In this iconic year, local authority budgets are at an all-time low and many leisure facilities stand in desperate need of repair and investment. Councils are therefore being urged to embrace several options available through partnership working to help revitalise their leisure provision. Here we speak to local authority representatives from around the UK to discuss how they have transformed their leisure offering through effective partnership working.

Indeed, local authorities have three options available to them; they can borrow money from the exchequer at a low rate, develop lease back agreements where private companies build facilities then lease them back to the council, or councils can work more extensively with private partners. It is estimated that over half of all local authorities now outsource their leisure provision, with many partnering with private companies to increase footfall and reduce annual revenue costs.
DC Leisure, the UK’s leading leisure operator, currently manages over 100 sites on behalf of their partner local authorities. Working with 29 clients, DC Leisure has invested over £32 million in partnerships with local authorities in the last 15 years plus a further £80m developing nine new centres via the PPP and PFI structures.

Peter Kirkham, Development Director at DC Leisure explains: “By developing dynamic and responsive partnerships with local authorities, we optimise the performance of leisure facilities so that they can better serve their local community and achieve both economic and social objectives. By bringing together the right teams, possessing the necessary drive, skills and experience we have forged some very successful partnerships which continue to grow.”

Elmbridge Borough Council

DC Leisure has formed a winning partnership with Elmbridge Borough Council best illustrated by its flagship development Xcel Leisure Centre, a great example of a Public Private Partnership (PPP). This site has seen sport participation levels increase by 210% across the Borough and swimming attendances rise by a staggering 170%. The ‘iconic centre’, as described by Sport England, saves the Council in excess of £6 million over the 15 year contract.

The partnership was created in 2003 when Elmbridge Borough Council undertook a review of its leisure provision. At the time, there were three ageing facilities which were increasingly expensive and inefficient to operate. The Council decided to combine these sites into one state of the art facility using the PPP framework, allowing greater creativity and financial security for the future.

Ian Burrows, Head of Leisure and Cultural Services, at Elmbridge Borough Council, says: “DC Leisure was appointed as the preferred bidder as they demonstrated their heavy investment in the project, spreading the risk and reducing our costs. DC Leisure managed the design and build process, and now operates the facility. “Following the PPP route has enabled us to create a modern leisure complex that the community can take real pride in and will undoubtedly attract interest as a regional and international venue in years to come.”

Peter Kirkham adds: “We’re all extremely proud of this project and five years down the line, our partnership with Elmbridge Borough Council has gone from strength to strength. The Xcel Leisure Centre was awarded 87% in its last Quest accreditation assessment for excellent standards of service, management and customer care, which is testament to the dedication of the team at all levels.”

Eastleigh Borough Council

Another best practice example of partnership working is that of DC Leisure and Eastleigh Borough Council. Having worked together for over 20 years, over £6 million has been invested into the redevelopment and management of Fleming Park Leisure Centre.

The complex is now a thriving and highly sought after leisure centre, catering for the whole community, with footfall of over one million visitors per annum. The centre boasts two swimming pools; a main 25 metre facility and a smaller teaching pool, a 120 station gym and three fitness studios with over 100 workout classes. Fleming Park is also home to a wide range of diverse sports including; judo, table tennis, hockey, trampolining and gymnastics.

A successful grant application to the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) and Sport England in 2010 secured the development of Fleming Park Tennis Centre, comprising four floodlit macadam tennis courts. The centre offers a broad range of activities including; adult and junior coaching programmes, adult ‘return to sport’ classes, local leagues and other LTA competitions.
DC Leisure has launched a number of initiatives to make physical activity more accessible to disadvantaged groups, with schemes such as the GP referral scheme and a Buddy programme for people with disabilities. A ‘Passport to Leisure’ programme also caters for over 60s, students and low income earners who are interested in sporting activities but may have been discouraged in the past.

Julia Birt, Sport and Active Lifestyles Manager at Eastleigh Borough Council, says of the partnership: “In this difficult financial climate, it has never been more important to collaborate and extend partnership working. Our alliance with DC Leisure allows us to provide exceptional community sports facilities across the Borough, I believe we have raised the bar higher than many local authorities would have dreamed possible twenty years ago.”

Flintshire County Council

Sector specialists Alliance Leisure offers a design, build and capital package that enables development to be achieved without the need for capital expenditure. To date, Alliance Leisure has delivered 85 schemes with rentalised requirements, made affordable from revenue created by the new facilities. One of its schemes is the largest refurbishment project of its kind in the UK; the partnership with Flintshire County Council has created what is now widely known as North Wales’ flagship leisure centre. A three phase £6million project has transformed a once virtually derelict leisure centre into an impressive, state of the art facility that is financially robust.

Deeside Leisure Centre now comprises six 5-a-side 3G football pitches replacing the existing 11-a-side area, a health and fitness suite, new reception, café and soft play centre, which opened in two phases in August and November 2011. The final phase, the first Welsh public spa and largest indoor public Extreme Centre, opened in January 2012. In the first week alone, membership sales for the Extreme Centre hit 66% of the target for year one.

