Supporting Towns at Every Stage

Programme update from the TFDP

It has been an exciting few weeks for all of us involved in the Towns Fund programme. Cohort 2 towns submitted their Town Investment Plans (TIPs) at the end of last week. Also, the first seven Town Deal offers were announced for Barrow-in-Furness, Blackpool, Darlington, Norwich, Peterborough, Torquay and Warrington, with the remaining Cohort 1 Town Deal offers to follow shortly.

We are continuing to develop our understanding of your requirements as the programme progresses, and we are growing and adapting the support the Towns Fund Delivery Partner (TFDP) offers you based on your feedback. This blog sets out some of our key learnings so far alongside details of new resources available for towns at every stage of the process.

Lessons from the Cohort 1 first ‘wave’ of Town Deal offers

Towns have developed some great TIPs, as evidenced by the types of projects approved in the first Town Deal offers. The best-evidenced TIPs in the evaluation process had a ‘golden thread’ of logic from the vision to the projects selected and their anticipated outcomes. There will need to be a continued effort to engage with business and community groups as towns start building up detailed business cases for the projects they wish to take forward as part of their Town Deal. TIPs have provided a great foundation for towns entering this second stage of the process.

Preparing for Stage 2: Business Case Development

We have brought together our Town Coordinators from across the country, service leaders and topic experts, and programme management team to develop a comprehensive service offer to support you as you develop your business cases. While we cannot write your business cases for you, we can help with key aspects across all elements of Green Book compliant business cases.

Following agreement of your Heads of Terms with government, your Town Coordinator will provide you with a Stage 2 Welcome Pack. This Pack will give you all the information about the key steps you will need to take to go through the next stage of the Towns Fund process. We will also have a clear offer of support on everything from business cases and finance to key issues around planning permission and environmental impact assessment (EIA). We will work with you as you further develop the detail of your projects with experts on-hand, from health and wellbeing to transport or regeneration.

Bolstering support for Cohort 2a and 3 towns

While Cohort 1 moves on to the business case stage, we recognise that more than half of the 101 towns continue to work on their TIPs. We have developed a broad range of online tools, guidance notes and other resources, but we are keen to hear if there is anything more you need. A handy summary of all our resources can be found here.

We have offered “Check-and-Challenge" services pre-TIP submission for Cohorts 1 and 2 and these have proven to be very useful. However, we have also learned that towns tend to have better-developed TIPs if we have engaged earlier in the process. So, your Town Coordinator is on-hand to answer any questions you have now, well in advance of any Check-and-Challenge. We have 26 areas of support and advice we can offer to help you develop your best possible TIP.

If you have a question or issue that would benefit from a short, informal chat with an expert, we are offering Expert Drop-in Hour sessions. You simply choose the topic category for which you have a question, provide a line or two on your query, and tell us when you are free. We will do the rest by arranging for one of our experts to meet with you.

We have seen the benefits of towns working together, and we want to build on those successes. The TFDP will soon be announcing Town Working Groups – informal groups of Towns Fund towns working together with common interests, either based on local characteristics (e.g. coastal towns) or shared projects (e.g. tourism).

We are excited to continue working with all 101 towns. If you have any questions about our support or how the TFDP can work with you through any part of the process, get in touch with your Town Coordinator.