Engaging with Businesses

From sole traders to multinationals, businesses are the lifeblood of a community. While some may have a long history in your town, others may be relative newcomers to the area. They can be contributors to the Towns Fund, or beneficiaries, as it seeks to galvanise local economies. Businesses should be at the heart of shaping and delivering Town Investment Plans (TIPs).

This guidance note provides nine practical ideas for Towns on how they can engage better with businesses, whether drafting TIPs, developing business cases or delivering projects and beyond.

Social Value 101

With significant Towns Fund investment planned matched with potentially socio-economic challenges exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis, there is now more than ever a need/opportunity for development and infrastructure projects to create additional social value over their lifecycle and help to rebuild local economies.

This document provides an insight into what social value is in development and infrastructure projects and seeks to answer the following questions:

• What is driving the need to articulate and deliver social value

• How to define social value in the built environment

• How social value links to the Towns Fund’s outcome led approach and the Theory of Change

• How social value can be set out in business cases and embedded in to all stages of a project’s life cycle

• What to consider in social value impact measurement

Health and Wellbeing Dashboard

In developing a robust Town Investment Plan it is important to consider how any intervention will impact and improve the health and wellbeing of the population. An understanding of the existing health and wellbeing performance of a Town and the surrounding area is therefore crucial.

The purpose of this dashboard is to assist in this process. Within this dashboard we have brought together a selection of key health and wellbeing measures. The lack of health and wellbeing data published at a local level makes it challenging to access Town level data on health and wellbeing. For this reason we have included local authority level data alongside the Town level data. In addition we have included a national average which helps to identify any specific challenges (or opportunities).

What opportunities can ports bring to our towns?

The Maritime Sector is larger than other comparable transport industries in the UK, including Rail and Aerospace, and is only marginally smaller than the Road Transport industry. About 20 of the Towns Fund towns have a port, and all have an important part to play in our economy, whether that be supplying jobs or GVA contribution. We would like to form a working group amongst towns that have a port to enable learning, knowledge sharing and to work with our team of experts. In this video, Tom Bridges chats to four of our experts to understand the opportunities that ports can bring to towns, as well as how towns can harness these.

Our speakers include Borbala Trifunovics and Clon Ulrick from Arup’s Maritime Team, Arthur Smart from Arup’s Urban Design Team, and Kieron Hyams from Arup’s Planning Team. Kieron has also written a blog to outline the opportunities that ports can bring to towns.

We hope you enjoy the video and get in touch with your town coordinator if you would like a bespoke session with our experts or if you would like to be part of a working group.

Digital High Streets - Connected Services for people and place

During this workshop, we considered the future of connected services in high streets and town centres to inform a debate around the benefits of developing a digital blueprint to guide the implementation and delivery of the telecommunication provision.

Connected services encompass all products and experiences that rely on digital connectivity, from loading real-time travel information in an app to facilitating pop-up shops with an online tenancy agreement. The workshop touched on a plethora of high-street related themes, such as mobility, real estate, retail, social equity, and placemaking (to name a few), in order to collectively identify the areas that present the greatest opportunities for digital enablement.

About the speaker:

The session was facilitated by Camilla Siggaard Andersen, design lead in Arup Digital Studio. Camilla is an architect with a background in town planning and urban technology. Other speakers may be announced closer to the date.

Lighting & Regeneration

Light is vital and fundamental to our daily existence, linking cultural, economic, social and political aspects of our global society. This short learning burst looks at the role of lighting in supporting town centre regeneration and economic recovery, and includes real life examples of how to use lighting to overcome key challenges that towns may face.

The slides for this presentation are also available for you to download.

Taking Account of Net Zero in your TIP

In June 2019, the UK parliament passed legislation requiring the government to reduce the UK’s net emissions of greenhouse gases to zero by 2050.

Since 2018, over 280 UK Local Authorities have declared a Climate Emergency, many of which house the 100 Towns of the Towns Fund programme. These Local Authorities, and others, will be in the process of developing plans to deliver net zero (production-based) carbon emissions by 2030 – 2050.

This guidance note seeks to:

• Provide towns with an overview of what ‘net zero’ means in the context of their Town Investment Plans.

