Transform Issue 26 - November 2021 Edition

ISSUE 26

In print and online issue | www.iese.org.uk

Wigan named iESE’s Council of the Year Wigan’s Chief Executive explains why it’s a win for the sector

Portsmouth’s green initiative gets Gold How one council is innovating with solar and battery storage

Also inside: • Peer reviews: are they still fit for purpose?

• iESE enters design phase of Case Management System • Fiona Lees on recovery and regeneration • How CareCubed is aiding partnership working

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Page 2-3 Introduction from Dr Andrew Larner, Chief Executive at iESE and News

Page 4-5 Feature: Council of the Year

Page 6-7 Feature: The future of Peer Reviews

Page 7 Feature: Green award winners

Page 8 Focus: Recovery and regeneration

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Celebrating our industry successes elcome to this edition of Transform where we are looking at a range of issues impacting the sector but also taking time to acknowledge our successes.

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We celebrate Wigan Council and its achievement in being named Dr Andrew Larner, iESE Council of the Year. We look at why the judges felt it Chief Executive deserved this accolade and what made its pandemic response stand out in a sector which responded heroically as a whole. @LaverdaJota We also look closely at a solar and battery storage project by our Green award winner Portsmouth City Council, which was an entry we found inspiring in showing how local authorities can be at the forefront of innovation which benefits the environment and gives a return on investment too.

In addition, we celebrate Fiona Lees, former Chief Executive of East Ayrshire Council, to whom iESE awarded a special Chairman’s award for her contribution to the sector. In the piece we highlight her thoughts on recovery and regeneration as we come out of the pandemic. We also look at sector-led improvement and whether the peer review system is still fit for purpose.

Get in touch with any feedback on this issue or with views for inclusion in a future edition at: annabelle.spencer@iese.org.uk

Red Carpet Solutions visualises virtual town hall

RED CARPET SOLUTIONS IS SEEKING LOCAL AUTHORITY PARTNERS TO HELP BRING ITS VIRTUAL TOWN HALL CONCEPT TO LIFE. Red Carpet Solutions is creating a councilfocused innovative digital platform, which will give visitors a richer and deeper virtual experience.

The concept is that residents would start off on a home page image of a town hall or civic centre, then click through to a visual reception area where they would have the option to use a chat box, speak to someone in real time, or click through to the department they need, which would be visually available from the front desk.

They would then click on the relevant department and get transported by a virtual lift to the next reception area or into the room where a cabinet meeting is taking place, for example.

“You could have the option at the planning reception desk to talk to the duty planner and simultaneously pull up a plan to view. The idea is that the user could do everything they would usually want to do in a council building – get information, book or pay for a service, report something and so on but in a much more interactive way,” said iESE Associate Graham Simmons.

Although the concept is for a complete town hall or

civic centre, the format could also be used for certain departments only.

“A website, however cleverly constructed, is mainly text. This platform would enhance the experience, engage with residents and be a great leveller. If you have difficulty with transport links or mobility issues, there is no need to travel as you will have the same rich virtual experience you would in person,” Simmons added, “This is the future and we are looking for some early adopters to work with us.”

• To find out more contact Graham Simmons at: graham.simmons@iese.org.uk

CMS build is underway IESE IS NOW IN THE DEVELOPMENT STAGE OF BUILDING A NEW CASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS) WHICH HAS THE POTENTIAL TO REVOLUTIONISE HOW SOCIAL WORKERS KEEP AND USE CLIENT RECORDS. A reimagined innovative CMS which is currently being designed and built by iESE aims to give access to real time information from multiple stakeholders, including the recipient of care, allowing social workers to make more informed decisions and spend less time inputting data and more time with their clients.

By taking on this challenge, iESE is entering a market dominated by a few key players. Working extensively with industry technology providers and local government during the past year, iESE has

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clearly understood the issues faced with the current systems and what needs to change and how. It is now about to start building the system which it hopes will revolutionise care management.

“The current CMS market is dominated by a few players. Prices are very high, they are not very innovative and the records generated are not much better than the manilla folder that used to sit on the side in the home of the recipient of care that the social worker would pick up and make notes in,” explained Dr Andrew Larner, Chief Executive at iESE. “We are looking to bring something to market that is more affordable and more open so that internal systems talk to each other and data from external partners can also be brought into the system to give a real time view of the client. It will also be easier for

TRANSFORM IS PRODUCED BY: iESE, www.iese.org.uk Email: enquiries@iese.org.uk @iESELtd

CREDITS: Editorial by: Vicki Arnstein Designed by: SMK Design

new technology to be plugged in without it costing a fortune and without having to rebuild connections every time.” iESE has appointed the developer Miracle Mill to build the CMS and has a couple of UK councils signed up ready to test the prototype.

