Download as PDF: Developing a Rural Delivery Strategy

Through its recent Rural Delivery Strategy project, Hampshire County Council has developed an innovative approach to embedding rural delivery as part of its mainstream decision making processes. Their consultative, evidence-based approach represents a considerable step towards tackling the challenge of delivering services in rural areas.

This case study was compiled by the Commission for Rural Communities, in partnership with Hampshire County Council

Rural policy background

Creating policies that take account of both urban and rural areas is a challenge faced by policy and decision makers at all tiers of government. According to latest estimates, England’s rural areas account for 9.6 million or 19.1 per cent of the total population. Policy makers and those responsible for service delivery are continually faced with the issue of the ‘rural premium’, the perceived higher costs associated with equitable service delivery in rural communities. As a result, many policies fall victim to an ‘urban pull’, meaning those living in rural areas often experience a disparity in their ability to access services compared to their urban counterparts.

The local authority is often the most successful government tier in terms of meeting these challenges. In their position as the most visible and directly accountable tier of government, local authorities have both a responsibility and opportunity to lead the way in achieving equitable policy making. This has often been achieved through effective rural proofing, the process whereby policies are examined and modified to ensure that they do not unfairly disadvantage rural areas. Rural proofing directly supports national level policy to mainstream rural delivery.

Hampshire – a rural county

With a population of over 1,285,900 (ONS Mid-Year Estimates 2008) and covering an area of almost 368,000 hectares, Hampshire is one of the largest shire counties in England. Eighty-five per cent of Hampshire’s land area is classed as rural. The success of a county like Hampshire therefore relies heavily on its thriving rural areas and crucially, a healthy interdependence between its rural and urban areas. Whilst in many respects Hampshire’s rural areas symbolise the ‘jewel in the crown’ for the county, they also present a range of complex problems for the council, with higher costs in equitable service delivery often leading to poor accessibility and a resulting isolation of some service users.

The change of Southampton and Portsmouth into two unitary authorities in 1997 led to an increasing emphasis on Hampshire’s rural areas. The County Council also led the 2005-2007 Defra sponsored Rural Pathfinder for the South East region, which tested innovative ways of delivering services in the county. These factors led to the council asking itself whether it was doing all it could for its rural communities. The appointment in 2008 of an individual Cabinet Member with responsibility for rural affairs prompted the council to revisit its approach to rural areas as part of its overall policy-making process.

The overarching focus for the council’s subsequent work was based on the need to heighten the importance of rural proofing across the council, and to ensure that the interests of its rural communities were fully recognised within its mainstream decision making processes and structures.

Consultative approach

Hampshire County Council began its revised approach by developing a sound evidence base from which to conduct any future work on rural service delivery. Involving the local community in identifying priorities for the area was seen as essential to achieving this. The council held a Rural Delivery Strategy consultation during autumn 2008, which sought feedback from rural stakeholders on the issues faced by Hampshire’s rural communities. The consultation document mapped all of the council’s services to rural areas and divided them into seven key themes, highlighting examples of initiatives already underway in tackling certain issues.

A series of seminars and facilitated workshops were also held, which sought views on the priority areas of the council’s work, as well as providing an opportunity for attendees to discuss key issues around rural service delivery in the county. The findings of the workshops, together with detailed responses to the consultation by nearly 60 organisations and individuals, enabled Hampshire to identify both short and long term actions to improve the delivery of services to its rural communities.

‘Immediate interventions’

Following the consultation process, Hampshire identified 11 changes to service delivery that could be implemented immediately, with no new resources required. These ‘immediate interventions’ were aligned to the key themes identified in the Rural Delivery Strategy consultation paper. The interventions included:

• using Hampshire’s ‘Putting People First’ Personalisation programme to develop flexible approaches to care and support for people in rural areas
• bringing specialist children’s services to rural areas in partnership with the NHS
• applying rural weighting as part of the Early Years service
• providing additional arts and performance activities in villages
• combating anti-social behaviour by adding 24 villages and small towns to patrols by Accredited Community Safety Officers; and
• supporting a Village Hall Adviser post for which Government funding had been withdrawn.

