The survey is open until 21 January 2022.

Leicestershire county council is committed to collaborating with, and working alongside, Leicestershire Communities and this commitment is central to their Communities Approach which sets out their proposed way of working with communities over the coming years.

Key principles of this Approach are;

• Prevention – how the whole council works towards providing preventative and self-help support
• Engagement – building trusting relationships to collaboratively define and design local solutions
• Catalysts – supporting voluntary organisations and town and parish councils to provide local services and activities.

You can now take part in an online survey to give your views and help with the development of the Council’s Approach.

The survey can be accessed here.

The draft communities approach can be found here.

The  Business Gateway Growth Hub are seeking expressions of interest from small to medium sized businesses to benefit from an opportunity, fully funded by the Leicester and Leicestershire Local Enterprise Partnership.

Successful businesses will be matched with an experienced business mentor with the expertise to assist you with identifying quick and longer term wins to enable the future growth of your business. Working with your team the mentor will help your business thrive as we recover from these unprecedented times, by both building on lessons learnt and exploring innovative new solutions appropriate to you.

Spaces are limited to just 20 organisations on a first come first served basis and is open to all sectors including charities and social enterprises.

For more information and to express an interest in participating, contact their Innovation Manager Gary.Dimmock@bizgateway.org.uk

The consultation closes on 21 January 2022

The Leicestershire County Council’s proposed Strategic Plan 2022-2026, sets out their ambitions and priorities for the years ahead. It outlines what the Council want to achieve and how they intend to do it. It is based on five strategic outcomes which are aspirational. They outline the end results the Council want to see for Leicestershire.

Have your say on the draft Plan by filling in the online survey.

For paper copies of the survey or any other questions, please email policy@leics.gov.uk or call 0116 3050527.

The online survey can be accessed here.

On 17 November 2021 the charity commission published new guidance regarding a charity’s responsibility to keep everyone who comes into contact with your charity safe from harm: this includes volunteers, staff and beneficiaries.

The guidance covers:

•  Identifying and managing risks
•  Having suitable policies and practices in place
•  Carrying out necessary checks
•  Protecting your volunteers and staff
•  Handling and reporting incidents appropriately
•  Further support

The guidance can be accessed here.

We recommend that all VCSE organisations review their safeguarding policies in light of this new guidance.

If your organisation is due to file accounts with Companies House by the end of December 2021, they are recommending you use their online services where possible and allow plenty of time before your deadline.

This is because they are continuing to follow government guidance for working safely during coronavirus (COVID-19). This means it could take longer than usual to process paper documents sent by post.

Details of how to file your accounts can be found here.

Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Councils and the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG’s) for the area have launched a Joint Commissioning Strategy for Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND), following engagement earlier this year with key stakeholders.

The strategy contains a vision for joint commissioning ‘we will work together across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland to improve the outcomes for children and young people with SEND’ and a set of priorities for the focus of joint work in the coming 3 years.

These priorities focus on a range of areas including, transitions, quality, planning and health provisions.

Through a consultation survey they were able to incorporate the feedback received from young people, families and staff across Leicestershire.
This has allowed them to ensure their actions are focused on the priorities as chosen by you.

To view the outcomes of the previous consultation click here.

By having this strategy in place, they hope to have a greater and more positive impact within SEND.
This strategy will provide benefits including:

• Improved planning to meet volume and types of SEN needs for children and young people
• Effective use of funding for school places, across a range of provision
• Better information and support for parents
• Up-to-date Local offer platforms that reflect needs of young people (SEND Local Offer)
• An improved transitions experience into adult services for young people and their families
• Improved health support across educational settings

To view the strategy and the 3 year action plan click here.

By Natasha Jolob, Director, Kai-zen Change for Good CIC

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Are you wasting time and money?

A great deal of time and money is wasted on poorly designed and implemented social impact monitoring and evaluation systems. An article by Stanford Social Innovation Review sets out ten reasons to not measure impact. In fact it states that you are wasting time and money on collecting impact data unless you:

1. Use the data to help manage operations or design decisions for your services
2. Use the data for accountability – to verify that you are doing what you said you would do
3. Commit to using the data to make investments in organisational structures

If you do not do any of the above then there is no point in collecting the data!

