Capacity Projects

• Partnership Capacity - There are a significant number of partnerships across Leicester City, County and Rutland with responsibility for delivering outcomes. The project will ensure that each of the individual partnerships is fit for purpose through a partnership audit and toolkit, individual partnership assessment report, action plan development, funding to implement Peer Review findings, partnership training for local authority members, briefings and enhanced partnership communications.

• Member Development - The project will procure external consultancy support to undertake development needs assessments and create personal development plans for each member and provide a leadership programme for representatives from the ten authorities.

• Programme/Project Management - A key dependency for the successful delivery of efficiencies and LAA/MAA outcomes is programme and project management capacity. A number of councils have limited capacity to deliver projects and there is an uneven skills level. The project will develop a project management competency framework as part of an overall strategy for programme and project support, deliver a core training programme, carry out a feasibility study for a regional project management centre of excellence and support the employment of a RIEP sub region programme manager in years two and three.

• Equalities and Diversity - All authorities are working to achieve high performance on the Equality Standard for Local Government. The project includes a menu of activities to ensure all 10 councils maximise work around equalities including development of common standards for access to information, enhanced Leicestershire Equalities Forum, partnership equalities strategy, common assessment tool, standardised incident and monitoring system, development of an equality website, single translation service and improved representation in the democratic process.

• Improvements Priorities- this project will work to address ‘Improving life expectancy and reducing health inequalities' and ‘Crime levels' ‘in Leicester. The work within the City will be undertaken with vulnerable people and those living and working in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

• Partnership Change Programme - support for the priority projects being developed through the Leicestershire and Leicester Partnership Change Programme. The Partnership Change Programme is sub regional but reflects the need for separate City & County arrangements for some projects - access to services for example. The Partnership Change Programme will bring significant changes and substantial savings in back office functions through the provision of services by one agency to a range of other agencies (single services). The effectiveness of frontline services will be examined in turn to ensure that outcomes are maintained within reducing budgets.

• Building Capacity Programme:-
o Leadership in Partnership - A joint leadership development programme for talented middle managers across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland and support for the learners from Leicester City Council who are attending a unique programme offered through the University of Warwick. The programme is underway and receiving positive press publicity and links being made with the Total Place initiative and efficiency.
o CDRP Training - The training aims to develop the Hallmarks of Effective Practice within Community Safety Partnerships in Leicestershire.
o Single Learning and Development Service - Funding is needed to resource the identification of learning and development provision, duplication, and savings that could be made through the creation of a single service. This resource will be required for a 3 month period to undertake all interviews, assessment, analysis and reports to the Joint Change Programme and Public Service Board.
o Business Process Re-engineering training delivered over two five week periods

• Strategic Commissioning Capacity - The proposal is to enable decision makers in Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland to plan and deliver more efficient and effective services and in a consistent manner. To make this possible a 5 day Postgraduate module in Strategic Commissioning from Birmingham University has been identified. This course will be open to senior managers, decision makers and those involved in commissioning services from public, private and third sectors including Community Partnerships, Local Strategic Partnerships, Local Authority's, Health and other service providers and the voluntary sector.