All of the immediate interventions were either underway or complete within a year of the Rural Delivery Strategy consultation being launched, which represented a significant step to achieving action on the ground.

Strategic Action Plan

In parallel with the immediate interventions, a strategic action plan was developed and agreed at the Council’s Cabinet in spring 2009. The action plan was prepared along seven themes or ‘emerging priorities’ that were most relevant to service delivery in the county’s rural areas. These themes included:

• Adult Social Care
• Children’s Services
• Community, Leisure and Culture
• Environment; Food, Farming and Forestry
• Rural Economy, Employment and Skills; and
• Rural Transport and Accessibility

Non-rural specific lead officers were given responsibility for developing specific objectives for each theme. This more holistic approach towards creating combined objectives across council directorates was designed to tackle a previous reliance on existing departmental arrangements, which in the past had presented a barrier to developing innovative, joined up solutions to service delivery in rural areas. Following Cabinet agreement in spring 2009, lead officers for each theme are now responsible for ensuring objectives are progressed.

Assigning responsibility for implementing action plan themes to officers with non-rural specific remits has greatly increased the potential for objectives to become embedded within mainstream council policy. Whilst advice and guidance is available via the council’s Culture, Communities and Rural Affairs Department, accountability for delivering the action plan theme rests firmly with mainstream policy makers and service deliverers at the council.

Cross-council support

Cross-team and directorate working groups aligned to the specific action plan themes have been convened across the council. These groups link officers with joint responsibility for meeting the objectives within the individual action plan themes. Crucial to the success of these groups, and the broader cultural change associated with cross-directorate working, has been endorsement from both the Leader of the Council and its Chief Executive, who have encouraged collaborative working within their respective Cabinet and Corporate Management teams.

Buy-in across the council for the rural action plan has been high and there is a general acknowledgment that good policy making is occurring, through policies that take into account varying needs and geographies. Moreover, there is agreement across the council that effective rural proofing of service delivery is leading to more successful corporate collaboration in general policy making.

The Rural Delivery Strategy consultation also highlighted many examples of good practice already taking place across the council. For example, a cross-directorate group has developed advice for pupils in rural schools on access to transport. It has also developed a ‘wheels to work’ moped scheme, where mopeds are loaned to people in rural areas who have no other means of travelling to work.

A new multi-disciplinary team, with representatives from Adult Services, Children’s Services, Culture, Communities and Rural Affairs, and Chief Executive’s Department, has also identified a need for improved access to adult wellbeing services in rural areas. As a result, plans are in place to develop outreach wellbeing services using an existing high-specification mobile Children’s Centre vehicle.

In order to identify areas of the county most at risk of missing out on specific services, the council is also making full use of ‘Mosaic’ data modelling, which it combines with other existing data, Place Survey data, and information on population wealth and distance from key services to build up a richer picture of its local communities. This has enabled officers to identify areas of rural isolation within the county, and has led, for example, to the council agreeing to provide funding to improve transport access to hospital services within rural areas around Andover. It has also been used to target areas in need of improved access to library, healthcare, and other services.

Partnership working

The council’s close relationship with partner organisations is crucial to the future success of the Rural Delivery Strategy. Engaging the community in achieving sustainable rural communities featured prominently in feedback from the initial consultation, and the resulting action plan involves a range of external organisations. Working with others, particularly district and parish councils to develop a new approach to tackling issues such as rural spatial planning and local housing and service provision, will be crucial to the success of the various action plan themes.

Organisations such as the Hampshire Alliance for Rural Affordable Housing (HARAH), which works to address the need for affordable rural housing, are also crucial to the council’s future working in rural areas. Successful partnership working has already taken place in the village of Ropley, where twelve affordable homes were recently completed. Although it is the responsibility of Hampshire’s district councils to provide statutory housing provision, buy in from the county, town and parish councils, as well as HARAH, has gone a long way towards making this development possible.

