Guidance: Project Adjustment Requests

The Department has delegated some decision-making on PARs to Town Deal Boards and Local Authorities. This allows places to modify the agreed spend, outputs and outcomes against any project by up to 30% without requiring formal clearance from the Department. All non-delegated (changes >30%) PARs must be submitted alongside a brief letter of support for the changes from the relevant local MP. Where a letter of support from the local MP cannot be obtained, the PAR should still be submitted with a short explanation of why this is not possible.

Please keep in mind that:

• The PAR Form linked below must still be submitted for every change request, alongside an MP letter of support where applicable.

• The Department must then issue written confirmation regarding whether the PAR is delegated or not before any changes can proceed.

• All interventions must continue meet Towns Fund value for money requirements.

We have publicly committed to a 20 working-day turnaround for any PAR decisions that are not delegated to get projects off the ground and allow for a quicker response to any delivery issues. All PAR Forms (alongside MP support letters) should be submitted to [email protected] CC’ing in your dedicated Cities and Local Growth Unit Area Lead for information.

Monitoring and Evaluation: Expanded Outcome Indicators

This document provides further details on the expanded list of outcome indicators that are included within the Towns Fund performance reporting template.

Grant recipients are encouraged to align their chosen outcomes with the indicators in this document where possible, but this is not mandatory.

The more places that align with the outcome indicators in this document, the greater the consistency across the programme, and the more useful the data will be for evaluation purposes.

Guidance: The Future of Town Deal Boards

The Town Deal Boards: Supplementary Guidance document sets out DLUHC’s expectations for Town Deal Boards as places move into the delivery of Town Deal projects. Please note this guidance is supplementary to existing guidance, and sets out DLUHC’s expectations regarding the Board’s specific role in:

• Performance reviews

• Project Adjustment Requests

• Assurance activity

It also reiterates the key strategic and consultative role of the Town Deal Board. As per the Levelling Up Funds Local Authority Assurance Framework (September 2022), checks will be carried out annually on publicly available records to review whether each Town Deal Board is working in line with its governance. This governance includes the information provision requirements set out in the original prospectus and all subsequent guidance including this supplementary guidance.

Please see the full gov.uk article which links to all previous Town Deal Board guidance here.

Amplifying your message: content and channel strategy

As you deliver your projects, you will have messages you need to communicate. A ‘content and channel strategy’ will ensure your messaging resonates with your audience’s needs and priorities.

This animation explores how to shape your content around your audiences, and the channels you can use to reach them. 

How do we leverage Towns’ procurement process to support their net zero aims?

This document sets out some general guidance to help local authorities leverage their procurement processes in their transition to net zero in the context of their Towns Fund projects. This guide is not intended to provide comprehensive recommendations on all aspects of a local authority’s procurement, but should provide a starting point to consider how to incorporate net zero into procurement. Over time, this guide could be updated based on lessons learnt from Towns and best practices demonstrated. It is recommended that Towns work carefully with their procurement teams to develop the best approach for their specific project and Town.

Animation: the virtuous circle of good engagement

In this guide, we will provide you with a framework to carry out effective and comprehensive engagement at any stage in the project lifecycle.

Integrating net zero into a Local Authority capital projects lifecycle

The scope of this resource covers net zero and climate change resilience, which must be achieved through natural, technological, material and process and behaviour change solutions. For this reason, the guide references interrelated priorities and principles such as biodiversity and circular economy to the extent they support net zero and climate resilience objectives. It’s important to note that Towns should address the climate and ecological emergency in parallel. This resource is intended as a starting point for Towns to continuously develop as a live resource based on their own priorities, contexts, and further lessons learnt as across the UK local authorities work to incorporate net zero into all projects.

Town Deal Board: Stakeholder engagement activity deck

Over the course of the Place Leadership Programme we have shared a number of resources and activities to help towns thinking about engaging local stakeholders in their work.

The TFDP have created a wide range of resources on Communications & Engagement available on the TFDP website.

This activity deck brings together a selection of practical activities for Town Deal Board Chairs and members. You may wish to revisit them at important moments in your project, or to use as you move onto the next thing as a town:

1. Mapping your stakeholders: this activity is about getting to grips with who is important to your project and establishing what you know/or assume about them.

1. Matching stakeholders with engagement methods: this activity is about recognising the different styles of engagement that are appropriate to your different audiences, and planning activities to do so.

2. Creating a long-term engagement plan: this activity is about focusing not just on the here and now, but who you want to be engaged over the longer term and why.

Useful Links for s151 Officers

The document below highlights useful links for s151 Officers.

S151 Officer Focus Group

The document below offers highlights of the four s151 Officer Focus Group sessions held between April and July 2022.

Integrated support for regeneration, infrastructure and development projects

Crown Commercial Service (CCS) supports organisations across the entire public sector to save time and money buying everyday goods and services

CCS offers:

• commercial expertise

• significant savings

• bulk buying power

Local government achieved commercial benefits worth more than £200M compared to current market comparators in 2021/22.