Andreas Öhrvall, CTO and Co-Founder of Miracle Mill said it was a privilege to work on a system that would do so much good by improving the lives of social workers and their clients. He also credited iESE for their intensive input, adding that he had not previously worked on a project that was so well researched. “The key to success when building such an application is the combined involvement and dedication of both the client and the development team,” he said.

Views expressed within are those of the iESE editorial team. iESE is distributed on a triannual basis to companies and individuals with an interest in reviewing, remodelling and reinventing public services. © Copyright iESE 2021

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iESE Public Sector Transformation Awards THIS YEAR’S IESE PUBLIC SECTOR TRANSFORMATION AWARDS 2021 WERE A GREAT SUCCESS WITH RECORD NUMBERS OF HIGH-QUALITY NOMINATIONS. The awards celebrate and share the most innovative practice in transforming local public service. iESE received hundreds of submissions across twelve categories, with each category having a gold, silver and bronze winner. There is also an overall Council of the Year award given to one exemplary council and some years iESE presents a special Chairman’s award to an individual for their significant contribution to the sector.

This year was iESE’s 12th annual awards with the awards ceremony held on 8th September at Church House in Westminster. It was run as a hybrid event with attendees also joining online. Dr Andrew Larner, Chief Executive at iESE, said he was delighted by the number and quality of entries and thanked sponsors Inspired Villages, Assurity Systems and Netcall for their support. iESE’s Chairman, Councillor Paul Bettison, said the purpose of the awards was to identify stories of innovation that have made a meaningful impact to residents and businesses. “Each year the standard of the submissions and the local public services they represent goes up. This year the awards judging was against a backdrop of the pandemic and the submissions were simply stunning. The standards in the sector and the impact has made a generational leap forward,” he said.

This year the Chairman’s award went to Fiona Lees for her work as Chief Executive at East Ayrshire, a position from which she retired this year. The Council of the Year award went to Wigan Council in recognition of its pandemic response.

• Nominations for the Public Sector Transformation Awards 2022 are now open, download a nomination form at: www.iese.org.uk/public-sectortransformation-awards-2022 • Download a complete booklet of winners Transform Issue 21 - 2021 Awards Edition by iESE Ltd: www.iese.org.uk/public-sectortransformation-awards-2021 • Read about Wigan Council and its work on pages 4 and 5.

• Read a piece about regeneration and recovery with Fiona Lees on page 8.

The iESE Public Sector Transformation Award 2021 winners were: ASSET MANAGEMENT AND REGENERATION Gold Barbergh and Mid Suffolk District Council: The Virtual Highstreet Silver Gloucester Constabulary: Berkeley Sabrina Training Centre Bronze East Suffolk Council: Economic Regeneration Team BEST TRANSFORMATION TEAM Gold Cumbria County Council: Digital Team Silver Broxbourne Borough Council: One Broxbourne Team Bronze Surrey County Council: Digital programme COMMUNICATIONS Gold Cheltenham Borough Council: LinkedIn Silver London Borough of Havering: #DoingMyBit Bronze Isle of Wight Council: Communications and Engagement Team

