Financial Case Good Practice

This webinar provides an outline of the key elements of the Financial Case, highlighting Green Book guidance and industry good practice. It is aimed at practitioners within the Town who will be preparing or managing your business cases. The webinar seeks to offer guidance to Towns on how to demonstrate the affordability and funding of the preferred option for each project.

Management Case Good Practice

This recording of our webinar focuses on the Management Case. Drawing on published guidance it provides a context for the application to Towns Fund projects with reference to the template and proportionality guide and exploring topics and issues that will support Towns in developing their plans for the organisation, governance, planning, control, monitoring, evaluation and assurance of their projects during implementation.

Project Re-Prioritisation Tool

In some cases, Towns have received a lower offer than they had asked for, and as such decisions need to be made around which projects should be taken forward to the Business Case stage. This tool has been developed to help you to re-consider your projects, in light of your Heads of Terms (HOT) offer of funding.

A short tutorial video can be found below, explaining how to use the tool, but if you have any further questions please contact your Town Coordinator.

Update: Version 4 added 13/05/21

Stakeholder Engagement Good Practice

This recorded webinar focuses on Stakeholder Engagement and Communications at Business Case stage. The presenters walk through a model and steps to take to keep your stakeholders engaged throughout the business case development. This webinar aims to equip you with best practice tools to maintain engagement and communication throughout this next phase of the Towns Fund deal. 

Commercial Case Good Practice

This webinar focuses on the Commercial Case. Drawing on published guidance, it provides a context for the application to Towns Fund projects with reference to the template and proportionality guide. The aim is to provide insights into topics and issues that will support Towns in developing proportionate and viable procurements and commercial arrangements.

Economic Case Good Practice

The Economic Case assess the costs and benefits of the proposed investments and the resulting value for money. This recording of our webinar explores the economic benefits that we would expect to analyse, including non-monetised benefits, and top tips for estimating them.

Strategic Case Good Practice

This webinar focuses on the Strategic Case and how it can be successfully developed, drawing on recent Government guidance and best practice. One of the key outcomes of the recent HM Treasury Green Book review was a greater focus on the Strategic Case. Ultimately this Case should set out the rationale for change, ensuring alignment of the intervention to the drivers for change (economic, social, environmental), and local and national policy. The Strategic Case should position the type of interventions and options for further assessment in the other four cases.

Translating your TIP into the Strategic Case

This Guide will help Towns work out how best to translate their Town Investment Plan into the strategic case of their project business cases.

The aim of the strategic case is to demonstrate the rationale for investment and outline options for investment. It has become an even more important part of the business case in the latest Government Green Book review.

The Town Investment Plan already sets out the strategic case and vision for the town which is directly relevant to project business cases. However, there is only one TIP and multiple business cases, so how can the former support the latter?

Addressing your Planning, EIA and HRA needs in your business case

The purpose of this document is to provide additional guidance in relation to addressing planning, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA) needs within your Towns Fund business case. This document supplements the Introduction to Business Cases provided by the TFDP (here).

This document provides an overview of some of the key actions associated with planning, EIA and HRA processes and outcomes that you should consider when preparing your business case.

Re:Imagining Retail

The accelerated evolution of retail is extraordinary. In 2020 we saw a shift in consumer behaviour like never before. These trends were already advancing, but too often ignored.

Re:Imagining Retail is a cross-sector collaboration of insights from Savills and peers from across the landlord, developer, planning and design space. In this publication, Savills have examined thought leadership and case studies through the lens of sustainable uses, sustainable repurposing, sustainable masterplanning, and sustainable funding and policy.

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We are currently curating a series of blogs which explain the research paper in more detail, links for which can be found below:

• Making the case for repurposing our town centres

• Repurposing town centres to sustainabe uses

How to account for COVID-19 in your baseline

In developing a robust Business Case it is important to consider how COVID-19 has impacted your Town and how best to capture this in your baseline. The purpose of this resource is to assist in this process.

Within this spreadsheet we have brought together a selection of key COVID-19 datasets that can be used to understand the impact of COVID-19 on your area. Please note that in most cases this data relates to the local authority level. There will of course be a number of other datasets that will need to form the baseline for your business case. These datasets have not been included here as timing means that will not yet reflect the impact of COVID-19 on your town.