How to do more good 

In early 2022 a new eighth Principle called ‘Being Responsive’, is being launched by the leading professional body for social value, Social Value UK. The aim of the principle is to support businesses to increase and optimise their social value/ impact. This principle is part of a suite of principles (see text box) that can be used to identify your social value using a standardised social accounting methodology called ‘Social Return on Investment’ (SROI).

 What do we mean by ‘Being Responsive’?

The Being Responsive standard involves implementing a management approach that ensures that social value is maximised, and that social value accounting is rigorous and embedded in organisational planning, decision-making and reporting.

What do we mean by optimise Social Value?

The Being Responsive principle can be seen as a quality standard to check that you are doing the most possible good and that you are transparent and accountable for the social value decisions that you make.

Many organisations complete an SROI evaluation to support their marketing and fund-raising efforts, and rarely use the results to inform business planning. This is not surprising because organisations are mostly under resourced, running around delivering restricted projects and reporting to funders. There is very little time and resource to invest in good data collection, analysis, reporting and planning following and using the good practice Social Value UK principles and standards.

But this is perhaps part of the reason that we continue to have social problems that need addressing – because we are not using good quality stakeholder data for planning and decision-making.

The Being Responsive address this problem as it involves taking action on your social impact data (and SROI evaluation) to identify where social value can be increased.

In seeking to increase social value there are three types of decisions to be made:

1. Strategic: Goal setting to increase social value
2. Tactical: Shifting outcomes & activities to increase social value
3. Operational: Making improvements to existing activities to increase social value

Decision-making involves stakeholders discussing the quality of evidence, assessing risks, making trade-offs, and considering the consequences of decisions made.

This is exciting…we are excited about this!

So watch this space, and the launch of the new standard in the New Year. Stay up to date with news from Social Value UK (https://socialvalueuk.org), join them as a member, and/ or attend their activities to ensure that you are following good practice.

As Advanced Accredited Practitioners with Social Value UK, we are also currently piloting a Business Improvement Workshop with one of our large charity clients that aims to help organisations to implement the new standard and we plan to launch this in the New Year.

In the meantime sign up for our email updates, and please do not hesitate to get in touch. We live in and are based in Leicestershire, we know the city and county well, and we work in partnership with Voluntary Action Leicestershire. We would love to discuss your business needs and support you to do more good through good quality evaluation and business planning.

 

Chris Shaw – Think Funding

You will have heard much about the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda in the past few weeks. Boris loves a good levelling up quote, and Rishi Sunak’s budget was full of references to it, including the first allocation of funding for the programme. We even have a Government Department called Levelling Up now, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, led by Michael Gove, which must mean there is something to it. So what’s it all about, and is it a new idea or, in the era of sustainability, a recycled one with a change of name?

What does ‘levelling up’ actually mean? Do we have any clues?

Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a hint in a speech in early July when he said “Imagine if we could level up – not just lengthening London’s lead around the world. But closing the gap between London and the rest of the UK’s great cities. That would increase the national GDP by tens of billions.” He also invited places to come forward with ideas about how enhanced devolution might work.

If imprecision is at the heart of the definition at the moment, this is to be expected, I suppose. As you might expect, until the Levelling Up White paper is published later this year, no one knows for sure what the government really has in mind, other than the fact it was elected on a pledge to address regional inequality and to ‘level up’ the country, so it must mean something (we hope!).

Neil O’Brien, MP for Harborough and parliamentary undersecretary of state for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is the man charged with leading the Levelling Up taskforce and building some clarity and focus into the Government’s ideas  as we approach the unveiling of the White Paper.

In a 6th October article, The Guardian gave Neil O’Brien an opportunity to define it, he said: “Levelling up isn’t about north or south, or city or town. It’s about restoring local pride.” In a more precise statement he added “The objectives of levelling up are clear. To empower local leaders and communities. To grow the private sector and raise living standards – particularly where they are lower. To spread opportunity and improve public services, particularly where they are lacking. And to restore local pride, whether that is about the way your town centre feels, keeping the streets safe or backing community life.”

