost-efficient way. Over the lifetime of CSR07 (April 2008 to March 2011) councils in the West Midlands will be responsible for achieving efficiency savings of up to £293 million through more efficient procurement and ‘cashable’ savings. In practice, achieving ‘cashable’ savings makes the challenge much tougher, as the efficiencies must actually save money, rather than simply achieving greater value for money at existing spending levels.

The West Midlands Regional Procurement Hub is one of a number of sustainable procurement activities developed by Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands (IEWM) which are designed to increase public sector efficiency by reducing the costs of procurement administration. IEWM supports a range of procurement initiatives across the region through the Regional Procurement Strategy, the Regional Procurement Action Plan for CSR07 and the Smarter Procurement Programme. IEWM describe sustainable procurement as ‘a process whereby organisations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves value for money on a whole life basis; in terms of generating benefits not only to the organisation, but also to society and the economy, whilst minimising damage to the environment’.

What is Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands?

IEWM is the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership for the West Midlands, established to help the region’s 33 councils in their drive to increase efficiency and improve services. IEWM provides specialist regional support to public authorities and partnerships in efficiency and procurement; people and leadership development; performance improvement; support for the effective delivery of LAAs in the region; transformation and adult and children’s services. There is also support available for the Police and Fire and Rescue Authorities.

What they did

What are the aims and objectives of the West Midlands Procurement Hub?

The Comprehensive Spending Review, undertaken by the treasury in 2007 (CSR07), requires all local councils to reduce their operating budgets by a total of three per cent over the period April 2008 to March 2011. In the West Midlands region this represents a total of £500 million of ‘cashable’ savings. Communities and Local Government is anticipating that some 60 per cent, or £293 million, of these savings in the West Midlands will be achieved through procurement efficiencies.

Research undertaken by the Regional Centre of Excellence in 2006 identified that achieving collaborative procurement on a regional basis was difficult without a regional catalyst. As a result, the West Midlands Regional Procurement Hub was set up as a regional platform to support collaborative procurement activities and is an internet-based solution which;

• provides a ‘one-stop shop’ for all public sector procurement related matters affecting the West Midlands region, including the National Procurement Programme and third sector engagement
• supports local authorities in the region to get direct and easy access to the ‘best deals’ available for common items
• eliminates the duplication of similar tender processes
• helps to build regional joint working around procurement projects and challenges
• creates more stable marketplaces for local councils.

At regional strategy level, Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands’ Efficiency and Procurement Work Programme is designed to support local councils in the region to achieve the required efficiencies by helping them to:

• develop collaborative approaches to procurement
• share contracts and contract information
• and maximise purchasing power through joint procurement exercises and frameworks.

IEWM have also established a number of ‘Regional Commodity Groups’, which are made up from representatives from the procurement functions of a number of the region’s local councils. These groups support increased procurement efficiency by developing and championing a number of specific projects designed to achieve savings across a number of major procurement categories.

What does the West Midlands Procurement Hub do?

The Procurement Hub, launched in May 2007, provides subscribers with access to a range of highly efficient procurement related processes and activities including:

• live procurement contracts and best deals
• procurement information
• standard procurement documentation
• access to Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands’ procurement training programme, designed specifically for procurement professionals, which is being delivered throughout the region
• access to the SOPO National Procurement Discussion Forum.

The Hub also provides access to a number of third-party procurement applications including;

• access to the region’s eTendering Portal provided in associated with
• access to ‘Ask THEMiS’ legal support, provided Achilles and funded by Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands.

The Hub’s internet portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way and allows organisations like IEWM to provide a consistent look and feel to information sharing around procurement opportunities.

Live procurement contracts and ‘best deals’

The live procurement area of the Procurement Hub lists a number of current procurement opportunities that all member councils can utilise. The opportunities are organised around the principle of ‘category management’ with an officer from IEWM responsible for the management of each designated category. The procurement categories currently managed through the hub are:

• transport services
• insurance services
• postal services
• agency staff
• office supplies
• banking services
• Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
• food
• consultancy services
• energy.

The Hub carries a range of ‘best deals’ across each of these categories. These deals highlight a number of standard framework contracts that are open to all local councils in the region. This means that procurement officers in individual local councils can make collaborative use of these to gain substantial financial and time savings, by avoiding the need to use lengthy procurement processes of their own.

Procurement Information

The Hub supports the development and implementation of a range of procurement processes designed to improve efficiency and achieve value for money on behalf of local councils in the region. These include activities such as e-Auctions, which are proven to generate significant savings for councils. An eAuction is an electronic reverse auction procurement tool that enables pre-approved organisations to bid for local council contracts. Similar in concept to eBay, the eAuctions allow organisations to repetitively bid for contracts, although in this instance bids reduce in value as the auction progresses. Consequently the lowest bidder, taking into account qualitative ranking, wins the contract at the end of the process.

The Hub makes use of a range of case studies and effective practice examples to disseminate the potential for using the procurement hub approach to generate efficiency savings throughout the region.

Standard Procurement Information and the Procurement Library

The Hub offers open access to a range of standard procurement information and best practice guides developed by improvement and efficiency partnerships in both the West Midlands and in other regions. This Procurement Library provides a single source of information and documentation for all of the councils in the region (and elsewhere) who are undertaking tendering and contracting procedures.