Towns Fund Playbook

This guide provides an overview of the resources that have been produced throughout the Towns Fund Delivery Partner (TFDP) programme. It is provided for Towns Fund programme leads and delivery teams to enable engagement with the library of resources produced by TFDP and Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). It also signposts to official documents which have been issued by DLUHC.

Stage 2 FAQs (TFDP Slide Deck)

This document provides Towns with answers to Frequently Asked Questions regarding the Towns Fund Delivery Partner support in the Towns Fund programme. The questions have been divided into ten categories, and includes FAQs which have been officially published by DLUHC in formal communications.

The latest version of this document was published on 28/07/22

Insights and look ahead from DLUHC and TFDP

Description

The Towns Fund Delivery Partner has worked closely with you over the Towns fund programme. Starting from developing successful Town Investment Plans through our support with Business Case development and project support, TFDP has learned a great deal from the Towns across the country. As our programme ended, we wanted to share back with you insights from across the programme as you continue your journey to delivering transformational projects and programmes. This recorded event brings together some of the TFDP leads to present insight from TFDP that can support Towns on your journey, moving into project delivery and how to make best use of TFDP resources going forward.

DLUHC will continue to champion the Towns Fund programme as an important part of levelling up. During the event, representatives from DLUHC shared their aspirations for continuing the success of the programme to-date and answered questions about ‘what next?’ for the Towns.

About the speakers

Beatrice Andrews (Deputy Director, DLUHC) and Peter Sutton (Towns Fund Programme Delivery Lead, DLUHC)

Members of the TFDP team shared their insights during this session.

Integrating Active Travel and Public Realm

This document provides guidance on potential strategies and recommendations to improving active travel and placemaking opportunities in towns.

This guidance is presented in the form of case studies demonstrating active travel and public realm schemes that have been completed successfully in a range of locations.

Some of the challenges that might be common to towns and that will be covered in this guidance are:

• Improving connectivity between natural features (e.g. canal side, riverside) and active travel infrastructure.

• Improving public realm in response to cycling schemes

Seminar 5: Procuring suppliers and managing the delivery stage

‘Seminar 5: Procuring suppliers and managing the delivery stage’ works aimed to raise awareness of what is needed to enable successful the procurement of suppliers and how to manage suppliers post contract award.

In this seminar we covered:

• The importance of investing time and resources in the procurement stage and not rushing it

• Being clear on what your role will be through procurement, delivery, handover (and other key participants)

• Deciding early what you want from your delivery contracts based on your business case and stakeholder requirements

• The need to keep reflecting on your plans and update your risk register because problems and issues will arise

• The value of building and maintaining a collaborative culture with partners and suppliers

• Why you should start planning for handover from the beginning of the project to support a smooth completion

Project Close Out Report

Project closure is often a stage that is neglected as people move onto other assignments and significant energy has been focused on bringing an asset into use. It is however an important time to take stock, assess the successes and failures and most importantly, identify the areas of learning that can be transferred to other projects. This is especially important in a Towns Fund context as many Towns are delivering multiple projects, at different times but with similar challenges to overcome. This Project Close Report template has been produced to provide a straightforward but effective way of capturing useful information from the project team that, if populated correctly will serve well from both traceability and lessons learned perspectives. This report should be endorsed through governance via a final decision gate and although is the responsibility of the Sponsor, will often be produced by the project team who have had the first-hand experience of delivery.

Seminar 4: Delivery stage Planning and Risk Management

‘Seminar 4: Delivery stage Planning and Risk Management’ aimed to help project teams to develop the high level milestone plans defined in their business cases into robust project delivery plans, and augment risk registers prepared to date by raising awareness of risks associated with capital projects.

In this seminar we covered:

• The common drivers for planning and the benefits of robust planning in the Project Initiation stage

• Different ways to communicate the plan to different stakeholders

• Dependencies and ways to elicit these and reflect them on the delivery plan (schedule)

• Risk management and common capital project risks

Making the Case for Public Realm Investment

This document provides guidance on how to appraise public realm projects and set a compelling case for intervention. This guidance includes step-by-step methodology on how to estimate and capture the economic and social benefits of public realm investment to inform the Value for Money Assessment.

Seminar 3: Requirements and Change Management

‘Seminar 3: Requirements and Change Management’ aimed to highlight the importance of capturing and agreeing project requirements with stakeholders, along with defining how Requirements will managed throughout the project lifecycle.

In this seminar we covered:

• What requirements are and why they are important

• Requirements management through the lifecycle

• Useful inputs for requirements

• Developing, agreeing and prioritising requirements

• Alignment of objectives, requirements and benefits – the ‘golden thread’

• Common risks and wider considerations

• Benefits management and some Programme-level considerations

• Change Control