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COMMUNITY FOCUS Gold East Ayrshire Council: Vibrant Communities Silver Isle of Wight Council: COVID-19 Community Response Service Bronze Mid and East Antrim: Community Hub CUSTOMER FOCUS Gold Essex Police: Op Harrier Silver Barbergh and Mid Suffolk District Council: Transformation of Planning Enforcement Bronze Cornwall Council: Business Regulatory Support Hub BEST USE OF DIGITAL AND TECHNOLOGY Gold Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council: A Digital Approach to the Pandemic Silver Plymouth City Council: The Box on the Box Bronze Surrey County Council: Agile Workforce BEST USE OF DATA INSIGHT Gold East Sussex Fire and Rescue: GP Practices Silver Nottinghamshire County Council: Demand Intelligence Initiative Bronze London Borough of Havering: Better Living EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS Gold Essex County Council: CareCubed Silver Surrey County Council: Transformation Support Unit Bronze 3C Shared Services: Building Control GREEN PUBLIC SERVICE Gold Portsmouth City Council: Hilsea Industrial Estate Silver West Berkshire Council: Community Municipal Investment Bronze East Ayrshire Council: Waste Management INNOVATION Gold Improvement Service: National Entitlement Card Scheme Silver Carmarthenshire County Council: Delta Connect Bronze South Wales Police and Gwent Police: Mental Health App TRANSFORMATION IN HEALTH & SOCIAL CARE Gold Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council: Project RITA Silver East Ayrshire Council: Health and Social Care Partnership Bronze Lancashire County Council: Capacity Tracker WORKING TOGETHER Gold East Ayrshire Council: Dignified Food Programme Silver Cheltenham Borough Council: #TeamCheltenham Response Bronze South Wales Police: Estates Department UK FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE OF THE YEAR 2021 Gold East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service Silver South Wales Fire & Rescue Service Bronze Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire & Rescue Services UK POLICE SERVICE OF THE YEAR 2021 Gold Essex Police Silver Humberside Police Bronze South Wales Police COUNCIL OF THE YEAR Winner Wigan Council CHAIRMAN’S AWARD 2021 Winner Fiona Lees, former Chief Executive of East Ayrshire Council

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CareCubed aids partnership working for Surrey CC SURREY COUNTY COUNCIL (SCC) IS NOW USING CARECUBED ACROSS BOTH ITS ADULT AND CHILDREN’S SERVICES TO PROVIDE A CONSISTENT APPROACH AND ROBUST EVIDENCE BASE TO SUPPORT PLACEMENT PRICING DISCUSSIONS WITH PROVIDERS. THE COUNCIL’S ADULT SERVICES TEAM HAS ENGAGED WITH CARE PROVIDERS THROUGH THE SURREY CARE ASSOCIATION TO SHARE DETAILS OF HOW CARECUBED IS GOING TO BE USED AND THE BENEFITS IT WILL BRING TO LOCAL PROVIDERS. CareCubed gives a platform for the council and providers to collaborate on placements, a benchmark cost based on market data and a structured way of understanding unique offerings of providers and reflecting their costs.

The initial focus was residential care settings ranging from very small family run businesses right through to large national care providers. Jez Taylor, Head of Contract & Commissioning Support Service at SCC, said: "One provider recently requested an increase in funding, and very quickly we were able to assess the request and agree an uplift with them based on CareCubed. Without a nationally-recognised benchmarking tool it was very difficult to know exactly what we were paying for and whether we were being charged a fair price. As a commissioning authority, we have a duty to get value from the public purse whilst also recognising our providers are businesses which need to turn a profit. CareCubed is an invaluable tool to support an open, constructive conversation with our partners."

CareCubed is being used by both commissioners and providers as a 'common currency' and SCC is working in partnership with a large national care provider, which also subscribes to CareCubed, to carry out some whole service reviews. This will give a complete picture of care settings across all service users so that there is clarity on the total service funding and resource requirement and fees can be 'levelled up' where required so that new placements and legacy ones are on an even footing. "There is a lot of variation on the fees being paid where the support need might be very similar, which can be difficult to explain. This needs to be understood and addressed so that pricing is fair and sustainable. Once this process is complete it will make it much easier for us to plan and budget for annual reviews and uplift based on CareCubed.

This will avoid placements 'drifting' away from the benchmark rate and recreating the issue we are unpicking now," Taylor added.

The council is now starting work at looking at its Supported Living services and has been working closely with iESE and a provider to add some new models which will handle the breadth of services offered. The functionality in CareCubed continues to develop based on changes in the market and direct input from iESE’s growing customer base of both local authorities and care providers.

• If you’re interested in hearing more about collaborative work with CareCubed contact craig.white@iese.org.uk

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Wigan named iESE Council of the Year Wigan Council has been named iESE Council of the Year in recognition of its outstanding pandemic response which was supported by its long-standing initiative known as The Deal. Having community, volunteer and partnership relationships already in place jumpstarted Wigan’s response, while a strongly embedded BeWigan staff culture helped drive it forward.

he winning submission for Council of the Year centred on Wigan Council’s wide-ranging Covid response, which saw the overnight introduction of new services, such as the delivery of business grants and creation of food distributions hubs, as well as continuing to seamlessly run core services, such as waste collections.