Resources which are available through the procurement library include access to the following:

• ‘The Docking Station’ was developed by Improvement and Efficiency North West. It is a full suite of template documents that councils often need to use when procuring goods and services, from the start of the tendering process through to the awarding of contracts and beyond.
• There is a range of ‘On the Money’ and ‘How to be Successful’ guides to procurement across a wide range of categories. These guides have been developed through the Regional Centres of Excellence Procurement Programme and highlight a number of industry standard framework agreements open to all local councils. The many topics include buying energy, fuel, fleet, and agency staff.
• ProClass is the English local government owned procurement classification standard which provides a breakdown of council expenditure using a sensible hierarchy of headings. ProClass is used by the Hub to categorise the contracts database and by local councils to compare and monitor expenditure between councils and to share market intelligence against a common standard.
• Legal Updates update all councils with any changes to public sector procurement rules, information on opening up local frameworks to the region and using another council’s framework. It also contains information on standard phrases to include in any European Union Official Journal (OJEU) notices to make them legal and a glossary of terms and frequently asked questions.
• Ask THEMiS is a specialist decision support package used by over 500 public sector, utility and private organisations in the UK and Ireland that are involved in procurement covered by EC procurement legislation. THEMiS gives purchasers the tools to comply with the complex requirements of the EC and other international procurement legislation easily and with minimum cost.
• West Midlands eTendering Portal. The Procurement Hub also facilitates access to region’s eTendering Portal, provided, a collaboration between IEWM and eSourcing specialists BravoSolution. This portal provides the latest in eSourcing methodology for the region’s local councils but at significant lower costs than if the councils sought to procurement their own individual Bravo portal.

Improvement and efficiency training

The Procurement Hub eases access to a number of training and procurement events which are designed to promote and sustain sound procurement skills across all procurement categories. Events are organised regularly. One example is ‘The Bargain Hunt’; an annual opportunity for local councils and improvement and efficiency partnerships to share knowledge, best practice and performance information on procurement. More formal learning opportunities, on issues such as contract preparation, EU legislation etc are scheduled throughout the year, with three or four training events held every month. Places on the procurement training courses and workshops are free and are open to local government, fire and police employees.

SOPO National Procurement Discussion Forum

Access to the Society of Procurement Officers in Local Government (SOPO) electronic networks gives procurement officers from the region access to a range of national activities dedicated to strategic purchasing, contracting and supplies functions. With almost 3,000 members, SOPO provides area networks and forums and produces guidance on best practice. Through membership of the SOPO forum, local procurement officers can work with colleagues nationally to share best practice and influence the national agenda. In addition, IEWM representation is made within SOPO through the Programme Manger for Smarter Procurement who sits on the SOPO National Executive Committee. This relationship is highly important to both organisations and greater alignment and collaboration between the two organisations is continually developing.

The impact

There are two approaches for measuring the impact of the Procurement Hub. The first is in the number of local councils and their employees who are registered to use the Contracts Database on the Procurement Hub. The second is the level of cashable savings that the Contracts Database has helped to bring about for its members throughout the region.

Membership

All of the local councils in the region now use the Procurement Hub for some element of their procurement activity. The most consistent users of the site are procurement officers from the region’s smaller district councils, where dedicated procurement resources are limited, although the main metropolitan councils like Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Coventry are also regular users. This pattern of use reflects the Hub’s philosophy of building collaboration and sharing information on best deals.

The Procurement Hub is regularly marketed to all of the regions councils through the Hub’s project officer, who sets up site visits to demonstrate the latest procurement innovations. Use of the Hub by subscribers is closely monitored to enable IEWM to monitor how effective the project is at streamlining procurement processes and enabling cashable savings. At the end of each month, the Hub’s back office asks all subscribers who have used the site during that period to complete a questionnaire. Information provided through the questionnaire includes:

• which commodity the authority was interested in purchasing
• the level of investment required, or made
• the estimated savings made through the Hub approach
• an estimate of any future projected savings.

These figures are used to compile a monthly report on the level of cashable savings made in the region that the Procurement Hub has helped to achieve. This information, coupled with feedback channels, is used to constantly develop the Hub and to ensure its potential benefits are maximised.

Cashable savings

The West Midlands Procurement Hub has currently saved the region £8.4 million through smarter procurement according to calculations made up to the end of March 2009. This amount is based on officially recorded figures provided by procurement officers within the region’s local councils. The total savings facilitated through the Procurement Hub over the lifetime of CSR07 is estimated at £12 million. Highlights include:

• facilitating the ‘Home to School Travel’ e-Auction programme which has now delivered £2.1 million in savings for the West Midlands during CSR07 alone
• promoting the use of Office of Government Commerce frameworks among the region’s councils which has achieved savings of £1.6 million against CSR07, on top of savings of £7.25 million against CSR04
• enabling savings of £1.7 million in agency staff costs and £1.1 million savings against stationery supplies
• a saving of £85,000 for one local council on its annual bill for water coolers.

The Hub currently supports the 33 local councils in the West Midlands region and has also supported many other councils outside the region who are considering adopting similar processes and who do not have access to their own contracts database.