• Offer practical guidance on how to incorporate decarbonisation into towns’ investment propositions and TIP as a whole.

An Introduction to Fire Safety

A series of major fire events in tall residential and heritage listed buildings, with high numbers of casualties, extensive damage to people’s homes and continued threat to livelihoods highlights the need for fire safety to be considered carefully at local government and national level from the outset.

Due to its specific and technical nature, fire safety is not likely at the front of your mind as you develop your projects and feasibility for your TIP. This note sets out some key considerations to assist you in embedding fire safety in your TIP and business case.

An Introduction to 5G

In a year where everyone has relied on the internet more than ever shortcomings in existing networks have been under renewed scrutiny. At the same time, anticipation for 5G has continued to grow in many industries, in the hope that this will unleash new and better ways of doing things. So, is the revolution finally here? 

This guide provides an introduction to 5G and addresses some of the key questions that we have received from towns thus far.

In addition, this blog on Why 5G may be taking longer than we thought provides some useful context as to the delivery of 5G networks.

Realising the opportunities of major rail projects

Description:

This session focused on the opportunities presented by major rail infrastructure projects such as High Speed 2, East West Rail and Northern Powerhouse Rail. Several towns in the Towns Fund will be affected by these projects, whether this be a new station, depot or railway line. This session looked at the current status of these projects in their lifecycle, and discuss opportunities and advice to get people, businesses and towns ready for these schemes when they arrive. It was also discussed what can be done now to prepare for these long-term projects and how this can be articulated in your Town Investment Plan.

About the speakers:

Richard de Cani chaired the session. Richard is a recognised senior leader of planning and Transport, with a strong track record of strategic thinking and delivery with in-depth knowledge of the transport/planning issues facing cities and city regions. He brings together a unique combination of senior client-side experience from Transport for London, with direct experience of leading many of the new transport and planning initiatives in London and the UK over the past decade.

Tom Bridges discussed ‘getting our businesses ready’. Tom leads Arup’s Cities Advisory practice, advising on town, city and regional strategies for economic development, inclusive growth, infrastructure, skills and innovation. He supports clients on funding and finance, socio-economic advice, housing growth, regeneration programmes and town and city strategies.

Peter Neckelmann focused on ‘getting our towns ready’. Peter is an Architect and Urban Designer with global experience with projects focused particularly in the UK, Europe and Asia. Peter’s projects focus on the development of resilient places that deliver positive spatial, social and economic outcomes. Much of his recent work looks at the integration of regional and national transport infrastructure and how it contributes to regeneration and meaningful placemaking.

Richard Hadfield presented on ‘getting our people ready’. Richard has 25 years’ experience in the technology sector including senior roles and consulting positions working with government departments and agencies (e.g. Department for Education, Cabinet Office, Skills Funding Agency, Medical Research Council, Ofsted, Jisc), UK Parliament, UK universities, research institutes and further education colleges. He has worked with over 30 UK universities and further education colleges in developing shared services and examining the impact of their teaching and learning and research work.

An Introduction to Housing & Homelessness

Our Housing, Homelessness and Repurposing Buildings expert Sally Caldwell, has produced this introductory guidance document. The document provides a brief introduction to housing and homelessness. It aims to:

Help you think about whether housing is a significant element of economic development for your town

Help you navigate data on housing and homelessness, including what impact these issues have on economic development and the wider community

Make the links between housing and homelessness and other aspects of economic, social and environmental impacts

An Introduction to Inclusive Environments

This pre-recorded webinar introduces the topic of Youth, Urban Childhoods and Inclusive Environments and discusses key issues around inclusive environment and engagement with children and young people. It is intended to provide an overview to the topic and to help generate ideas to consider in preparation of Town Investment Plans.

Both the video, and the presentation slides are available below.

A Guide to Financial Metrics

The purpose of this guidance note is to support the Towns to think through how different types of measures can be used to assess success for their intended outputs and outcomes.

It enables Towns to understand which measures are best suited to their needs dependent upon the interventions proposed and the context of their place. This will allow them to not only prepare a TIP which considers the preferred option(s) but allows them to consider a suite of scenarios as part of their internal thinking.

The guidance note will provide information for each key financial metric, including:

• A brief description

• ‘What good looks like’

• Opportunities for Towns to present their view on specific metrics

An Introduction to Strategy Planning

The purpose of this document is to provide an overview for towns to develop their strategy for their Town Investment Plan.

The information is intentionally presented at a high level. Please contact your Town Coordinator if you require more detailed strategy support or to request more detailed guidance or workshops in this area.

Project Prioritisation Tool

NB: This is an updated version of the previously provided tool

This Project Prioritisation Tool aims to help towns ensure that the projects put forward for further appraisal fit the Town’s objectives and MHCLG’s requirements.

The tool will help you to prioritise a long list of projects, taking you through two stages of assessment to score the projects against a set of town specific criteria, and Green Book appraisal criteria.

The recent blog posts Project Prioritisation 101 and From long list to short list provide some guidance on how to use this tool, but please do read the ‘Overview READ ME’ tab of the Excel prior to using the tool, as this provides a thorough explanation as to how the tool works.

If you have any issues accessing or using the tool, please contact your town coordinator.

An Introduction to Theory of Change

This short session will provide you with an introduction to “Theory of Change” – what it is and why it matters for your Town Investment Plan. Please find a recorded video and presentation slides below.

An Introduction to Education, Skills & Enterprise

Our Education and Skills team have provided an introductory guide, highlighting the key considerations for towns when designing projects.

The guide has been designed to help towns consider education and skills in supporting and driving forward their TIP ambitions, as well as reflect upon the intrinsic link between skills and employment, and the role of skills development in enabling learning opportunities.

Lessons Learnt from Cohort 1

Description:

In this recorded session, a panel of experts discuss key findings and outcomes from their work reviewing the Town Investment Plans submitted by the Cohort 1 towns.

About the speakers:

The panelist were all involved in reviewing Cohort 1 TIPs, and have extensive experience in their respective areas.

Tom Bridges is an experienced professional in town and city strategies, urban and regional policy and planning, transport, economic development, economic analysis, regeneration, and town and city operations.

James Gore is an experienced communicator with a strong Track record in stakeholder engagement, focusing on local, regional and national government relations. He has worked in agency and in-house roles across many industries, with a specialism in the aviation sector.

Rob Turner plays a lead role in Grant Thornton's Public Services consulting team. He brings particular expertise in the analysis of large quantitative and qualitative data, with the explicit purpose of deriving intelligent insight to inform service delivery, make the case for investment and to drive performance improvement.

Lessons Learnt from Cohort 1

Description:

Following on from the series of blog posts that we published at the start of August 2020, we hosted this webinar, where a panel of experts discussed key findings and outcomes from their work reviewing the Town Investment Plans submitted by the Cohort 1 towns.

The session covered key lessons learnt, and provided tips and recommendations for those towns currently preparing their TIPs.

About the speakers:

Our panel were all involved in reviewing Cohort 1 TIPs, and have extensive experience in their respective areas.

Tom Bridges is an experienced professional in town and city strategies, urban and regional policy and planning, transport, economic development, economic analysis, regeneration, and town and city operations.

James Gore is an experienced communicator with a strong Track record in stakeholder engagement, focusing on local, regional and national government relations. He has worked in agency and in-house roles across many industries, with a specialism in the aviation sector.

Rob Turner plays a lead role in Grant Thornton's Public Services consulting team. He brings particular expertise in the analysis of large quantitative and qualitative data, with the explicit purpose of deriving intelligent insight to inform service delivery, make the case for investment and to drive performance improvement.

Good Governance Tool

The Towns Fund provides an opportunity for transformational investment in your town and acts as a platform for future policy and development. Your Town Deal Board has an essential role to play and is responsible for producing Town Investment Plans and overseeing compliance with the Heads of Terms Agreement with the government. Therefore, it’s crucial that the board performs well.  

This tool is designed to help you get the best from your board. It’s an opportunity for you to reflect on what a high performing board looks like, plan how you can support and improve your board and identify any extra support needs you may have. 

The tool looks at the four themes which are core to good governance and high performing boards: 

• working well as a board team 

• working in the open 

• engaging with relevant partners and the community 

• making good decisions