The Council had originally planned to demolish the site and start again from scratch, at a cost quoted at £18million. Instead, Alliance’s four-year framework agreement with the Council allows up to £10million to be invested in the infrastructure of the authority’s leisure portfolio. On top of the £6million ploughed into Deeside Leisure Centre, a further £2.5million was recently committed to reworking Flint Pavilion to create a tenpin bowling and indoor bowls facility with additional investment into its soft play, café and fitness provision.

Cllr Dennis Hutchinson, Executive Member for Leisure and Public Protection at Flintshire Council Council, says: “Without the support of Alliance Leisure the council would not have been able to access the funding needed to undertake anywhere near this level of leisure development. In tough economic times, when all the talk is of public sector budget cuts, partnering with a private sector company means we can still look to make facility and service improvements for the benefit of the local population.”

Julia Goddard, Alliance Leisure’s Business Development Manager adds: “We’ve been able to bring what are traditionally seen as high-end facilities to a community centre, which in many ways surpasses its private sector counterparts. By working alongside the centre for the next five years we can ensure that the big potential for revenue generation is met and that all the facilities will be used by local people, at a cost that is affordable – that is the crucial element.”

Despite the current economic climate, the case studies reviewed demonstrate that local authorities must embrace new ways of working to finance their long term leisure provision. There are undoubtedly positive and innovative solutions available through partnership working that can exceed expectations in terms of revenue projections and provide modern, exciting facilities for the local communities they serve.

One of key recommendations of the Munro Review of Child Protection: A Child centred system, published earlier this year was for local services to be freed from government targets, national IT systems and regulations, and allowed to design their own services and procedures. However, in a time of severe budgetary cuts and constraints this recommendation has unnerved some social care organisations, being construed as an expensive route to improving efficiencies. Undoubtedly, organisations will want to continue to see service improvements, and more tangible benefits in the form of cash savings and intangible benefits including improved employee performance, but they will need to fund these from a new slim line budget.

Enhancing mobile working is a cost effective way for organisations to achieve both these hard and soft benefits. With this in mind, OLM Systems, the UK’s largest independent solutions provider for children’s and adult services, has unveiled the CareMobile App Store. It delivers mobile functionality through easy to use, bite size apps, providing frontline social workers with online and offline access to case information whilst away from the office.

“In agreement with Munro’s call to free social workers of lengthy administrative burdens, Nushra Mansuri, professional officer for the British Association of Social Workers and the College of Social Work (BASW/CoSW) has echoed the frustrations of many: “ Social workers are prevented from working directly with the people who need their services and…are under extraordinary added pressure from deep funding cuts.” The pressure on organisations to be more efficient has trickled-down from management to frontline workers. However, with administrative obligations and off site travel unavoidable, little headway has been made towards improvement.

A recent ROI study for a social care department identified potential savings of over £300,000 by introducing mobile working. This included savings of 2.5 hours per social worker, per week from saved travel time, a reduction in time typing up notes, and savings on mileage claims (approximately 20 miles per week, however, rural areas can generate even greater travel savings). In the current climate, these savings cannot simply be overlooked. In addition to providing real savings, innovative mobile working technology can both increase productivity and enable social workers to spend more time with vulnerable adults, children and their families.

Crucial development

Following a successful development partner programme, including Devon County Council and Hull City Council, the CareMobile App Store is now on general availability.

The App Store runs inside the mobile device’s browser, and delivers a wide variety of social care apps to enable mobile working across the entire social care team. Functions are broken down into individual, easy to use apps, ensuring that the relevant ones are delivered to the right staff on demand. This ensures minimal user training. They are available on all platforms, including tablet, netbook and smartphone, and are fully offline functional, which means that encrypted data is cached securely on the device. This enables the user to continue working without having to worry about having an internet connection.

The App Store currently includes the following apps:
? ‘Assessments’ enables forms to be downloaded and completed whilst with a client or directly afterwards
? Existing case notes can be viewed and new ones created in ‘Observations’
? ‘Find person’ enables client records to be searched
? Via ‘Person details’ users can view person information including addresses, telephone numbers, relationships, classification and roles. Warnings are also displayed which has an important role to play for personal safety
? ‘Create person’ captures the details for a new client, whilst avoiding any duplication
? ‘Briefcase’ enables a number of client records to be downloaded in anticipation of being out of network range
? ‘Messages’ allows messages to be viewed and created while on the move
? ‘Lone worker’ provides a facility to generate SMS or email alerts either from an alarm button or a timed function

Addressing challenges

Councils want to know the savings they stand to make before committing to or implementing any new solutions, which is understandable particularly in the current economic climate. This is something we are happy to do for them, after which a pilot project can be initiated before the full roll out takes place. At each stage the benefits can be established and ROI projections calculated.

Undoubtedly, mobile working can lead to hard cash savings and the CareMobile App Store can certainly help with meeting many of the challenges associated with this objective. It also gives councils an opportunity to radically transform the way case recording administration is supported.