Barriers, challenges and lessons

The West Midlands Procurement Hub has learnt a number of lessons since its launch in May 2007;

• the Hub’s approach to smarter procurement is built around the premise that strategic coordination is key to regional efficiencies, but with an understanding that the actual savings are made at individual council level. This means that a smarter procurement strategy must be viewed ‘end to end’; championed at CEO level within the local council, promoted at senior level and delivered at procurement officer level
• the success of the Hub’s approach lies in the relationship between the Hub and all sides of the procurement community; one that is effectively managed with plenty of two-way dialogue and feedback
• the use of live regional case studies, around the efficiency benefits of e-Auctions for instance, to illustrate the effectiveness of the process has been a key component in promoting widespread adoption throughout the region
• there is growing demand from the professional third sector for the Hub’s services, particularly around the procurement of social and domiciliary care contracts.

For the Hub to develop as a long-term sustainable procurement resource for the region, there are a number of challenges that need to be met;

• developing its longer term funding base, beyond the lifetime of CSR07
• negotiating longer-term ownership of the Hub amongst the large spending and contracting councils in the region
• making the move into new, and more complex, procurement areas such as waste, adult services and children’s services.

Further information

For more information on the West Midlands Regional Procurement Hub contact:

Carly Haswell
Project Officer – Smarter Procurement
email – chaswell@westmidlandsiep.gov.uk
telephone: 0121 245 0225
mobile: 07827 996730

Jonathan Jones
Programme Manager – Smarter Procurement
email – jjones@westmidlandsiep.gov.uk
telephone: 0121 245 0227
mobile: 07827 996732

Wayne Welsby
Project Manager – Smarter Procurement
email: wwelsby@westmidlandsiep.gov.uk
telephone: 0121 245 0232
mobile: 07769 887135

Keith Gordon
Assistant Director – Efficiency and Delivery
Email – kgordon@westmidlandsiep.gov.uk
Tel: 0121 245 0224
Mobile: 07789 614489

Links

• The West Midlands Regional Procurement Hub
• Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands
• Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands efficiency and procurement work programme
• Procurement Library
• The Docking Station

Other useful sites

• 4Ps
• The Office of Government Commerce (OGC)
• CIPS
• The Society of Procurement Officers in Local Government (SOPO)
• BravoSolution
• Achilles

Download as PDF: London RIEP – Young London Matters

Helping mobile children and young people access services; Capital Ambition’s vision is that London’s public services should take the lead in innovation, fairness, relevance, efficiency and effectiveness. The Young London Matters’ mobility programme, which forms the focus of this case study, is one example of how Capital Ambition is supporting new ways of working to achieve its vision.

Background

Regional improvement and efficiency

In April 2008, nine regional improvement and efficiency partnership (RIEPS) were created to help councils deliver the ambitious outcomes, set through local area agreements (LAAs), by supporting them in their efforts to become more efficient, innovative and engaged with citizens. The RIEP for the London region is Capital Ambition.

Capital Ambition’s vision is that London’s public services should take the lead in innovation, fairness, relevance, efficiency and effectiveness. To meet its priorities of efficiency and improvement, Capital Ambition is developing a comprehensive programme of support for a wide range of activities.

The Young London Matters’ mobility programme, which forms the focus of this case study, is one example of how Capital Ambition is supporting new ways of working to achieve its vision. They have contributed more than £150,000 towards the cost of the programme.

The issue

Young London Matters

Young London Matters (YLM) is a partnership initiative set up by Government Office for London (GOL) to improve the outcomes for London’s most vulnerable children and young people. It was launched in October 2006 in response to Every Child Matters – the government’s programme for a national framework to support the joining up of children’s services. It is funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and driven by GOL.

YLM brings together expertise on issues that affect London’s children and young people. It aims to tackle these problems and ensure that more young Londoners can access the support they need to achieve their full potential. A range of partners are involved in YLM including London’s local councils and the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services (ALDCS), the Greater London Assembly (GLA), London Councils and Capital Ambition.

YLM’s activities have been focused on five main areas:

• Improving children and young people’s access to services that support their emotional and mental health
• Reducing the number of teenage pregnancies
• Improving the attainment and achievement of Black boys
• Improving the attainment and achievement of children in care
• Supporting pan-London implementation of the Every Child Matters agenda and facilitating cross-borough collaboration

Each area has been managed by a specific group of experts from organisations including local councils, schools, colleges, universities, the third sector and government departments.

For the next financial year, YLM will work with key London partners, through the London Children and Young People’s Partnership (LCYPP) to identify new priorities.

Focus on mobility

As part of its remit to focus on pan-London issues and cross-borough collaboration, YLM has been concerned with issues relating to mobility including children and young people receiving services outside their home borough. The context for this work is the YLM report ‘Mobility and Young London’ 2007. The report highlights the challenges that the movement of children across borough boundaries presents to public service providers, at both a strategic and operational level.

According to the report, high levels of mobility can make it difficult for children and young people to access the services they need. For those who are already vulnerable or socially excluded, moving can worsen these effects. Nearly two-thirds of London boroughs had high mobility rates.

Impact of mobility

Mobility can have a particularly damaging effect on children’s education. The report shows that pupil mobility rates are over 14 per cent in inner London and as high as 90 per cent in some schools. Ofsted research suggests that where mobility levels exceed 12 per cent, there is an impact on standards for all pupils. Mobility can also act as a barrier for young people who want to access work or training and other key services. This in turn has an impact on their physical and mental health.