We spoke to Wigan Council’s Chief Executive Alison McKenzie-Folan about how she felt about the accolade of Council of the Year. Her answer was very humble, insisting the win was not just for Wigan but one for the whole sector: “This story is our story, but it could Alison McKenzie-Folan be the story of many councils.

Everybody achieved unbelievable things across the sector with their own partners,” she said.

Whilst many other iESE award submissions also highlighted amazing pandemic responses, the judges felt Wigan had taken a whole council approach and that this had been achieved because of its history of building capacity within the community through the Wigan Deal (see box for more information). One of the judges said The Deal was like Wigan “having a trampoline when they wanted to get higher” and the organisation had demonstrated how a community-enabled council has inbuilt resilience.

“I think what the Deal has done over the years is

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give us a different relationship with our residents and communities. It gave us those really strong foundations to respond to the pandemic because the relationships were in place,” said McKenzieFolan. “We’ve had heavy investment in the community sector over many years, through what is classed as the community investment fund, so we had invested in excess of £10m in hundreds of community organisations and so we already had that social glue and infrastructure to step up and work alongside as partners. The Deal is very much about partnerships, so the fact that we could pick up the phone to the NHS, the police, to all our public sector partners was amazing. The business sector has also been unbelievable, bringing their own volunteers, bringing their own resources and supporting in the response because of that shared link between community, business and public sector,” she added.

A neighbourhood model, which the council has been building over the past three years, also paid dividends. It has established seven defined neighbourhoods across the borough, each with a population between 30,000 and 50,000. The award submission highlighted how in just a matter of days after the pandemic began and lockdown restrictions were imposed, the neighbourhood model proved to be highly effective in supporting those in need and delivering services in partnership with partners and communities.

The neighbourhood model helped support more

than 7,000 individuals, providing more than 32,000 food parcels/meals, making more than 5,000 comfort calls or referrals for welfare support, enabled 20,000-plus items of PPE to be delivered to residents and voluntary and community enterprises, handled more than 7,500 calls via the contact centre and around 1,500 online forms from the public requesting support. It also registered an additional 500 community volunteers.

As well as The Deal between residents and the council, Wigan Council also has a Staff Deal which encourages employees to engage with what it calls BeWigan behaviours: Be Positive, Be Accountable, Be Courageous and Be Kind (see box for more information). The award submission highlighted the role staff had played in the pandemic response with more than 800 employees redeployed to frontline roles being just one example.

McKenzie-Folan said she had been delighted to share the news of the Council of the Year win with staff. “It is a way of us being able to say to staff this is for you, it is about you and it is about what you have done with volunteers and partners. People have achieved outrageous things that we never thought possible and people have delivered the impossible. The whole of local government should be proud. This award is one for the whole sector but with a little bit of extra pride for us too,” she said.

The pandemic response was “a team Wigan effort”, with McKenzie-Folan also highlighting the role that mutual trust and respect between officers,

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the member team, the cabinet team and the Wigan council leader David Molyneux played. “Having a leader who backs his team and a cabinet who backs the team has been amazing,” she adds.

When asked which of the council’s many pandemic responses she would pick as those that stand out, McKenzie-Folan finds it difficult to choose. She has clearly been blown away by staff efforts, highlighting some stories which really struck her. “I was chatting to a staff member who went to work in supported living and she loved it and has now become a volunteer. One guy who was a health and wellbeing coach went to work in one of our homes with vulnerable residents. He didn’t just go in and do the job, he went in and changed their lives. He was doing fitness sessions and healthy meal plans and becoming friends with them. I could go on and on,” she added.

One Wigan Council employee, Catherine Lawton, was deployed to community hubs from her role as a librarian. “I think the response was a prime example of our BeWigan behaviours in action. Everyone was bringing a little light into people’s lives. From the staff who stepped willingly, with a smile on their face, way beyond their comfort zones into roles that were not only new to them but actually hadn’t even existed before lockdown, to the many acts of kindness, both large and small, that happened every day, the whole experience highlighted the dedication of staff and their willingness to go that extra mile,” Lawton said.

McKenzie-Folan did pick out the establishment of a new rest and recuperation unit, which took over an 88-bedroom hotel situated close to Wigan Infirmary as a safe haven for those in need, as a response she was proud of. Three floors were occupied by homeless residents and two floors by the rest and recuperation team for residents returning home from hospital or in need of respite.