The county council funds a third of the cost of providing a team of Rural Housing Enablers (based at Community Action Hampshire, which is the Rural Community Council – the umbrella body for the local voluntary and community sector), who provide a key support service for local communities and parish councils in helping them bring forward schemes such as the one at Ropley.

In the past two years since the Council funded the Rural Housing Enablers, 63 affordable village homes have been built and a further 39 are under construction. The County Council has recently initiated a project with district partners to build 500 affordable homes as a contribution to its Local Area Agreement target. This will use county council land holdings at below market value with a significant emphasis on rural affordable housing delivery . The Local Area Agreement, which embodies the collective improvement priorities for Hampshire, includes an affordable housing target. The county, district, town and parish councils are also represented on the HARAH steering group. The impact of the scheme at Ropley has not stopped at affordable housing. A local community shop has also resulted, in which all of the scheme’s residents have a share. This has contributed considerably to generating strong community spirit in the area.

The community and voluntary sector are also crucial to the council’s current and future partnership working in rural areas. They provide an invaluable source of information and route for service delivery for both the council and its rural residents. The council is working with district partners, parishes, the Hampshire Association of Local Councils, and Community Action Hampshire to develop an agreed approach to community led planning and is currently piloting this new approach. The council has taken considerable steps towards furthering community-designed solutions, including encouraging small businesses to develop innovative solutions to local problems.

A number of changes to the ownership of the shop in the village of West Meon had caused a gradual decline in the vital services it provided to the local community. However, with assistance from ViRSA, a number of forward-thinking local people purchased the site. West Meon Community Shop Association has raised nearly £40,000 for the community, as well as £91,500 in grants, including funding from Hampshire County Council through grants such as the council’s Village Community Grant Scheme.

This has been used to improve the shop’s facilities, including the transformation of the shop’s disused storeroom into an internet café with a wireless broadband connection. As well as selling local produce, providing a delivery service, café, take-away service and outreach post office, the local police also hold a regular surgery at the shop, and it also provides internet training, particularly for older people. The shop also acts as a Tourist Information Point, as well as being one of the county council’s Customer Access Points.

To further develop partnership working, the council has also set up a county wide ‘Rural Forum’, which includes a wide range of rural stakeholders. It is hoped this will provide a valuable route for effective partnership working in the county, and the council’s Members have identified this type of improved partnership working as forming the crucial next step for the Rural Delivery Strategy project.

Performance measurement

The emerging Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) framework and the targets in the achievement of Local Area Agreement (LAA) targets has brought into sharp focus the need to harness joint resources with partners such as district, town and parish councils. The council recognises it’s essential to monitor performance across the organisation and also ensure that LAA target reporting covers rural parameters effectively. The action plan developed as part of the Rural Delivery Strategy project has assisted the council considerably in meeting its LAA targets, together with a focus on addressing rural inequality for young people, and affordable rural housing.

The council’s Corporate Performance and Efficiency Group, involving a selection of Cabinet Members, Directors and Assistant Directors, will also be monitoring the progress of the Rural Delivery Strategy Action Plan, and will be ensuring that departmental action plans are rural proofed. The group have also made addressing rural deprivation and inequality a key priority within the council’s Corporate Business Plan.

Resources

At the beginning of the project, the council set out to establish whether it was delivering services to rural areas in the most efficient and effective way possible. Instead of including a specific objective for the project around increased spending or cost savings, the council took the more holistic approach of seeking to ensure that as much as possible was being done with existing resources.

Although no direct savings have been made as a result of the Rural Delivery Strategy project, the council’s staff and partners are delivering improved services and increasing value for money. By using qualitative feedback such as Place Survey data, the council is also aiming to evaluate the extent to which its rural residents feel a greater sense of satisfaction as a result of rural strategy interventions.

The council has also identified funding to help progress the outcomes of the project. £200,000 of pump priming investment has been identified in the council’s budget for the current year, which will be used to support new initiatives and projects in rural areas. Initiatives include Grant Aid support for communities, and a pilot to deliver broadband in an area currently without coverage. Six projects have recently been agreed, all focusing on delivering specific outcomes and maximising partnership involvement.