In areas with poor 3G access, a signal cannot always be guaranteed when visiting clients in their homes, and may be lost completely if the home is located within a block of flats. The CareMobile apps are fully offline tolerant, meaning data can still be recorded even when there is no signal.
Historically, technology has been viewed as a barrier to client interaction. Social workers had seen the twin requirements of focusing and spending time with families, whilst systematically recording their involvement, as being mutually incompatible. Nowadays slim line technology and simple to use apps have gained support from social workers as the technology is unobtrusive and the social worker can record quickly and efficiently in the front line, thus resolving this issue.

The benefits

Probably the most noted benefit amongst organisations is the cash savings made on office space, travel time and administration time.

The App Store gives frontline workers the mobility to bypass the office and go straight from home to the client; it increases their flexibility to work from anywhere. Not only does this mean that their work/life balance is improved, but it also means that they are spending less time on the road and more time with their clients. In turn, client engagement is also improved as, when appropriate, clients can see their comments being recorded as they speak thus making them feel more involved (this is most evident with older children).

Employee performance is also improved as the App Store allows them to speed up the completion of assessments, employ greater accuracy when logging information, and helps them to meet performance targets. In addition, it also increases morale amongst social workers by helping them to feel more professional and in control.

The App Store itself requires minimal user training as a simple and modern interface is provided. It is also available for multiple platform formats and can be accessed via Tablet, laptop or Slate, with the option of keyboard or handwriting recognition, and also Smartphones.

The solution, designed with simplicity at its heart, ensures frontline workers gain valuable time, have access to client records on the move and record information more accurately. Introducing innovative mobile working technology to adult social care teams will increase productivity and promote joint health and social care working. This ensures that the availability of social workers and their expertise is maximised to improve the quality of care offered.”

Caroline Cozier is the product manager with OLM Systems.

While some ministers support the controversial view that the elderly should pay for their place in a care home out of their own pockets, others argue that the state should plough more funds into residential care rather than leaving it to individuals and their families to foot the bill.

Wherever you stand in this debate, few can deny that a major re-think is needed if the care system is to stand a chance of coping with the increased pressure of a rapidly growing ageing population and ever-tighter public sector budgets.

The cross-party talks follow the findings of Andrew Dilnot’s commission, which predicted a 25 per cent rise in demand on adult social care services over the next decade.

To put this in perspective, it is estimated that by 2020, the total annual cost of care home provision in the UK will reach a staggering £15.6 billion. This is down to the fact that the number of people in care homes funded by the public is estimated to continue to increase from the current level of 227,700 to 383,500 in 2032. By comparison, the estimated cost of domiciliary care provision will be far lower at £1.2 billion with an additional £51.3 million subsidy for the provision of a ‘Meals on Wheels’ service.

In fact, the report concluded that keeping people in their own homes instead of going into care could save the UK more than £1 billion each year.

Besides the fact that most elderly people would prefer to remain in their own homes for as long as possible, with figures like these it’s hard to argue that delaying their entry into residential care has a significant role to play in reducing the pressures faced by our country’s care system.

Keeping healthy at home

Ensuring the elderly receive a balanced, nutritional diet is a key factor in maintaining the level of health needed for them to remain in their homes. After all – food is one of the best medicines! Ideal for those who have difficulty cooking for themselves, Community Meals services provide nutritious meals tailored to suit individual appetites, tastes, dietary needs and cultural preferences.

For example, apetito’s selection includes kosher meals and halal dishes, as well as an innovative range of soft and puréed meals for those with swallowing difficulties (dysphagia). Little is understood about dysphagia and it can be a real challenge to find ways to encourage sufferers eat, but the soft and puréed range is one solution that can help improve their nutritional intake and make their mealtimes more enjoyable. Every puréed dish looks just like a normal meal, while soft choices offer appetising colour combinations to help make the dishes as appetising as possible.

The argument for promoting sound nutrition

In the years between 2003-2008 alone, the number of Community Meals delivered was reduced by 35 per cent, but during the same period the cost of malnutrition to the NHS increased by 214 per cent – many believe there is a direct link between the two, supporting the argument that Community Meals has the potential to deliver significant health benefits as well as cost savings.

What is more, just as important to Meals on Wheels recipients are the emotional benefits of seeing the friendly faces of the delivery team, who are often the only point of human contact they receive on a daily basis. In fact, independent think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), recently reported that social isolation affects more than one million pensioners in the UK. The CSJ has argued that a failure to address this means that many will end up in residential care as a direct result of the detrimental impact this isolation will have on their wider health and wellbeing.

Community Meal deliveries therefore not only provide the valuable health benefits that come with a good diet and nutrition, but can also contribute to the social wellbeing of residents, as well as their safety. We know from our own experience that our drivers regularly forge genuine friendships with meal recipients and are also trained to identify and report any signs of concern they pick up on their visit so they can be addressed as quickly as possible. For those who are rarely visited by friends or relatives, these visits can act as a vital lifeline.

