What can town deal boards learn from one another
Kate Willard MBE
Many Town Deal Boards are at a critical point in their development cycle – celebrating the success of their Town Investment Plans and preparing for a new purpose and way of working. The transition from developing a strategy and vision to project development and delivery requires different skill sets, and it marks an opportune moment to pause and reflect on how the Board has been working to date.
TFDP has been working with a number of TDB Chairs and Board members over recent months to support Boards to do their best work. Through our engagement, we have seen the strength of this public-private model for generating exciting ideas, supporting broad-based community engagement, and working in partnership to ensure value for money on public projects.
Reflecting on what has worked particularly well, we have identified 4 characteristics or behaviours that have helped Boards as they reflect on the transition to this new stage of the Towns Fund programme.
Public sector partners should work with their business partners to explain how decisions are made in the accountable body. Local authority decision frameworks and timescales will be new to many private sector Board members, so a clear flow chart of decision making and its timescales can help with board function and delivery.
The Board must be bought into the Terms of Reference. These rules govern what the Board is there to do, how decisions are made and what the culture should be. This should also cover ‘fundamentals’ such as how to appoint and induct Board members, and how to handle any potential Declarations of Interest. If the Board agreed them as a matter of process, it may be helpful to revisit them, discuss them and own them to avoid misunderstandings or issues down the line. From our experience, successful Terms of Reference are more about the process of agreeing and owning them, rather than the document as an output.
‘Assurance Frameworks’ are uniquely public sector (in the sense of Towns Fund), so the Board should be clear on the purpose of the local assurance framework and the roles of the Board, accountable body and s151 officer early on in the process. This will help set clear expectations for each party’s roles in providing assurance. It will also provide additional comfort to private sector Board members who may be less familiar with the rules/expectations around spending public money.
‘Speaking the same language’ is incredibly important. The public sector and regeneration experts use a different set of terms and acronyms to the private sector, and vice versa. When Board members communicate with one another – in meetings or in documents and reports – they should steer away from jargon or make sure they explain any technical terms to the wider group to facilitate clear understanding among everyone in the team.
Over the coming weeks, we will be working with groups of TDB Chairs to share lessons learned throughout the Towns Fund programme from TFDP and from one another. With 101 Town Deal Offers agreed, representing £2.4 bn, it’s no doubt that Town Deal Boards have undertaken a mammoth task to drive positive change for their towns. Now, we want to support Chairs through the next stage of the journey to make sure Boards can go from success to success.