The Mobility and Young London report identified a number of specific challenges for service providers. These were:

• Cooperation throughout professional boundaries within boroughs as well as across borough boundaries
• Clarity over who is responsible and accountable for delivering a joined-up service for mobile children
• The length of time that negotiation can take between boroughs and other agencies over who is ‘responsible’ for an individual child or young person
• The impact on funding and capacity for the ‘responsible agency’
• Lack of effective commissioning among boroughs to ensure a joined-up service for mobile children and young people
• Mobility issues are not always a key strand in borough’s Children and Young People’s plan or specified as outcome targets.
• The need for improved data collection, analysis, information sharing, identification and tracking

What they did

Young London Mobility Board

GOL set up a Young London Mobility Board to consider the key challenges outlined in the Mobility and Young London report. The board is chaired by the Director of Children’s Services at the Royal Borough of Kingston and includes representation from organisations including the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services (ALDCS), the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP), GLA and London Councils.

Young London Mobility Programme

The Board drew up a mobility programme to address the main issues identified in the report. The programme also aims to support performance improvement and offer added value to local councils. This would be achieved through the development of a range of mutuality agreements (among councils) and pan-London protocols for mobile children and young people that would:

• improve their emotional health and well being
• improve their access to key services, including children and adolescent mental health services and
• minimise the impact of mobility on their achievement and attainment.

YLM’s mobility programme focuses on a ‘passport’ to services concept. This places children, young people and their families or carers at the heart of the programme, rather than making it just a protocol between services. The mobility programme is made up of three distinct strands.

Strand 1: A passport for enabling mobile children and young children to stay in education

It is estimated that 85,000 secondary school students are educated outside their home council in London. The passport’s aim is to improve school attendance and prevent the exclusion and unlawful off-rolling of pupils educated out of borough.

The project has focused on supporting London councils to develop and implement effective cross-borough processes, protocols and partnerships. These initiatives are designed to improve internal processes in education settings, information sharing and the management of young people missing and excluded from education

Strand 2: A passport to enable easy access for children who are in care to out-of-borough child and adolescent mental health services (CAHMS)

Prior to the project there were no effective systems for ensuring swift access to CAHMS for children in care, particularly for children moving across borough boundaries. Young people often had to return to their home boroughs to get access to services and were subjected to long waiting lists.

The project aims to support local councils and health partners improve outcomes for children in care, as set out in the government’s 2007 white paper (Care Matters). The passport’s objectives are to ensure that every child and young person in care has a personalised health plan, priority access to CAHMS across London and enhanced health support needs.

Strand 3: Developing a London protocol for integrated working without boundaries using the common assessment framework (CAF)

The effective safeguarding of children requires clarity between neighbouring boroughs of their respective roles and responsibilities in the identification of children’s needs. Data sharing agreements and integrated processes, using a CAF that can be used across borough boundaries, are also crucial. All local councils are required to implement a CAF by September 2009.

This protocol represents an agreement by local councils and partners delivering children’s services to set in place minimum standards identified within the document for all children, young people and families with identified additional needs who require support outside their local borough. It aims to ensure that children and young people remain at the heart of any engagement, support and intervention.

Delivering the projects

The Young London Mobility Board was expanded to include more local councils and three project teams were set up comprising policy and delivery experts. Each project has had its own reference group to help develop pilots and provide the fine details for the passports. Other groups and networks have also been consulted. A programme manager, based at GOL, has overseen the development and implementation processes.

Funding the programme

The total cost of the YLM mobility programme, over a two-year period, was £312,000. The projects have been funded by YLM with additional funding provided by London Challenge and the CSIP. The mobility programme and other key YLM projects have been match funded by Capital Ambition.

The impact

The YLM mobility programme is still being implemented with several projects more advanced than others. Evidence frameworks are being developed and used to evaluate the projects however it is still too early to assess their impact on outcomes for mobile children and young people.

The main impact relates to the innovative ways of working that have enabled GOL and YLM to develop pan-London agreements. The good practice embedded in the development and implementation of the protocols is attracting attention from councils outside London and the pan-London CAF is contributing to the Every Child Matters national integrated working agenda. YLM is also supporting sub regional groups that have been established to help cross council working.

Partnership working

There has been extensive involvement and collaboration between the key strategic Pan-London strategic bodies and local councils. It is estimated that nearly 1,000 professionals from children’s services, schools, health services and the Third Sector have taken part in the development of the passports during 2008/09.

Key agencies and partnerships represented in the development and implementation of the protocols have included:

• All of London’s local councils
• ALDCS
• GOL
• CSIP
• The London Safeguarding Children’s Board
• The Pan London Integrated Working Network
• National Strategies

Adopting a dynamic approach

The YLM mobility approach is one that has involved wide consultation with local councils, other delivery partners and specialist agencies to ensure that the passports can be used to best effect and meet their objectives. The process focuses on getting feedback at each stage in a project’s life during the development and piloting stages.

Close monitoring during the implementation phases will enable the passports to be fine-tuned to ensure they are fit for purpose. For example, monitoring of the schools attendance passport is helping to identify whether the processes are working and if they are offering effective support to schools and local councils to enable children to stay in education.