Reducing meals service

Despite such compelling benefits, further shocking reading came with Age UK’s recent findings that more than 80 per cent of English councils only provide free home care – including Meals on Wheels services – to those with ‘substantial’ or ‘critical’ health needs. By comparison, just 57 per cent of councils restricted care to these groups in 2005/06.

Even those that are classified as ‘low’ or ‘moderate’ may still be disabled or housebound and the less that is spent on them now means more will be spent when their needs become substantial and they are forced to enter the care system – a stage they are likely to reach far sooner with such a low level of support.

As Government cuts continue to bite and local authorities tighten their budgets, cuts to front line community services may seem logical. However, as the cross-party talks have highlighted, we cannot continue to bury our heads in the sand when it comes to the future of elderly care in this country.

Offering far more than just a meal, the Community Meals service has a valuable role to play in meeting the wider funding challenge faced by Britain’s care system, not only by helping the elderly remain in their own homes by supporting their physical wellbeing, but also their emotional health. Set against the substantial potential costs needed to support them through residential or hospital care, anything that delays this has got to be worth the investment.

With such vital services under increased threat, reforming our care system has become unavoidable and local authorities should view cuts to frontline community services as a last resort rather than a quick way to make a saving.

Leading Community Gateway Association, Greenfields Community Housing, teamed up with Nacro Braintree Community Sports Project to provide sporting opportunities for young people across the Braintree District throughout Summer 2011. The project ‘Get Sporty, Get Healthy’ aimed to alleviate anti-social behaviour and petty crime through making sport both financially and logistically accessible to young people.

The Halstead Skate Park and those aged between 11-26 were targeted for engagement as part of the project. This scheme was unique because it provided the opportunity for the young people it targeted to volunteer within the project. They were given a role of responsibility and also encouraged to share their ideas of how it could be run.
Joshua Murdy and Billy Jackson, both from Halstead and aged 18 and 20 respectively, were selected as volunteers. Both have previous involvement with petty crime, yet expressed the desire to change their lives for the better – with fantastic results.

Joshua comments: “We have been volunteering for 10 hours per week – mainly helping out organising the Street 20 cricket and the football games at the skate park. It’s actually a lot harder to control a group of young people than I realised and it was really good to experience what the Nacro guys do on a daily basis.
This project has really helped improved my confidence and allowed me to develop some essential life skills. I hope we can be good role models to the younger people in the programme and show there are opportunities to involve yourself in community life and escape the path of alcohol, drugs, anti-social behaviour and crime.”

Phil Adams, Chief Executive of Greenfields Community Housing, says: “We are committed at Greenfields to improving the lives of our residents and this kind of community project is a prime example of how we want to make a difference. It has not only fostered a good working relationship with the many young people engaged in the activities, but also provided two young residents with the opportunity to significantly improve their life chances. Billy and Joshua have both worked very hard and I would like to thank them on behalf of Greenfields for this.”

Nacro is the leading crime reduction charity – working in partnership with Greenfields Community Housing – dedicated to changing lives and creating opportunities for young people aged 10–19 years. Working within environments highlighted as areas of deprivation – where incidents of youth nuisance and petty crime are particularly high – they focus on providing a diversionary activity away from anti-social behaviour whilst improving the self esteem, self confidence, health and fitness of youngsters.

Greenfields Community Housing is a not-for-profit, Community Gateway housing association launched to give tenants and leaseholders a big influence in how their housing service is run. The organisation has approximately 8,100 homes spread over the district, which covers Braintree, Witham and Halstead and many surrounding towns and villages, as well as approximately 450 leasehold properties.

For more information on Greenfields Community Housing, please visit www.GreenfieldsCH.org.uk or call 01376 535400.

The safe storage and management of sensitive information is a high priority for the City of London Police. Not only do they employ approximately 850 police officers and 406 civilian support staff, but there are some 450 international banks based in their catchment ‘Square Mile’ area of the city.

The correct management of sensitive information should also be an operational concern for all public sector organisations, especially as the Information Commissioners Office now has increased powers to impose fines of up to £500,000 for the mismanagement of data.

As a result of lack of storage space at their headquarters, the City of London Police outsources its records management. Outsourcing is particularly necessary due to the length of time crime records are required to be retained. Content dependent, crime files must be kept for a minimum of seven years, with the most serious crime records requiring storage for 100 years. The outsourcing solution also ensures information is kept safe under the tightest security conditions, but also that this information is being managed in a way that complies with all current legislation.

Catherine Coulthard, Force Records and Museum Manager at the City of London Police, explains: “As you might imagine, we have a high volume of records to store. This ranges from crime files to personnel documents – all of which contain sensitive information. We have thousands of boxes of records stored and must have quick and easy access to these on a daily basis. Some of our team prefer the online ordering system, whilst others will phone or email.

Wincanton Records Management (WRM) was appointed in 2009 to provide outsourced records management support. Whatever method we use to access our records we get prompt delivery and have access 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. WRM’s customer service is excellent – the team updates us regularly on the status of our records and is always on hand to offer advice. All their staff are fully CRB checked so that we know exactly who has access to all our information.”