Each county councillor also has £10,000 to allocate towards their own projects, and which they can spend as they wish. Some of these grants inevitably benefit rural areas. £10,000 has also been allocated to a Community Challenge Fund to enable parish councils and voluntary groups to bring forward small-scale projects in their communities.

Conclusion

Through initiatives such as the previous Defra Rural Pathfinder, and now the Rural Delivery Strategy project, Hampshire County Council has had considerable success in addressing the issues associated with delivering services in rural areas. The turnaround lies in strong leadership across the council, and specifically the support given by the council’s Members. The council is now well coordinated internally, in contrast to previous projects which operated in isolation. Joined up working as a result of the Rural Delivery Strategy project has not only led to more effective mainstreamed decision making and service delivery at the council; it has also helped avoid the risks of duplication of service delivery. However, this change has not happened overnight and is very much a continuing process.

By mainstreaming rural proofing into the council’s overall policy making, Hampshire County Council has found a way of securing involvement across the whole authority. It is hoped that the Rural Delivery Strategy will assist departments to meet their targets, and set an example for different parts of the council to work more collaboratively.

As well as delivering its Rural Delivery Strategy action plan, the priority for the council is to develop its approach to partnership working, tackling the associated challenges, including the need for the council to justify its investment in resources, and managing competing agendas and expectations of its partners. These are increasingly important issues in the current economic climate, where local authorities across the country are being required to do more with less.

The Hampshire Regional Recruitment Portal is a shared electronic recruitment service. Designed jointly by the 12 participating local authorities across the county, it provides one dedicated site that holds all local government jobs across those local authorities, as well as a common platform for managing the end-to-end recruitment process.

The benefits for jobseekers include only having to fill in application details once, regardless of the job or local authority they are applying to; being able to set up automatic job alerts; booking interviews online; and tracking the progress of their applications online. Candidates can also choose to join the Hampshire Talent Bank, which stores their application details centrally and allows individual authorities to match skills against future roles.

The portal offers more efficient ways of using technology to deliver better public services. In its first year of operation, it achieved savings of £819,000 – far in excess of the original business case.

The issue

In 2005/06, the 15 Hampshire and Isle of Wight (HIOW) councils spent more than £3 million on recruitment advertising, recruiting a total of over 4,500 staff. Councils in Hampshire and across the country are under increasing pressure to find efficiencies and seek opportunities for shared services. They also face common issues when recruiting.

The joint recruitment portal was born from a real desire to work more in partnership, as well as the councils’ collective wish to reduce the cost of recruitment while still attracting quality applicants. It enabled partner councils to benefit from the expertise and best practice held within each authority, allowing this to be shared to provide a better overall service to candidates looking for a job in local government in Hampshire.

The councils had, to some extent, regarded recruitment as competing with each other for the same group of applicants. The recruitment portal initiative reflected a shift towards attracting ‘pools’ of skilled individuals to consider career paths in Hampshire, making it easier to retain talent within local government in the county.

What they did

The HIOW heads of human resources group originally conceived the idea of the Hampshire Regional Recruitment Portal in May 2006 and it was launched in March 2008.

The aim of the project was to have a single technology platform for all HIOW partners that provided:

• a single external web portal where candidates could search, apply, track and engage with the job opportunities in local government across Hampshire in a single location
• an integrated platform that all partners could use to manage the end-to-end recruitment process from candidate application to offer
• the framework for future joint working in order to solve common recruitment challenges.

Developing the model and tender

The system was delivered as a true partnership project from creation to launch – and this continues as important future systems develop. Under a formal partnership agreement, each council had equal voting power in decision making. Project management came from Hampshire County Council’s recruitment team working with people experienced in developing similar projects in the private sector.

All 15 of HIOW’s local authorities took part in the initial discussions. Three of them then decided, for various reasons, including existing contractual commitments, to withdraw. A steering group was formed with representatives from each of the remaining 12 participating authorities, as well as an IT and procurement representative to provide expert advice and liaise with the 12 individual IT and procurement departments within each local authority.