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How to use

The 'COVID-19 data resources' spreadsheet provides links to the data source along with supporting information on the data and suggestions on how it could be used in the Business Case. Information provided includes:

• Theme: Overarching theme relating to Social, Economic, or Other

• Source: Name of data source

• Data: Type of data/indicators provided by this source

• Publisher: Publisher of the data source

• Frequency: How often the data is published

• Spatial level: Lowest spatial level that the data is available at

• Use: How the data can be used

• Application to business case: Why the data is relevant to your Business Case and suggestions on how it could be used

• Link: Hyperlink to the source of data

• Notes: Any additional instructions on how to access from the data from the link

Road to Delivery: Planning & EIA requirements

The purpose of this Briefing Pack is to set out some of the planning and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) considerations that you might face during development of your business case and whilst progressing your projects. Projects may interface with the planning system and EIA requirements in different ways, and it will be important to understand what might be required to deliver such projects.  

The Briefing Pack is intended to provide an introduction to these issues to Town Deal Board members and local authority officers who do not have a background in planning and EIA. Please speak to your Town Coordinator if you believe you require further support, including bespoke advice on planning and EIA strategies. Advice can also be sought from your local planning authority.

Stakeholder Engagement to support Business Cases

This guide provides information to help support you when developing your Business Cases. It outlines the process in more detail, the key role of engagement and includes examples of what a strong Business Case should look like.

The guidance is summarised by the image below, showing the Eight Simple Steps to building stakeholder engagement into the development of your Stage 2 Business Case.

Implications of the new Green Book for the Towns Fund

On 25th November 2020, HM Treasury published The Green Book 2020, an update to the 2018 Government guidance on how to appraise policies, programmes and projects, underpinning business cases for public investment.

This guide provides a review of the Green Book, and how it may impact the Towns Fund, and complements the recently published blog.

TIP Part 2: Your questions answered

On 6 and 11 January 2021, TFDP held two workshops on TIP Part 2. We have collated the key questions asked by Towns during these sessions and provided answers, to aid Towns in the completion of their Town Investment Plans.

Our previous guide on the Top Recommendations for TIP Part 2 can also provide further guidance.

If you require further support in completing your TIP, we can also offer a one-to-one session with any of our experts. In order to request an hour with an expert, please complete the Expert Drop-in Hour request form found on the TFDP website, or discuss with your Town Coordinator.

Introduction to Planning, EIA and HRA

Your Town Investment Plan Heads of Terms refer to securing required planning permissions and undertaking Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and/or Habitat Regulations Assessment (HRA) – what next?

This note provides Towns with a brief introduction to the planning, EIA and HRA requirements that may be relevant to your TIP projects. It provides a high-level guide for Towns of the steps they should go through to ensure that planning, EIA and HRA requirements are understood and are appropriately reflected in the individual business cases including the project programme.

10 Recommendations for TIP Part 2

There are two parts to every TIP, and the Part 2 spreadsheet templates form a very important part of the submission to MHCLG. This is where towns are required to provide details of each proposed project, set out the funding sources and expected outputs/outcomes, and provide some of the key evidence around the work undertaken to date.

This note sets out some pointers for completing Part 2 TIPs which will help towns to ensure that they are using them to make as strong a case as possible for each proposed investment.

National Strategic Brief: Climate Change

The purpose of this document is to support towns in the preparation of their TIP to ensure that there is a consideration of climate change – both its potential impacts and the actions that can be taken to reduce local emissions.

In light of the UK government’s 2050 ‘Net Zero’ commitment in 2019, there are significant regulatory and policy changes in the pipeline which are anticipated to be announced in the coming year.

Towns should develop their TIPs taking due regard of these commitments as they will likely impact upon all areas of local development such as building regulation, local infrastructure requirements e.g. electric vehicle charging and resident behaviour.

Towns should explore each of the documents included in the briefing note, considering how they will impact their TIP vision as well as how they can support the delivery of the UK-wide ambition to be net zero by 2050.

Evidence in your TIP: Health & Wellbeing

This document sets out some key evidence towns can call upon to support links between the built environment and health and wellbeing. The aim is to provide a brief overview and introduction for different environmental factors that influence health to help towns evidence the health benefits of their projects or support the overall approach in their vision and strategy.

This document should be read alongside the blog Boost your TIP: Health & Wellbeing.

Engagement Evidence

A community and stakeholder engagement plan is key to building a strong Business Case and it is critical in demonstrating how you manage stakeholders during project delivery.

It needs to show how you have engaged with people and how you will continue to engage as you work up business cases, and project delivery.

But you only have limited space, so what evidence should you include? This guide gives you some tips on what to include, and how to present it.