WRM operates nine sites throughout the UK. Their facilities are equipped with some of the highest standards of security and fire protection in Europe including early smoke detection (ESDA), in-aisle and in-racking sprinkler systems, secure vaults with gas suppressions and temperature and humidity controlled environments, round-the-clock security, laser beam monitored perimeter fencing, highly sophisticated intruder alarms, dual-door airlock entry, electronic access pass entry and digital motion CCTV including night time visibility.

For more information on the City of London Police click here.

For further information on Wincanton Records Management’s secure document storage solutions call 0870 90 88 000 or
click here.

BETT 2012 is the world’s largest education and technology event. Taking place from 11-14 January 2012 at London’s Olympia, BETT 2012 provides more than 30,000 visitors with direct access to the latest innovations, products and services from more than 650 of the world’s leading technology suppliers to the education market. In addition to the extensive exhibition, BETT 2012 also features a wide variety of zones, features and educational programmes to help you maximise your time at the show.

Here’s just a sample of the feature that you’ll explore at BETT 2012.

Education Leaders @ BETT

Following its successful launch at BETT 2011, the Education Leaders @ BETT Conference will again provide two days of thought-provoking discussion around the key strategic issues facing school leaders such as: curriculum and assessment change; maximising the benefits of greater autonomy; and teacher recruitment and retention.

Learn Live

The BETT seminar programme has evolved to become ‘Learn Live’; an exciting programme of more than 100 interactive, informative and enjoyable workshops, seminars, and discussion sessions. Offering an accessible, hands-on approach, the ‘Learn Live’ programme provides something for everyone with a number of streams including ICT in the Classroom, SEN and Leaders.

New Worlds of Learning

Teachers, students and schools throughout the world are learning from each other and exchanging best practices with new technology at the heart of this communication. The central feature at BETT 2012, New Worlds of Learning, will illustrate this global conversation. Led by Prof. Stephen Heppell, a group of school children will be talking to, working with and sharing best practice examples between students and teachers in other countries.

In the UK there is now a wide diversity of school organisations and governance. Each day, representatives from these different learning institutions within the UK will talk within New Worlds of Learning about their recipes for learning and the role of ICT in their particular institutions. These guests, the school children and the video-linked schools will also be the focus of a continuous broadcast stream from BETT Radio, running live on the stand.

Ray Barker, director, British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), says: “2011 has marked a potential new era for education. This has seen, and continues to see educators at all levels seeking to understand changes, challenges and maximise opportunities with the resources and budgets available. For local authorities, the changes have been marked, with a need to now ‘sell’ their services to schools. A visit to BETT 2012 will be the place to gather the knowledge required to make informed decisions and excel in the new education landscape.”

BETT 2012 is free to attend, visit www.bettshow.com/register to register. You can also keep up to date with the event’s news and developments by following the event on twitter @BETT_show or on Facebook, www.facebook.com/BETT_Show.

Old habits die hard, so don’t fight them. Instead give your staff collaboration tools they will actually use.

Back in the 60s the only technology on an employee’s desk, if they were lucky enough to have any at all, was a telephone. Things have changed dramatically since then, and today we are surrounded by an array of technology that we use for work – from PCs, mobile phones, laptops and tablets to a hodgepodge of collaboration and social tools – all designed to make us productive in the office and, now also, on-the-go.

Given such a rich tapestry of tools, why does Forrester Research report across-the-board underutilization of collaboration and social tools, with 64% of surveyed businesses receiving few benefits, if any, from their investments?

The technology adoption gap

Human nature is arguably the main factor that inhibits the adoption of new technology – people don’t like change. The reality is, when presented with an alternative way of doing something, we tend to overvalue the way we already do it while undervaluing the new option. Harvard Business School marketing professor, John Gourville, sums it up as ‘People irrationally overvalue benefits they currently possess relative to those that they don’t’. In fact, according to Gourville’s ‘what you have’ theory, a new product, service or process has to be nine times better than what a user is already using, or is doing, if it is to motivate them enough to change their behaviour or adopt a new product or technology.

Why nine times? Well, his premise is that the people peddling change will overvalue their fantastic new offering by a factor of three. In parallel, users tend to undervalue the benefits of the proposed change by a factor of three.

A second key factor impacting technology adoption is our reliance on an abundance of digital devices and stand-alone applications to get work done. Office workers switch programs some 37 times an hour, according to research reported by the New York Times. Dealing with too much information, and Alt-tabbing between too many potentially useful-but disjointed tools, is a constant mental locomotion that robs us of our ability to focus, think creatively, and generally take care of the responsibilities we were hired for. And that costs money.

So when change is called for, it is critically important to recognize common pitfalls and take steps to make sure the right technology solution gets implemented, with as little friction as possible. Here are some questions to consider:

• Is all that glitters gold? People are all too often lured into thinking they need something entirely new to solve a problem. Rather than first looking at what they have and why it isn’t being utilized, they make significant investments in a host of new technologies, creating yet another information silo for users to disregard. Jive is a perfect example. It seems it can do almost anything, with its robust feature set and top notch analytics capabilities, but social business leader Jacob Morgan questions if this is really what organizations need or want. He explains, “Many companies are just trying to hang picture frames and Jive is trying to offer the ability to tear down walls.” In his blog, Morgan postulates that perhaps 20-50% of Jive’s features are actually adopted.