The passports and resources for the projects are available through the YLM website. These are expected to change over time, responding to government policy and the journey experienced by local councils. The expectation is that councils will contribute to these resources on an ongoing basis by sharing examples of good practice or case studies.

Streamlining approaches to cross-borough working and managing school attendance

At the start of the YLM mobility programme there were five models used by London local councils for managing school attendance. This meant that a child could get ‘lost’ if moving from one area to another. It could also result in the duplication of resources to families of children from outside the borough or no provision of education welfare for children educated out-of-borough.

The project has remodelled the way councils work together by establishing a single clear approach to managing cross-borough working. The protocol offers clarity on where the responsibilities for attendance, exclusions and off-rolling lie for schools and local councils.

The protocol ‘Attendance, Exclusions and Off-rolling Passport: enabling children and young people to stay in education’ was published in November 2008 and has an accompanying toolkit to help London councils implement it.

The passport is being implemented in three phases and is due to be completed by September 2009. Early feedback from schools and local councils suggests that the passport is beginning to make a difference and some mutuality agreements are already in place between local councils.

Developing a London CAF protocol

At the start of the YLM mobility programme there were 33 different approaches to the CAF. Currently, there is a lack of national, and most cases, local standards and criteria by which the CAF is quality assured. The pan-London approach to CAF has identified key strategic principles for information-sharing and common assessment across London boundaries and a ‘roadmap’ for operational practice and processes. This is making it possible to have a single, common approach in delivering services to mobile children and young people.

A first draft of the protocol was produced in September 2008 and reviewed by over 400 professionals from sectors involved in delivering services and policies for children, young people and families. On the basis of these consultations, a second draft was produced with over 800 professionals responding to the draft. The protocol is expected to be in operation from September 2009 and will be accompanied by a quality assurance framework protocol.

Barriers and challenges

The greatest challenge has been having sufficient lead time to develop and implement the passports. The projects have been funded for only 18 months, during which time the process has needed consultations with a large number of partners and getting agreement from them on the direction of travel and a common approach to delivering services to mobile children and young people.

The challenge has involved getting local councils and other delivery partners to refocus the way they work across both professional and borough boundaries. YLM has addressed this by consistently demonstrating the benefits of new ways of working and ensuring that partners are at the forefront of the process. Getting early commitment and endorsement from councils is critical to the success of the projects.

Lessons

The YLM mobility programme experience suggests that the process is best managed by people with a delivery rather than policy background. It needs somebody with vision and good communication skills to explain the process and direction of travel. Essentially, a change management approach is best for driving such a complex process. In the case of the YLM programme this has included:

• Being inclusive and involving all key partners
• Focusing on achievable activities
• Being transparent to build up trust
• Having a dynamic process with consultation and feedback to get it right
• Sharing good practice to get across key issues
• Providing support at all stages of the process

Data / evidence

The scale and scope of mobility in London

The Mobility and Young London report (2007) identified a number of trends which make child mobility a challenge for services providers. For example:

• A high proportion of London boroughs (20 out of 33) were identified as having high mobility in terms of ‘frequent movers’. (ONS)
• Over 20 per cent of households leaving temporary accommodation in London had been in temporary accommodation for over two years compared with ten per cent for England. (ODPM 2005)
• A New Deal for Communities report showed that frequent movers were more likely than non-movers to have seen their doctor (GP) more than a year ago or not at all. (ODPM)
• eight per cent of the most frequent movers in this national sample were not registered with a GP, but in London this was 22 per cent
• Ofsted (2002) found that London schools had very high rates of pupil mobility, with rates of 14.2 per cent in inner London. The average for England was 5.6 per cent.
• Ofsted (2002) also found that some primary schools in Inner London had rates of mobility as high as 80 per cent.
• Ofsted evidence suggests that where mobility levels exceed 12 per cent there is an impact on standards achieved for all pupils
• There was a significant gap in attainment at Key Stage 4 between mobile and non-mobile pupils. Pupils who stayed at the same school for all of their secondary education were much more likely to achieve five GCSE passes than those who joined later. (Ofsted 2002)
• DMAG (GLA, 2005) found that pupils with records in the London Data Set who were in the same home in January 2002 and January 2003 were most likely to reach nationally expected levels in 2002 Key Stage 3 test, with those moving home and school between these times being least likely to reach expected levels.
• Moreover pupils who didn’t change school but did move home tended to have lower levels of achievement, highlighting the impact of moving home on children’s outcomes. (DMAG, GLA, 2005)

The issues for individual London boroughs also highlight these challenges. For example one London borough had:

• An estimated 400 to 600 looked after children placed from other councils in the independent sector provision and with foster carers. At least 200 of them were between the ages of 5 and 12.
• Approximately 100 of these children attend school in their home borough and not in their borough of residence.
• This borough also has one of the highest numbers of unaccompanied minors in the country. Of their 780 looked after children, half of them are unaccompanied children.

In another, Inner, London borough:

• 70 per cent of the children picked up by truancy patrols were from outside the borough and 85 per cent of street crime was carried out by young people who do not live in the borough.