To ensure the project operated as efficiently as possible, the councils agreed an arrangement of four geographical hubs with one council representing the views of the councils in its area and feeding back details from the partnership discussions. This kept the overall numbers for discussions to a manageable level. However, when it came to the process of reviewing the bids and seeing the supplier presentations, all were welcome to take part.

It was agreed that the county council would formally contract on behalf of the partner councils, which required all 12 council legal teams to sign a partnership agreement. The specification asked bidders to describe what they could do to deliver and how they could help take the councils forward.

The portal design needed a ‘front-facing’ dimension that presented a common brand to candidates and then introduced the individual councils’ brands as appropriate. Councils’ corporate communication teams had to agree the brand, which became known as ‘Hampshire Jobs’. The ‘back end’ screens, those being used by the recruiting councils, needed to accommodate a variety of different procedures and formats, so it was important to capture these variations and build a system that could adapt and grow.

All these aspects needed to be thoroughly tested at both levels and at the partnership level to make sure they were properly interconnected.

Schedule

The overall schedule was as follows:

May 2006 – initial conceptual discussion
Sep 2006 – funding bid
Oct to Nov 2006 – discussions with managers of councils
Oct to Dec 2006 – agreement and specification with those proceeding
Jan to Jun 2007 – tender
Jun 2007 – contract awarded
Jun to Aug 2007 – contractor and partnership specification meetings
Sep to Dec 2007 – built system
Dec 2007 to Jan 2008 – three test phases
Feb 2008 – sign off
Mar 2008 – live

Fine tuning and development

At the launch stage, the Hampshire Jobs portal had a very simple front page – the lowest common denominator was simplest to agree. This was later redesigned and a new page relaunched in early 2009. Key improvements included a more interactive layout with changing pictures and graphics, rotating buttons with featured jobs and the option to advertise on a banner slot.

Specific career pages have now been developed outlining featured professions, including profiles of real people in the jobs. The careers pages have been very well received by both managers and candidates as an opportunity to provide greater information on key careers rather than purely job vacancies. They provide a range of information on specific careers – such as quantity surveying, social work, registrars – across individual councils with a plan to develop further profiles in the future.

Funding and income

Funding for the project came through the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Improvement Partnership – one of the sub-regional improvement and efficiency partnerships within the IESE structure. A sum of £200,000 from a Communities and Local Government fund was made available for the project via the regional improvement and efficiency partnerships (RIEPs). Participating councils pay an annual licence fee according to their size.

The portal has the flexibility to add new users and there is now agreement – since January 2009 – to charge for partners outside of the Hampshire Regional Recruitment Portal partnership to advertise individual vacancies on the site. At present, this arrangement is limited to partners connected to the local government framework, with third (voluntary) sector partners paying a reduced rate. These charges generate income to reinvest in enhancements to the system. There has recently been agreement to amend the current charging policy to increase the charge for the first advert placed by a partner, to reflect the cost of uploading their logo, but then they pay a lower charge for all subsequent adverts.

Future development

The future may include more joined up recruitment initiatives driving traffic to the single recruitment system; for example, joint initiatives on engagement with local universities and schools, or equality and diversity. There may be further scope to generate revenue from the recruitment portal from external customers in – or contracting with – the public sector.

The impact / evidence

Savings

The initial business case for the regional recruitment portal was built on delivering savings of £1.2 million over the five-year life of the contract. The partners reported £819,000 financial savings just in the project’s first year:

• £712,000 in recruitment advertising
• £81,000 in staffing
• £27,000 in other supplementary areas – such as postage and paper.

It has been hard to attribute savings directly to the system – as the councils have made other changes and redesigned the way in which they recruit – but these figures are regarded as fair reflections of the savings that the system has secured. Many of the savings are not directly cashable, but rather they have enabled the funding from the business to be redirected to other sources or allowed the delivery of greater volumes without the need for increased funding.