The speed at which business grants were issued is also something McKenzie-Folan picks up on, with Wigan being one of the quickest local authorities nationally to issue support grants. The council also showed how it valued its arts and creative professionals, with the launch of the Freelance Creative Practioner Covid-19 scheme, giving 35 freelance creatives a share of £47,000 with one off grants of between £500 and £1,500.

In addition, Wigan Council rapidly set up a food distribution hub with partners from the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors and local businesses, procured and distributed PPE to all 52 care homes in the borough, set up rapid response provision for children in care offering two-hour respite sessions, moved to remote working and distributed iPads to care homes. It also used its

TechMates programme, delivered by volunteers and council staff, to help residents with the use of digital technology. Throughout the pandemic the council ensured the children in the borough were fed. The families of 10,500 children who were eligible for free school meals were given £15 per week vouchers, which increased to £20 at Christmas. Thousands of children also benefited from school uniform vouchers thanks to the council using emergency grant funding.

Remarkably, the council maintained its full waste collection rota throughout the pandemic, despite a 34 per cent increase in household waste and the team being depleted by more than 40 per cent some weeks.

The overall response did not go unnoted by Wigan’s residents. In a survey of 1,266 people, 94 per cent said they were happy with the support provided and 95 per cent said they would recommend the service to a friend. In a broader residents’ survey with 4,600 respondents, 76 per cent said the response from the council had been ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’.

The pandemic response has also impacted the council’s future with some of the ten priorities set out in the council’s Deal 2030 brought into sharper focus, particularly around children and young people, inequality, place regeneration and climate change. “I think what we have seen is that people embraced a different way of living and we need to be accountable for that as a council and individuals and partners around a focus on those ambitions for net zero. The pandemic response hasn’t ripped up Deal 2030 but what it has done is put a sharper focus on the things that are a priority for us,” McKenzie-Folan explained.

This constant learning is at the heart of Wigan Council as an organisation which “listens and learns” and despite its exemplary pandemic response success, McKenzie-Folan still believes Wigan has plenty to learn from others. “This is our story but there is plenty we can still learn from others. The best part of working in local government is that you can learn from each other all of the time,” she added.

Images above: A rest and recuperation unit, which took over an 88-bedroom hotel situated close to Wigan Infirmary.

The Wigan Deal The Wigan Deal was launched in 2014 in response to budget cuts. It is an informal agreement between Wigan Council and everyone who lives or works there. The Deal sets out a list of pledges from the council, including one to keep council tax one of the lowest, and a set of pledges for the community, including recycle more and recycle right, get involved in the community and get online when contacting the council.

There are several other Deals, such as the Deal for Communities, The Deal for Adult and Social Care and the Deal for Business. The aim is to reduce costs by actively involving residents, eliminating wasteful resource usage and reducing the demand for services. One of the schemes under the Deal, for example, is Community Asset Transfer which can transfer land, buildings or structures owned by the council over to community or voluntary groups or social enterprises, which then become responsible for running, managing and maintaining them. The Deal has so far saved £115m and Wigan has the second lowest council tax rates in the whole of Greater Manchester.

The Staff Deal: BeWigan The BeWigan Staff Deal aims to have an engaged workforce which deliver The Deal to residents through the BeWigan behaviors: Be Positive, Be Accountable, Be Courageous and Be Kind. Some of the things the council promises staff under the Staff Deal is to provide strong, honest and visible leadership, to reward commitment and hard work, to care for staff health and wellbeing and to support staff to give something back. In return, employees are asked to agree to listen, be open honest and friendly, be efficient, flexible and professional, care for their health and stay active and to give something back when they can.

Alison McKenzie-Folan at Leigh hub responding to Covid19

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Focus on:

Sector-Led Improvement Sector-led improvement, including peer reviews, has been in place for more than a decade. In these challenging times for local government, we consider whether peer reviews are still fit for purpose. ector-led improvement (SLI) was introduced through the Local Government Association (LGA) in 2011 to replace the work done by the Audit Commission. One of the cornerstones of the SLI offer is the peer review.

There are a range of peer reviews available, ranging from the full Corporate Peer Challenge through to service specific peer challenges, such as for housing, planning and highways, for example.

LGA member councils are offered a peer review every four to five years. Under the scheme a team of five trained peer reviewers go into an organisation for three to four days and look at it as a critical friend. The team of peer reviewers is typically made up of senior and experienced officers and councillors and can sometimes include peers from across the public, private or voluntary sector, depending on what the peer challenge is focussing on. Feedback is given in several ways, including a written report. The host council should commit to a follow up visit within two years of the challenge taking place.