Further information

Young London Matters website

Download as PDF: South East RIEP – Improvement and Efficiency in waste management

South East RIEP improving efficiencies and reducing cost in the waste sector. Local councils are responsible for meeting stringent targets. Many procure waste management services and facilities from private sector companies to benefit from efficiency gains (such as economies of scale) and integrated waste management solutions. Due to the fragmented nature of the sector, effort was being duplicated across councils with many commissioning similar reports and taking time to produce contract documents that could easily have been shared. Local councils started to worry that those inefficiencies might prevent them from achieving their targets or from complying with the Landfill Directive. This led to the development of the Waste Improvement Network (WIN) by Improvement and Efficiency South East (IESE) in 2006.

Background

Waste management has increasingly come under the media spotlight, with public sector attempts to change the public’s behaviour producing friction and some negative media coverage of council policies over recycling, e.g. ‘Now bins are going to shrink’ from the Daily Express (1st March 2009). As natural resources are consumed at a more rapid pace the Government and local councils are recognising the importance of the need to reduce waste, reuse and recycle. This puts additional strain on local councils to provide adequate recycling and waste management facilities.

Waste policy in England is determined by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) through a national waste strategy called the ‘Waste Strategy for England 2007’. Within this strategy, the role of the local council is to:

“provide convenient recycling services for their residents and commercial customers and provide advice and information on how to reduce waste. They will also have to work with their communities to plan and invest in new collection and reprocessing facilities.”

The importance of waste management to the national agenda is reflected in the inclusion of three waste indicators in the national performance indicators in local area agreements (LAAs). In the future, EU directives will also come into play with formal adoption taking place in 2010; the main EU-wide targets include reusing and recycling 50 per cent of household waste by 2020, and the reuse, recycling and recovery of 70 per cent of construction and demolition waste by 2020.

The issue

Local councils are responsible for meeting these stringent targets. Many procure waste management services and facilities from private sector companies to benefit from efficiency gains (such as economies of scale) and integrated waste management solutions. Thus efficiency savings and targets have to be met through the waste contract procurement process. Due to the fragmented nature of the sector, effort was being duplicated across councils with many commissioning similar reports and taking time to produce contract documents that could easily have been shared.. Local councils started to worry that those inefficiencies might prevent them from achieving their targets or from complying with the Landfill Directive. This led to the development of the Waste Improvement Network (WIN) by Improvement and Efficiency South East (IESE) in 2006.

What they did

IESE is the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership (RIEP) for the southeast region working across 74 local councils. RIEPs are local government-led partnerships which work to support better and more efficient local services. Working across a number of local councils they realised that efficiency savings could be made in the area of waste contract procurement. They wanted to provide a single source of information, disclosing details of partnerships, efficiencies, documentation and best practices. Its aim was to bring together waste management information and support for local councils in procurement and decision making.

The Local Government Association, Regional Development Agencies, DEFRA and South East Centre of Excellence (SECE – the precursor to RIEP) were instrumental in setting up the network. They felt that there was a need to establish a national project where councils could find all the information they needed on the waste and environmental sector and to make the information that was already available more accessible.

The first step was to provide a portal that local councils could access to share information. Secondly, a number of contacts and partnerships between the WIN project manager and other agencies had to be developed in order to provide data, links and information. ChameleonNet were approached to build the online portal having had previous experience of building applications with similar functionalities and requirements. The content was developed and the website was built over a period of six months. The site was launched in June 2006 and was initially only available for local councils. The main users are waste managers in local councils. However, people from consultancies and the private sector can sign up to the site, yet some pages are limited to .gov.uk addresses.

As a testament to its success, a year after the website was launched a full-time WIN Project Co-ordinator was taken on to maintain and develop the site content. The website and content were reviewed and feedback was used to develop the site. The site has gone on to develop various methods of communication with WIN users through e-Bulletins, user networks and forums.

The impact

WIN has grown consistently attracting new users and interest and support from many areas. At the end of February 2008 WIN had 1,222 registered users with growth averaging 9 per cent each month and 71 per cent of local councils had at least one user registered to WIN. The idea was originally conceived as a place for councils to easily obtain information, guidance and advice about the waste sector. WIN has now expanded and is leading the way for sector-led support for local government in the waste and environmental sector by providing the resources to enable benchmarking by councils, improvement to their services, councillor development, networking and representation of local councils

One significant impact since the launch of WIN has seen the transfer of large amounts of data from DEFRA’s local authority support website onto WIN in August 2007, increasing its credibility as a one-stop-shop for local councils and their employees to access information.

WIN is an extremely powerful tool through which information can be provided directly. It enables contact between those that have implemented best practices and those that want to learn from them by providing a forum for questions and networking. It provides an aide for elected members and leaders of the council to keep up with what has been well managed and what neighbouring areas are implementing.

Barriers and challenges

Initially the main challenge was persuading the funding partners and stakeholders that such a network was necessary and would make a significant difference for the waste management sector. This was overcome by illustrating the number of different sources where one could access information, guidance and advice. By doing this exercise the team were demonstrating how fragmented the waste sector was. Unlike other sectors which had one representative network or source of information such as the planning advisory service for the planning sector the waste sector had four or five networks, but there was no guarantee that they provided complete coverage across the industry. Armed with this information the case was made for a new network and portal which would provide complete coverage and bring together a number of organisations that work within the waste management sector to share information, toolkits and best practices in order to avoid duplication.