• How do people do the task today? Dazzled by what the latest, greatest product or service promises it can do, many organizations neglect to think about how people would need to radically change their work habits to realise these gains. For example, an age old problem is the document development process. Business users invariably ping-pong multiple document versions back and forth, wasting time wrestling with the resultant document chaos and creating compliancy risks down the road. Web 2.0 pundits argue wikis activity streams and real time status updates will replace the “archaic” document concept. But the reality is, today, business people are creating and sharing more contracts, resumes, presentations and financial analyses than ever before. So documents won’t suddenly disappear, but they do need to become more social to be relevant in an Enterprise 2.0 world.

• Is resistance futile? Faced with the shock of new and/or unknown technologies, most people will dig in their heels rather than change. Email is an excellent case in point. If I had a dime for every eulogy written for email in the last few years, I wouldn’t be writing this article, I would be sailing on my yacht in the Bahamas. But email isn’t going anywhere soon. Rather, like documents, email will evolve.

So, how do you get users to change? Here are three things to consider that are often overlooked.

Technology

Consider how new products, or even changes to current solutions, will be used and fit within your existing parameters.

Currently, according to Forrester Research, only 20% of business workers use team document sharing sites such as Microsoft SharePoint daily. These user adoption gaps stem largely from the complex multi-step navigation required when completing tasks, not on inherent deficiencies in the product itself. Therefore, look at how incumbent products and existing working practices can be matched. For example, simplifying SharePoint tasks by bringing them into the place where people work, like email, is one way to take SharePoint and make it useful to every business user. Several products provide this type of functionality.

Training

Forrester Research estimates that, for every $1 invested in purchasing collaboration software, $6-7 will need to be spent on training and getting people to use it. Rather than try to streamline training, how about figuring out ways to obviate the need for training? The closer the solution matches the current workflow, the less training will be needed. In fact, enterprises that integrate SharePoint collaboration and social features within their email client have realized dramatic improvements in the way their workforce operates, without drastically changing what they are already doing, because their workforce adopts SharePoint en masse for collaboration.

Plan for ‘Larry in the Mailroom’

It’s important, when implementing change, that everyone in the business is considered. As it’s impractical to consult every member of the workforce, a cross section that ensures everyone in the business is represented should be consulted so that the business needs are clearly defined in real scenarios and the implications of introducing new processes and/or technology can be fully explored. User reactions will help determine how to progress, changes made, and training offered before universal implementation is conducted.

This process doesn’t just influence users to embrace change but can also have a knock on effect to other areas of the business. So when Larry, our mailroom clerk, hears about sales achieving double digit revenue growth by establishing global peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, he helps streamline deliveries by instigating a worldwide learning community. Aka social business in action.

Ultimately, technology is only worthwhile if it is embraced so plan for change even before you sign on the dotted line.

Most of the media coverage of the borders pilot immigration scheme has focused on the political battle between Theresa May and Brodie Clark. It has missed the key point that the scheme was successful in its primary objective of detecting more high-risk individuals trying to enter the country illegally from Europe.

As immigration minister, Damian Green, recently said: “The pilot was about changing the way we checked people from Europe and refusals from this group actually went up 33 per cent in this period.” He added: “We were getting regular information from [pilot scheme] management about what was happening, and it was telling us that there was… a 48 per cent increase in fraudulent documents detected and that cocaine seizures and illegal firearms seizures were up.”

Certainly, the blanket approach to border security is unwieldy in comparison with the passenger profiling used in the pilot scheme. Not only does the traditional approach result in long queues and delays at airports and other border crossing points, but it is clearly not the most efficient way of detecting illegal immigrants and other high-risk individuals. With the ongoing trend towards globalisation and escalating passenger numbers, these kinds of blanket checks are looking increasingly untenable.

Profiling Concepts

Passenger profiling offers an increasingly viable alternative to traditional security techniques. At its best, it effectively involves using intelligence, data analytics and behavioural modelling to assess the levels of potential risk individuals may pose. Many sceptics will have the public believe that passenger profiling is akin to racial profiling which is not only incorrect, but is nothing more than scaremongering by those who have not taken the time to understand the concept. Passenger profiling is about assessing risk, it employs complex algorithms and advanced risk management to evaluate whether an individual is a legitimate traveller and as such should freely pass through our borders or be subject to further scrutiny. – and rather than leading to more open borders, it can actually significantly enhance protection.

This kind of profiling is increasingly being deployed around the world – and SAS® is involved in delivering the technology that supports it. The concepts behind it are well established in a range of industry sectors, including most notably financial services and banking, where profiling is used to detect counter fraud, to decide whether an individual is a suitable candidate for a mortgage or a loan, or to assess whether a specific transaction should go through.