Councillor Peter Fleming, Leader of the Council at Sevenoaks District Council and Chair of the LGA’s Improvement and Innovation Board, believes the scheme is still up to task. He cites an independent evaluation carried out independently by Shared Intelligence in 2020 which included responses to an LGA membership survey which found almost 80 per cent of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that SLI was the right approach in the current context. Around 70 per cent of respondents to the LGA’s perceptions survey also reported that SLI had positively impacted their council to a great or significant effect.

“The peer challenge is a robust methodology and one that is supported by the sector far more than what it replaced. In the days of the Audit Commission there were huge numbers of companies that would go out and tout their wares to councils about how to get themselves in the best position.

The reality is that corporate peer challenges and other peer challenges are done by the sector so

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frankly we know the stones to look under,” said Fleming. “We reviewed with the sector whether the offer and focus are right and it came back with a resounding yes. I am always willing to be open to criticism, but the consumers are saying that they have improved as an organisation post the peer challenge.”

Councillor Paul Bettison OBE, Leader of Bracknell Forest Council and Chairman of iESE, who is himself a peer reviewer, has some concerns about the system. He believes that as a membership organisation the LGA has been put in a “difficult position” by Government by having to oversee the sector-led improvement agenda. “The trouble is the LGA relies for a large part of its income on the membership fees of member councils. Being a membership organisation is not commensurate with being an inspection organisation that instructs you to improve your services if necessary. I liken it to the AA and the issuing of speed fines. You could say it would streamline matters if we hand over the speeding cameras to the AA. Just imagine if on Monday you get a speeding ticket and then on Tuesday you get another letter informing you that your membership is due for renewal. How happy will you be, or

might you say that you are going to join the RAC for 12 months? I don’t think the Government did the LGA any favours and put the LGA in a difficult position.”

Councillor Bettison is also concerned that not all councils are taking up the Corporate Peer Review Challenge every four to five years as expected.

“One of the benefits [of SLI] was supposed to be that you could pick your own time [for review] and thereby the timing was no longer an issue but sadly for some councils there is never a good time, so some councils still haven’t had them. To try to get their numbers up the LGA have softened the ask, so rather than demanding that each council registers for a full corporate peer review every three years, which was the original idea, they have softened it so that if you have a peer review of a service, then you tick the box that you have had your peer review. Frankly, who are we kidding? Councils who do that are only cheating themselves. We are finding more councils have problems and we only find out later than we would have liked to, so we are getting more councils hitting the buffers harder and harder.”

Councillor Bettison fears that if the situation continues then stricter measures will be imposed.

“The sector is letting itself down. In my view the worst-case scenario is that we will continue like this and finally government will say we are not going to put up with this and we are going to go back in time to when we had the Audit Commission because sector-led improvement has failed. When that is said, and I fear that it will be, I believe it will be a very sad day for local government because the majority of us can be trusted.”

In its 2019/20 End of Year Report on Sector-Led Improvement the LGA states that it delivered 129 peer challenges during 2019/20, of which 60 were Corporate Peer Challenges, with 22 of those for councils who had not had a Corporate Peer Challenge before. The report also acknowledges that reducing the number of councils which have not had a Corporate Peer Challenge is a strategic priority.

“By far the vast majority of councils in the country have engaged with the LGA on both Corporate Peer Challenges, which is the overarching offer, but also on the specific ones,” Councillor Fleming said in response. “There are a

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G R E E N handful of councils that we have struggled with, but to put that in context that is out of 300 councils in England. This handful haven’t engaged in any of the programmes at all and they are the ones that we can legitimately have a conversation with Government about and say we have concerns. We are not an inspection regime, we are not the Audit Commission in a different guise, we are a membership body. Our reports are independently written, and we are invited in by the council, we do not invite ourselves in.”

Councillor Bettison has just booked a Corporate Peer Review for Bracknell Forest Council and carries out one or two as a peer reviewer for external councils per year. He feels the process is valuable for both the host and visiting council.

“I always say I would rather know where my weaknesses are and work on them. I look forward to the report and learning where we need to direct more resource to improve our performance in the future. I have done between 30 and 40 reviews and I have never returned to my own council without at least one good idea. Any council leader trying to avoid this process is reckless. I think it is reprehensible and they are lacking in their duty to their residents and their colleagues.”