Once the website was up and running there were three key challenges: to ensure the high quality of information, to maintain local council engagement and to sustain the overall integrity of WIN. Firstly, information that is posted needs to be up-to-date and of a high standard that is relevant to readers. This is an issue that is continually confronted by the project manager who has to decide what is promoted as useful information from a large number of articles and sources.. To overcome this problem the project manager tries to select more factual based reports with a basis in research where information is clear.

Secondly, local councils are a main contributor to the information contained on the website and therefore engagement of them was very important to enable a supply of information and case studies. The project manager manages these relationships and maintains continual communication with local councils and local government associations as there is an element of mutual trust and goodwill on both sides. A key lesson here is to try and include people who are part of or have been part of local governments or local government networks on the WIN team, this way an understanding of local government needs and issues has already been built up through previous experience.

Finally, the benchmarking test that the project manager uses on a regular basis to maintain the quality of WIN is by tracking the service usage on a daily basis and to check what documents and pages are accessed, in future the hope is that once the product is more developed members could be asked how much they would be prepared to pay for the service. The key to success is to make sure that there is enough capacity to run the network, to get enough information together to make it a credible website and to pull together a critical mass of councils who would both utilise and provide information.

Data / evidence

WIN’s impact stretches across all local councils in England and beyond, making it difficult to quantify WIN’s total contribution to the achievement of outcomes. In terms of process targets, it aims for a registration rate of 100 per cent amongst all the English local councils. This currently stands at 71 per cent. Performance monitoring, analytical and usage data collected by WIN shows over 1,700 registered users. It also shows other metrics such as browsing habits – for example, registered users don’t tend to browse the website but instead target their search on topics they need information on. This information has gone on to boost the site with better signposting in order to make it more user-friendly and tailored.

The WIN model could be used in other service areas within local government where there is a need to improve knowledge and resource sharing, with an ultimate outcome of improved efficiency and planning; but where activity is difficult to co-ordinate due to the fragmented nature of arrangement.

Download as PDF: North West RIEP – joint supply framework

The first joint supply framework for the built environment in the North West. The supply framework initiative was developed by the AGMA Collaborative Services Group, as a response to the need for a replacement supply agreement for DBM. The Collaborative Services Group was supported by the North West Centre of Excellence with the aim of securing efficiency savings and value for money through shared service delivery and collaboration over ‘back office’ functions.

The issue

The Supply Framework provides a standard specification, price and contract for the procurement of Dense Bitumen Macadam (DBM) by local councils in the North West region of England. It uses gains from bulk buying and purchasing influence to provide good value for money, efficiency and security of supply. It reduces the costs of procurement incurred by individual councils.

A number of Local Authorities within Greater Manchester (AGMA) used a Local Authority Procurement Partnership (LAPP) to meet their requirements for the supply of DBM materials. The LAPP secured supply from two national firms and was used by several local councils for the supply of all their road surface materials. By 2005 it was apparent that this agreement had been renewed and extended several times and it was not thought possible to extend it beyond November 2007.

The response

The supply framework initiative was developed by the AGMA Collaborative Services Group, as a response to the need for a replacement supply agreement for DBM. The Collaborative Services Group was supported by the North West Centre of Excellence with the aim of securing efficiency savings and value for money through shared service delivery and collaboration over ‘back office’ functions.

The group defined a project entitled “Procurement of Bituminous Road Surface Material” and set a number of objectives:

• improve the efficiency of the bituminous material procurement process
• establish commonalities in material specification
• gain from bulk buying and collective purchasing influence
• introduce a system that provides known rates across AGMA authorities
• implement framework agreements with contractors to supply bituminous material.

The initial stage was to get all the Greater Manchester Local Councils to agree to a common specification for DBM and to define the likely quantity of material required in order to understand the potential annual value of the contract. A draft report covering these matters was issued to the District Engineers for four local councils within the Greater Manchester area (Stockport, Manchester, Bury and Bolton) in February 2006. It was approved by a working group of District Engineers from Greater Manchester Authorities (GMADE) in March 2006. Following this approval funds were secured from the North West Centre of Excellence to appoint external advisers and a workshop was held with the four originating AGMA authorities to formulate a procurement strategy.

Following this process a ‘task and finish’ group was created to act as a DBM Project Board. This group was recruited from the existing AGMA Built Environment Procurement Group.

A procurement process was then undertaken under the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) rules. This was led by the North West Centre of Excellence, working with Manchester City Council (acting as contracting council on behalf of the AGMA authorities) and was supported by external consultants. The procurement process included a Pre Qualification Questionnaire and an interim stage where short-listed suppliers were invited to hold mid-tender discussions to address any queries arising from the initial stage. Quality assessment of the bids was provided by representatives from AGMA local authorities. On completion the DBM Project Board recommended that three suppliers be included within a Framework Contract for the supply of bituminous materials.

The Tender Evaluation report was completed in August 2007 and included recommendations that discussions be held with suppliers to consider whether additional materials (such as sand, pipe bedding and sub base) might be included in the Framework Agreement. The report also recommended that lessons learnt and the history of the project and the procurement process should be documented in order to improve the collaborative working programme between local councils in the northwest.