Utilising the same techniques, SAS is also involved in cargo profiling at borders. The Korea Customs Service (KCS) uses SAS® to implement advanced risk management with a high detection rate, improving the effective inspection of imported goods and detection of illegitimate goods.

KCS had needed to implement a fast, reliable way to spot illegal imported goods in order to replace the impractical practice of total cargo inspection. The SAS solution enables more targeted and accurate inspection of cargo leading to more efficient detection rates by resources. As a result of using SAS® KCS was able to improve the detection rate of illegal cargo by 20 per cent, and to achieve, more accurate sorting and inspection of that illegal cargo as well as faster customs clearance for normal cargo.

Driving Efficiencies

While safety and security must always be paramount, the operational efficiencies that passenger profiling supports should not be ignored. In the KCS implementation, a decrease in inspection rates and number of inspections through advanced risk management resulted in lower staffing levels. Furthermore, the number of inspections for normal cargo was significantly decreased.

As a result, these kinds of organisational efficiencies could potentially have great benefits in reducing the impact of public sector strikes like those taking place on November 30. In this context, instead of the border authorities having to rely largely on the initiative of untrained staff backfilling striking border staff, they could have the peace of mind of knowing that the technology could be accurately risk assessing passengers and would be flagging high risk suspects to stop at the border controls.

Ultimately, with more than 125 million passengers entering the country every year, introducing intelligence-led, targeted checks on higher-risk travellers through passenger profiling has to be the common sense approach.

Joanne Taylor is Director, Public Security with SAS.

In the current economic downturn, it is vital that local authorities and the UK’s construction industry support each other to develop the necessary training and skills needed for future economic growth. As the construction industry supports 8% of the UK’s GDP, it is imperative that we act now to facilitate increased understanding between these two sectors.

This becomes more significant when considering the Government’s current plans to streamline planning policy through the National Planning Policy Framework. Still open to public consultation, the draft proposal looks to empower local governments with the tools they need to energise local economies via less rigorous planning legislation. In the long term, this has the potential to boost the order books of all construction contractors.

In addition, the Government’s recent announcement which committed £470m to the completion of the Mersey Gateway Bridge, is another example of its strategy to stimulate national economic growth through regional construction initiatives.

Addressing the challenges

With this in mind, it is now imperative that we harness the Government’s construction strategy as a springboard to addressing the sector’s recruitment and skills challenges, whilst also laying the foundations for economic growth.

With one in six workers in the construction industry due to retire in the next decade, the industry is facing a retirement timebomb. An ageing workforce will take with it vital skills and knowledge. Furthermore, construction businesses in regions like the North West are still facing testing times. For example, according to our Construction Skills Network forecast, the North West is one of the hardest hit by the economic downturn, and is due to contract at an average rate of 0.6% between 2011 and 2015.

Public construction projects like the Mersey Gateway Bridge, and the proposals set out in the National Planning Policy Framework, certainly offer hope for the future in order to tackle recruitment and skills challenges. However, we must ensure that there are skills and training frameworks in place to facilitate this in order to stimulate that economic growth in local communities.

One way in which CITB-ConstructionSkills is currently adding value to the industry in this area, is through the Client Based Approach which has been established through our National Skills Academy for Construction.

The framework, predominantly aimed at Central and Local Government and the contractors and suppliers they use, aims to ensure public procurement guidelines are available to help solve the industry’s pressing recruitment challenge. It is also produced in-line with EU procurement legislation.

Help for local authorities

The Client Based Approach will help local authorities to leverage training and employment opportunities through capital work schemes. The aim is to provide a lasting skills legacy for local communities so that they have the necessary skills in place for long term growth. The activities covered by the guidance include work placements, NVQ qualifications, apprenticeships and a variety of training plans for subcontractors.

Within the guidance is good practice information on the use of an Employment and Skills Strategy and the development of an Employment and Skills Plan (ESP). This enables local authorities to carefully plan skills legacies at the outset of projects. The Client Based Approach also includes skills and training benchmarks to provide local authorities with the confidence that their employment and skills requirements are both proportionate and achievable. These benchmarks are set against a variety of contract value bands in several different areas of the construction industry. Figures for skills outcomes can be calculated for projects in the residential, education and health sectors to name a few.

The Client Based Approach is not only limited to local governments and contractors in England. ConstructionSkills Scotland recently launched an update to the guidance which was co-authored with BTO Solicitors and Trowers & Hamlins LLP. This builds on the procurement, legal and contractual issues set out in the Scottish Government Community Benefit in Procurement Report (2008).

ConstructionSkills Scotland’s Client Based Approach also coincides with the Scottish Government’s commitment to ask every company in receipt of a significant government contract to produce a training and apprenticeship plan. This links over £9bn of public procurement over the next spending period to improved training and skills development.

We very much hope that, by offering bespoke solutions to the current economic and recruitment challenges facing different parts of the UK construction industry, the Client Based Approach will be adopted as the main source of guidance for all local government construction procurement.