Of course, think tanks everywhere have weighed in with a view. Centre for Cities [1] thinks levelling up should:

• Increase skills spending in parts of the country that trail the current national average.
• End austerity for local government to improve the day-to-day services that people across the country experience.
• Reform local government and devolve powers to give local areas more power over services and spending.
• Facilitate bus franchising across the whole country to improve services, but focus transport infrastructure predominantly in and around big cities where pressure on the network is greatest.
• Invest in struggling city centres through a City Centre Productivity Fund to make them more attractive places to do business.
• Target R&D spending in places that currently underperform but have enough existing activity to suggest that increased public spending would have greatest impact.

Meanwhile, LGIU [2] (Local Government Information Unit), says that the Government needs to address six key principles in the White Paper:

• Clarity – The White Paper has to clarify what the government means by levelling up whilst allowing flexibility for locally-targeted action and scope for local leaders to make it their own.
• Scope – New levelling up funding and other funding related to it and local growth strategies, such as the Towns and UK Shared Prosperity funds should extend beyond investing in hard infrastructure projects to social infrastructure and to measures that address inequalities in areas such as health and skills, with support for early intervention measures such as early years programmes and childcare services.
• Partnership – Local leaders have to be given the tools to be able to fully contribute as partners to the levelling up project. Levelling up needs to go hand in hand with a decentralisation of power to local and sub-national governments, based on A New Settlement for Place.
• Transparency – There has to be complete transparency – both in relation to the data and information used for making decisions and the reasons why policy and funding decisions are made.
• Flexibility – Levelling up has to be and be seen to be relevant to local places, reflecting the priorities of and differences between local authorities, their communities and partners.
• Accountability – The levelling up White Paper needs to set out clear objectives and timescales – at national and disaggregated levels so that progress can be scrutinised and outcomes measured including developing metrics for place-based wellbeing policy.

NCVO[3] has focused on the role of charities within the levelling up agenda. They suggest there are three areas where the government can take practical steps to support the third sector:

• Power and decision-making. We want to see decision-making devolved, with more power in the hands of communities and local institutions – not detached from the centre but emboldened by a new partnership settlement.
• Funding and resources. We want to see long-term funding secured through community endowments, boosted philanthropy, and more sustainable local government mechanisms and powers.
• Community, space, and participation. We want the spaces and places in our communities to be hubs for building and harnessing relationships, opportunities, and ideas.

Whatever levelling up is, is it new? It’s hard to tell. Although not entirely clear, we can begin to see elements of previous economic regeneration programmes such as the Urban Programme, which prioritised disadvantaged areas but also offered scope for some citywide activity. And, of course, the EU’s Structural Fund and Investment Funds (ESI Funds, ESIFs) are financial tools set up to implement the regional policy of the European Union which aims to reduce regional disparities in income, wealth and opportunities.

However, what is potentially new about levelling up is the prospect of further devolution, maybe the ability of local government to raise funds at a local level, or to take more decisions about how funding is spent locally.

Levelling Up really is a case of watch this space right now.

 

Chris Shaw – Think Funding Owner and Director, Embark CSR
chris@think-funding.co.uk

[1] https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/so-you-want-to-level-up/
[2] On the level: six principles to underpin the levelling up White Paper, LGIU, October 2021
[3] The levelling up agenda: developing a vision with charities and volunteers, NCVO, July 2021

Our contract to provide free support to Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) groups based in the City ended on 30th September 2021.

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If you are a City based group you can access support from Leicester City Council. Further information including contact details are available on their website here.

If you are a VCS group based in the County you are not affected by these changes, and can still access our free support via our Helpline: 0116 257 5050.

VAL continues to offer consultancy services and paid for training. If you would like to talk to us about this you can do so by contacting us here by email on: helpline@valonline.org.uk

As we are now in the midst of COP26 conference, Media Trust has produced a number of video resources as part of their Conquering Climate Comms series to help organisations engage through more meaningful communication and inspire your audience to act.

Today we are featuring their top tips for small environmental charities.

Take a look here :