Service improvements

Feedback suggests a number of improvements:

• In individual authorities, the time taken for specific tasks – such as shortlisting – has reduced by over 40 per cent.
• The percentage of applications received through the system as opposed to paper application forms has increased significantly. Since the regional portal was launched, 87 per cent of all applications have been received online.
• Feedback from users indicates that candidates are finding using the portal a positive experience.

Feedback from applicants

Candidates using the system are routinely asked to rate the system and, since its launch, 94 per cent have rated it as good or above, with more than three-quarters rating it as very good or excellent.

Individual user comments include:

• “I think this is a very good way of doing applications. I wish other companies would do the same.”
• “It is really good that you save the information previously entered for past applications – it saves a lot of time!”
• “Very easy to use and I like the fact that you can create your own account.”
• “A very easy and simple application form, I like the fact that it saves information from prior applications, so that you do not have to rewrite information.”
• “More efficient than a paper-based application form.”
• “Straightforward and easy to use. Not off-putting as so many online applications are.”

Barriers / Challenges

In steering the project, it was a challenge to work with councils so varied in size, structure and delegation arrangements – particularly for someone with a private sector background. In implementing the system, for example, some councils with small HR and IT departments and little experience of e-recruitment would need more support and training than others.

It was also difficult to get all 12 different legal departments to sign up to a partnership agreement, particularly as they had not been involved from the start and so had no concept of what the project was trying to achieve. Understandably, their main focus was on protecting their authorities. County legal experts needed to attend separate talks with each council’s legal department to get agreement whereas, if each council had put forward one legal representative from the start – much as had happened with HR and IT – the process could have been much simpler.

The steering group communicated through members and the executive board and agreed key messages for partners to cascade locally. But in retrospect, a more standard, direct approach would have ensured greater consistency, leaving less room for interpretation of messages.

Whenever there was confusion, however, it helped the partners to have such a clearly stated aim on which they were all agreed. It was important to maintain momentum and clear focus over the whole project period.

Lessons

Experience in Hampshire suggests the following lessons for others embarking on similar projects:

• You first need to have a convincing business case. This becomes more difficult as inefficiencies are squeezed out of the system; for Hampshire the upfront funding was crucial, but the business case was a strong one. The Hampshire case was not developed with explicit links to LAA outcomes or CAA audit areas but rather on business and service benefits. However, such links could help to strengthen your argument and build support for your case.
• Having an agreed clear and simple aim will help you to retain focus and momentum throughout the project.
• The most effective partnership needs to involve key representatives – HR, IT and legal – from the outset and acknowledge the differences in what partners need. You should underpin it with a formal partnership agreement, one which gives partners an equal say in decisions.
• Having a project manager with experience of managing a similar process in the private sector helped to show the partnership “the art of the possible�. Coming from outside local government brought a lively mix: as the project manager said, “All partners challenged each other’s approach�.
• To keep the number of people around the table to manageable levels, there may be times when partners need to agree to represent the interests of more than one council along geographical lines. But all partners will need to be actively involved at key stages.
• Don’t underestimate the need to maintain good communication of progress, to a standard format, across the partnership.

According to the partnership, key success criteria from the candidate’s viewpoint include the following:

• A common brand, Hampshire Jobs, applies to all common areas of the system whereas the local corporate identity – the logo and specific information on that authority and its application process – comes into play when candidates select specific jobs.
• There is commonality across core areas, easy access and navigation, and all jobs are visible from one location.
• Information only needs to be entered once and is then pre-populated in future applications – irrespective of authority.

The key success criteria for candidate management include the following:

• There is one common system across all partners, but configured against each council’s individual processes and templates.
• All information on a vacancy is available from two screens at either a vacancy or candidate level.
• It has a useable talent banking facility and all information is held in a central location.
• Key activities – such as issuing rejection emails – are automated.

Further information

Hampshire Jobs web portal

Richard White, Head of Resourcing
Hampshire County Council
telephone: 01962 813951
email: richard.1.white@hants.gov.uk