Towns Fund Risk Register Template

Risks are a fact of programme delivery, and they have wide-ranging causes, including political, economic, social, technical and operational. Risk management is the process of identifying, assessing and putting in place measures to control threats to project success. Risk registers should be at the heart of your approach to risk management. A risk register provides a framework for you to identify and gain a shared understanding of the risks and what should be done.

To help you to manage risks for the Towns Fund, TFDP have developed a simple risk register, with accompanying instructions, for you to use.  This template can be used at the project- and programme-levels to track and manage risks, and they can support reporting on risk management to your Town Deal Board and across the programme.

TFDP Business Case template

The Towns Fund Delivery Partner (TFDP) have prepared an optional Business Case template for the Towns Fund programme. This template should help Towns establish a sound structure for their Business Cases in line with both government guidance and best practice.

Please note that this template will be regularly updated with changes in guidance or policy, and Towns should check back regularly to see any updates. A change control note has been added to the front of the document to inform users of the updates made.

The Business Case template document also provides the accompanying guidance and resource:

• Summary Document: as part of the business case process, a Summary Document must be submitted to MHCLG. The Summary Document is mandatory, and must be approved by MHCLG before funding can be released.

• Proportionality Guide: for each of the five cases, we set out key questions and considerations to help you gauge the level of detail required for your business case. At the end of the document, you can use the Proportionality Tool to assess where each business case falls on the scale of these key questions, which should help you understand the level of detail required for your business case.

We have published a blog, which introduces the template to Towns.

The template was updated to version 4 on 19th August 2021

Project Initiation Document template

A Project Initiation Document can help you to mitigate risks as you progress towards the project initiation stage. It will also create a good foundation from which to develop a business case. The purpose of a Project Initiation Document (sometimes called a “PID”) is to record basic, but important, information to better define the project.

TFDP have developed this Project Initiation Document template, which clearly sets out what to capture in each section.

Please see our blog for further details of the benefits of Project Initiation Documents. If you have any questions about how to use the template, please contact your Town Coordinator.

Board Report Template

As Boards evolve into their new responsibilities in the Business Case development stage, they will need to be kept informed of progress being made, have visibility of risks and be able to focus on the issues and decisions which need their steer. Putting in place a standard Board Report, which covers the key headlines, gives assurance to Board members and enables the precious time that they have to be focused on the key matters at hand.

We have developed a simple, editable Board Report template which you can use to ensure that your Board stays sighted on the information which is most important for them to see.

We have provided the template in both excel and word format. The excel template has a tab with instructions, and you can also download instructions on how to use the word template below.

Please read our accompanying blog to further understand the benefits of using this template.