While Councillor Bettison fears stricter measures, Councillor Fleming is surer that will not happen. “What would you replace it with?

The Audit Commission cost £2bn a year, frankly we don’t have £2bn in local government to pay for that.”

But is it time for the offer to be tweaked?

Jonathan Huish, Chief Executive of consultancy Capital People who was involved with the original audit regime feels it might be time to review the SLI offer. “Times have changed. The sector has gone through significant change and agendas have joined up. As issues have become more complex and interconnected so has the need for organisations to not be just looking at themselves but looking outside. The focus has shifted away from individual customers of a local authority to supporting and creating sustainable communities for the future.”

He said while lots of the benchmarks looked at through peer reviews are still valid, two key traits that also need to be developed and looked for in local authority are adaptiveness and resilience. “I think the peer review process of the future needs to be built around not only the same elements we have always looked at around leadership and resource and strategy, it needs to incorporate the behavioural approach where we start to look for behaviours across teams and organisations that between them create not only the skills for the future but the approach that gets you there too.”

He feels this could be part of the peer review process, with an added step of a development piece to lead the council in a supportive and facilitative way.

There have been noises to suggest some changes might be afoot. Councillor Bettison say the best councils set out an improvement plan following a peer review which they take through full council, but this is not a formality. Councillor Fleming says that there is a possibility this will become a requirement in the future: “There is a view in Government and across part of local government that that an action plan not done by the LGA but from the council that goes alongside the report would add value.”

While a full-scale overhaul of the peer review system may not be likely, perhaps the sector can expect some tweaks to the scheme in the future.

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Portsmouth powers its way to the top Portsmouth City Council has been named the winner of the iESE Green Public Service Award for a large-scale retrofit of solar and batteries at an industrial estate. The council has also developed a compliantly procured solar and battery framework for further projects and which can be used by other local authorities.

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project at Portsmouth City Council has been recognised for its innovation and public service impact at the iESE awards. With an aim of decarbonising three council buildings known collectively as Hilsea Industrial Estate, this innovative project was the first UK project to use ten Tesla Powerwall batteries in a single installation to store the excess power generated by solar and use it onsite. More than 900 solar panels were also installed across five roofs.

The site comprises of 23 light industrial units, a café and associated communal space. It was one of the council's newest buildings with very few opportunities to make energy efficiency savings on insulation, heating or lighting. It had one of the largest electricity bills across the council’s building portfolio and contributed significantly to its carbon emissions. As a result, it was decided to introduce clean generation from solar joined with battery storage, to ensure the maximum amount of PVgenerated power possible was used in house, as well as using the batteries to take advantage of storing power at time of day with lower electricity tariff rates.

The project was the first time Portsmouth City Council had installed a storage system of above 100kWh. The solar and battery storage were modelled to ensure that there was a financial return on investment from the income and savings generated by the system. Although innovative, it was essential the system could be funded through a traditional financial appraisal.

“One of the key criteria was that it gave us a return on investment. The council has invested heavily in solar and battery storage over the past four or five years and the funds for this project were taken from that budget which comes from the Public Works Loan Board. The pay back as we initially looked at it was about eight years, but it will exceeded that because electricity prices have risen significantly in the last few months,” Andrew Waggott, Energy Services Team Manager at Portsmouth City Council explained.

The procurement of the system was used as the reference project to establish a compliantly procured PV and battery framework for use by Portsmouth City Council and other public sector bodies. The framework, with an aggregate upper value of £500 million, allows work of this nature to be tendered to achieve best value, whilst keeping quality high. It has already been used to procure almost £9 million of solar and battery projects since the early autumn of 2020 and five other local authorities have, or will soon, tender work through it. The council charges a one per cent fee on the works delivered through the

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Above: Solar panels and batteries at Hilsea Industrial Estate. framework to cover its admin costs and can also offer a project management service.

“The framework has 14 suppliers on it, arranged across two tiers, and they are all accredited PV installers who have all been through a competition to be listed on the framework. You know they have the accreditation and the financial standing to give them the competencies to do this work. It cuts out any concerns about suppliers,” Waggott added.

To use the framework, authorities should be within a two-hour radius of Portsmouth because of the suppliers listed, but Waggott is happy to share his learning with authorities outside of this area. “I'd urge peers to get in touch, even if the framework is outside of their geographical area. This is not the first framework we have set up on solar, we have set up a number previously, this is the fourth such framework on solar but with battery this time,” he added.