By fostering and dovetailing the priorities of local authorities and regional construction businesses together through the Client Based Approach, we can help to reenergise the UK economy and ensure that we have the right skills for growth, both nationally and regionally.

For more information about the Client Based Approach, visit www.cskills.org or contact: jamie.white@cskills.org
In Scotland, please contact phillip.ford@cskills.org

There’s a simple answer.
Yes, capital is readily available from numerous City funding institutions for robust development schemes, planned with extreme diligence. Most importantly, these projects must be supported by experienced and effective project delivery teams.

As a result of the Government’s spending review, local authorities need to make significant spending cuts over the next three years. Gaining internal council capital for the development of leisure facilities is becoming more challenging and so local authorities nationwide will need to explore their options, in order to attract City financial investment.

The public sector certainly has the desire and ambition to provide leisure facilities that their communities demand, but as a non-statutory service, leisure remains low priority for a number of councils.

Consider your options

To reduce subsidy and increase revenue through leisure provision, consider the following:

Option 1: Cut costs through restricted programming, staff redundancies and potentially, whole centre closures. No-one engaged in public services wants to see this.

Option 2 (certainly a more positive approach): Explore ways of increasing income. Naturally, careful use of resource will need to be a consideration but the focus should be on reducing subsidy and generating income opportunities through lateral vision and intelligent use of space.

There is little debate around the increasing difficulty to secure fiscal aid but through working in partnership with third parties, LAs will still be able to improve their local leisure provision during these financially challenging times.

Having the ‘know how’ – spend to save

Government backed organisations including LAs, educational organisations, Universities, trusts, and private management contractors (working in partnership with the public sector) that are keen to improve leisure facilities can access funding using Alliance Leisure’s contract structure which attracts investment from numerous City funding institutions.

In order to drive efficiency and sustainability, it is essential that, when looking to deliver a redevelopment or new build scheme, the LA and project management team:
• undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the existing provision,
• explore current revenue levels and opportunities,
• determine physical site constraints and opportunities,
• report on latent demand,
• analyse other private leisure facilities in the locality,
• develop concept and business plans for proposed developments (including full assessment of capital costs and profiled income projection),
• finalise (and fix) development cost, provide the capital funding and deliver the scheme.

LAs and project management teams are encouraged to engage with independent consultants to ensure a sustainable business plan.

Unique to our organisation, once the facilities are operational a partnering support service is offered to ensure all revenue opportunities are maximised. The approach is to make no charge for work; instead to take a percentage of increases in sales. Until agreed targets are achieved, the LA or leisure trust does not pay for the support service, removing all risk from the investment.

Flintshire’s a flying success

Aware of its ageing and costly facilities, the Council knew considerable redevelopment was required at Deeside Leisure Centre. Flintshire County Council was keen to create new and exciting commercial activities to attract a diverse range of local residents. But constrained by very tight budgets, how was Flintshire to progress?

“Without the support of Alliance Leisure the council would not have been able to access the funding needed to undertake anywhere near this level of leisure development,” confirms Cllr Dennis Hutchinson, Executive Member for Leisure and Public Protection of Flintshire County Council.

“In these difficult financial times, when all the talk is of public sector budget cuts, partnering with a private sector company means we can still look to make facility and service improvements for the benefit of the local population.”

Flintshire unveiled the first phase of its £10 million redevelopment project at the end of 2010; six, 5-a-side floodlit football pitches at Deeside Leisure Centre. North Wales’ flagship leisure centre now offers the local community state of the art 3G turf football pitches, catering for both adult and junior football.

A phased approach was chosen by the Council to ensure building works were in manageable packages both from a financial viewpoint but also to minimise disruption to the running of the leisure centre. Phase two, an 80-station health and fitness suite, two fitness studios, a toning salon and new changing rooms opened in August. The development of the first Welsh public sector day spa is well underway and opens its doors early 2012.

Hutchinson adds: “Gaining this financial support and expertise has allowed us to create a new sporting environment which is welcoming, inspiring and a pleasure to visit. Getting more people participating in sport and enjoying the benefits of regular physical activity will have far reaching social and health benefits for our local community. We recognise that the leisure needs of our community are diverse so we wanted to create a facility that accommodates a wide selection of needs and preferences.”

Phase three of the project is also underway with the creation of an indoor extreme sporting arena. In response to the local community’s leisure needs and sporting preferences, the location of the old ice rink will transform into:
• a climbing wall,
• a high ropes course,
• a skate park for boarding, inline skates and BMX bikes,
• a new café,
• an under 7s soft play zone
(all due for completion early 2012).

Creating revenue positive facilities

Partnership is the key to overcoming the financial pressures on LAs nationwide. Now is the time to evolve existing, underutilised leisure sites into thriving facilities that cater for the diverse leisure needs of local communities.

The redevelopment of Deeside Leisure Centre demonstrates the fantastic results that can be achieved through a City funded, robust business plan to revitalise an ageing and costly facility whilst not putting any additional burden on revenue or capital budgets.

Sarah Watts is Managing Director of Alliance Leisure. www.allianceleisure.co.uk