The recommendations set out in the Tender Evaluation report were subsequently adopted by the DBM Project Board. It was then necessary to agree terms for Manchester City Council to manage the contract on behalf of participating councils. These terms were developed by the DBM Project Board and consisted of a levy payable on each order made using the contract. In addition to payment of the levy users also had to agree to share the risk of underwriting the management resource provided by Manchester City Council.

Following completion of the procurement process the Chief Executive of Manchester City Council contacted all the AGMA local authorities in October 2007 to inform them of the new framework agreement. The agreement was outlined and local councils were asked to adopt it enthusiastically and support the new arrangements, both in terms of procurement and by supplying representatives to sit on a board to oversee the framework. The letter promoted the framework as an important step forward in joint procurement and expressed the hope that it may prove to be a model that could be extended to other products and services.

The impact

During the 12 months since its launch the framework has been adopted by eight of the ten local councils in the region including Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Stockport, Oldham, Salford, Trafford, and Wigan. Orders for 42,012 tonnes of materials with a total value of £1.95 million were placed during the first year. This is a considerably smaller volume than was anticipated whilst the framework was in development, the Implementation Report (2007) refers to an annual spend by the AGMA authorities of £7 million, yet has still provided cash savings totalling £200,000 to the councils involved.

The management service provided by Manchester City Council has worked well and funds generated by the sales levy have covered the time and costs incurred by the Procurement Team.

The DBM Supply Framework is the first for the built environment sector in the region. The group’s success in agreeing and implementing the framework is to be used as a model by the Regional Construction Hub being developed by the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership (REIP). This project will develop supply frameworks which will be open to all local councils and public sector organisations in the region. The AGMA Built Environment Procurement Group is leading on the development of the Hub.

Lessons

The key successes of the project have been identified as:

• securing agreement on the need and opportunity
• securing agreement on a common specification
• matching the market opportunity identified within the business case through the tender process
• securing tangible savings in first year of operation
• developing a model that could be applied to other products or materials.

Disappointments included:

• the failure to engage more local councils
• the failure to extend the reach of the framework beyond Greater Manchester in the first year
• failures in communications within some authorities causing barriers to take up.

In order to function effectively a supply framework of this type needs to offer benefits to suppliers and local councils. For the supplier this essentially means reducing the cost of supply in order to trigger a reduction in price. For the buyer, it means providing a reduction in price and process costs without impinging on the quality or flexibility of the outcome. In this instance the key to providing this mutual benefit was to reduce the number of specifications (mixes) that suppliers had to deal with. This required a positive approach to facilitation and the support of senior figures within the local councils.

Any collaborative procurement process requires individuals to give up a part of their autonomy and control of the relationship with their supplier. Collaborative procurement in the built environment sector requires a positive approach to this change in culture from the service unit and the procurement team. It is unlikely that a new supply framework will be adopted without a shared commitment.

An analysis of barriers and critical success factors completed by the AGMA Project Champion prior to the implementation of the framework concluded that it had proven difficult at that stage to make progress with some councils due to fragmented leadership and lack of internal communication. This highlights the importance of ensuring that appropriate technical and strategic teams are involved in developing a new collaborative supply framework.

It would have been more efficient to have agreed a standard approach for invoicing and payment of the administration charge at the outset of the framework. Differences in approach between different authorities have led to the team in Manchester City Council having to chase payment.

The project has shown the value of the networks developed by the AGMA authorities. The existence of groups like GMADE made it a great deal easier to address controversial issues such as common specifications. The success of collaborative working amongst technical groups will support the transfer of knowledge and good practice to strategic and shared service networks.

Joint procurement is a strong driver for efficiency savings through collaboration. It is a means of changing culture and attitudes as well as a process to achieve immediate cash savings.

Continuity of involvement, vision and commitment from a core group is powerful and the key things needed are leadership and direction. If the group had not persisted in reducing the range of specifications they would not have succeeded.

The most valuable lesson has been about how to make a joint procurement process happen, rather than about the way to save money in procurement. The project has demonstrated the need to have the technical element right, but also the need for vision, drive and the focus on operational and strategic objectives.

“We set out down this road to see whether we could make a success of a joint procurement framework for the built environment sector. We have done so, and plan to use the learning to develop others. Perhaps the most important lesson however has been of the power of continuity. It has taken strong leadership, and the vision and commitment of a core group of people working together to make this happen. If we had not persisted in reducing the range of specifications used by partner authorities we would not have succeeded.”

John Lorimer, Director for Capital Programme Division, Manchester City Council

Data and evidence

The work done in preparation of the framework identified the potential to save an average of 5 per cent on the cost of materials and a further sum on the costs of each procurement transaction. The total potential saving identified, based on the estimated £7 million annual value of bituminous materials purchased by Greater Manchester local councils, was in the region of £885,000 per annum.

During the first 12 months of operation (to December 2008) 42,000 tonnes of material was purchased through the framework at a total value of £1.95 million. The savings on this volume of business are estimated to be in the region of £232,000 (5 per cent saving on price and £1,000 administrative saving per transaction for 135 transactions at an average transactional value of £14,500).

Contacts

John Lorimer, Director for Capital Programme Division
Manchester City Council

Ian Brown, Head of Procurement
Manchester City Council

Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGAM)