Local Government Challenge 2012 – the final challenge - Liz Copeland

The Local Government Challenge, now in its third year, is designed to give staff with the drive and determination to reach the top, the opportunity to demonstrate their individual and team working skills. Open to employees in the LGA’s member authorities, contestants undertake a series of challenges in a range of council services. You can find information about all of this year’s challenges on the LGA website.

Today’s afternoon plenary session kicked off with our four very nervous 2012 finalists answering questions posed by a distinguished panel.

The session was chaired by Councillor Marianne Overton, Vice-Chair of the LGA and the panel included  Carolyn Downs, Chief Executive of the LGA, Graham Farrant, Chief Executive of Thurrock Council and Paul Knight, Local Government Challenge 2011 winner from South Cambridgeshire District Council.

Before the questioning began, Paul Knight inspired everyone with some thoughts on his year since he won the competition. He talked about the need for dynamic leadership and how he had built his small team at South Cambridgeshire this year based on three key values he learnt were important during his time working on the Local Government Challenge:

• Passion
• Creativity
• A sense of urgency

Paul ended by saying that his vision for his council is to be an ambitious organisation with ambition for its residents.

Graham Farrant, the Chief Executive at Thurrock Council, who hosted a challenge this year then took centre stage and talked about how participating in the Local Government Challenge had benefited the council.

He said that the Local Government Challenge had brought them really valuable, tangible outputs as an organisation. Not least with their partners. Many local people and organisations who got involved with the challenge had commented that “they didn’t know there were people like that in local government”. A compliment to all our contestants of course, but an amazing boost to Thurrock Council’s reputation with the people it works with on a daily basis too.

And so, to the main event, a question and answer session with our finalists:

• Edward Adams, Assistant Business Manager, Schools Personnel Service, Kent County Council
• Hannah Rees, Communications Manager, Chief Executive’s Department, Cornwall Council
• Hannah Lavender, Learning and Organisational Development Partner, Northampton Borough Council
• Jodie Harris, Principal Strategy Officer, Children’s Services, London Borough of Southwark

Q: What did you learn from participating in the Local Government Challenge?

Hannah Lavender: managing expectations – my own and those of my team.

Edward Adams: communicating and collaborating with different people/audiences via different media.

Q: What did your council gain from your participation in the Local Government Challenge?

Hannah Rees: rethinking how we communicate with different audiences – are we thinking about who we communicate with and how?

Jodie Harris: I’m newly enthused and passionate – I’ve come back with a can do attitude.

Q: Imagine you’re a Chief Executive briefing a leader, what critical issues would you bring to their attention?

Edward:

• Issues of finance and budget
• Issues of health and social care including public health coming into local government and collaboration and cooperation with health service.
• The consideration that can be given to opportunities for localism in key areas of adult social care and children’s services.
• Designing services around people and utlising new ways of communicating with them.

Jodie:

• Welfare reform and the challenges it poses to us as an authority
• Rapidly evolving technologies and how we make the most of them
• Radically transforming the way we deliver services – no more incremental change

Q: What messages would you give to staff about the current financial challenges your authority faces?

Hannah Lavender:

• How their jobs and careers will look and what that might mean to them
• The local government model will look different, but it’s not about the organisation necessarily, it’s about the strengths and skills they have and why they work for the council
• Engaging them and getting them excited about working for the public

Hannah Rees:

• This is an opportunity for upskilling, reskilling
• Authorities might be smaller and different types of organisations, but along with challenge comes something exciting
• Prepare people properly and be honest, but emphasise that the future is bright and there is opportunity

Q: What one big money saving idea do you have for your council?

Jodie Harris: Playing on our central London location, we should be joining up services within and outside boundaries. Our Total Place pilot highlighted the benefit of pooling budgets and building services from a user point of view, so we need to work in this way – smarter and more effectively.

Hannah Lavender: promoting one team approach to skills. I would use the skills across the local public and voluntary sector – community skills. (A bit like community budgets.) It would be all about using the right people no matter where they were.

Hannah Rees: joining up services, rationalising public sector assets and using more private sector partners.

Edward: utilising more self service across the council, increasing the amount of paperless actions, enabling more access to services on line and enabling people to think about working in different ways.

Q: In three words only, describe the most important skills for a local authority chief executive in 2012:

Hannah Rees: tenacity, courage and resilience
Edward Adams: passion, honesty and leadership
Jodie Harris: passionate, communicator and resilient
Hannah Lavender: resilient, relationships and empowerment

What happens next?
The winner of the Local Government Challenge can look forward to a career enhancing scholarship worth up to £10,000 from the Bruce Lockhart Leadership Programme.

As I write, our four finalists are giving their final presentation and panel interview to promote their ideas for the use of the scholarship prize.

For now, we can only wish our finalists luck. We will find out who has won tomorrow (Thursday 28 June) at the last conference session when the Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government will announce the winner and award the prize.

All conference delegates are invited to join us at the LGA stand for a drinks reception after the close of conference at 4.15pm tomorrow to celebrate the Local Government Challenge winner’s achievement.