The system has already reduced the percentage of peak-tariff electricity bought from the grid by 62 per cent, saving £30,000 in bills since commissioning in mid October 2020, while the solar generated and used onsite has saved 70 tonnes of carbon being emitted.

“We are really honoured and proud to win the award. I think the judges liked that the project was cutting-edge and not something that has been done by a local authority previously, but it is very repeatable and we know that it is informing other local authorities already in the way that they are planning solar and battery storage projects going forward,” Waggott said.

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The Chief Execs view:

Regeneration and Recovery Regeneration and recovery are hot topics as local government looks to build a better future postpandemic. Here we pull together some thoughts from former Chief Executive of East Ayrshire, Fiona Lees, on what this means for the sector.

iona Lees retired from her position as Chief Executive at East Ayrshire Council following a 43 career in local government but has already come out of retirement once to undergo a short stint as Interim Chief Executive at Dumfries and Galloway Council. At the recent iESE Public Sector Transformation Awards we presented her with a special Chairman’s award to recognise her significant contribution to the sector. Here we look at the values she saw play out in the pandemic which she feels local authorities should capitalise on and why she thinks community enablement is so important.

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The Covid response “Working with communities is second nature to me.

I began my working life 43 years ago as a community worker. As a Chief Executive I was still a community worker, I just had a much bigger community.

Everything about this pandemic has been local, both in terms of its impact and its response, and we have exercised our servant leadership in that role.

I retired from East Ayrshire in January and since then I have been interim Chief Executive at Dumfries and Galloway and so have worked through the pandemic with communities. I have seen four things that have allowed us to respond in the way that we have.

The first is our relationship with our communities, we could not be closer and that is something that you don’t just get, that is something that you have to work at. We were able to build on very trusting relationships in East Ayrshire and to move at speed and I have seen the same in Dumfries and Galloway.

The second thing is having empowered teams. Our teams know the communities they serve well. It was about saying to those teams, do the right thing and we have got your back. As we moved to mission critical services that was hugely important and that is

what we will want to build on in the future.

The third thing has been our partners and our partnership working. You move at the speed of trust and in the communities I have worked in and served, the partners have moved quickly because we have trusted each other.

The fourth thing is the role of local government.

Everything about this pandemic has been about place and we are the leaders of place. We have told people to stay at home – communities have never been more important. Local government is about local leadership. We have exercised that well and now we need to take that same ability and move forward as we keep one foot in response because Covid is not finished with us yet.

That same criticality of life and death is the criticality we now need to have – the pace and the scale and the urgency – as we move into recovery and we tackle poverty and the inequalities which this pandemic has laid bare.”

The future of local government “I think now is the time to be listening as hard as we possibly can to our communities and staying close to them. In East Ayrshire we had five thousand people shielding. A lot of those people we knew and a lot of them we didn’t, but their communities did and we were able to reach out to them and get them the help and support they needed. Very often that wasn’t help and support from the council, it was help and support from their local community. It was people doing things for each other and that is what communities are about.

People need time to recover and to heal and I think actually we have not seen yet the full impact of

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Covid. We talk about the hidden harms in Scotland.

Covid is not finished with us yet, but people still have hopes and dreams and we need to focus on those hopes and dreams for people as they reimagine their communities and as they reimagine their town centres.

We are going to be talking about shifting the balance of power so the future of local government is going to be one that is going to change and we are going to see new governance arrangements locally.

For now, what we need to be doing is the things that matter most to our communities. The real risk is that we see a return to the way things were. We need to do everything we can to stop that happening and have an urgency and a pace to our actions. This is not a race back to normal, this is a time for change.

If you are talking about future councils, you have to be thinking about future workforce. The biggest threat is that we do not have enough people under 25 who work for us. In the two councils I have worked in and others I know very well, that would be a demographic that we would recognise and I think we need to reach out into our schools and colleges and set out the career paths that we have enjoyed in public service as career paths for young people so that is where my focus and energy would be.

What we have seen over the course of the pandemic is that our values – the values that bring people into local government – have served us well.

I have taken the opportunity to reconnect with staff and reflect on the values that have served us well and asked what the new things are we have learned about ourselves that need to become our values.

I think that we should unashamedly recruit against those qualities and behaviors, we should promote against them because that is the future of local government. These values sit at the heart of local government and those are the values our communities need to see.”