20171013 Things to note at WMCA Board
Does anyone else feel as though they have lived twelve lives since the last Board meeting? I have genuinely just had to establish that the last one was only a month ago, that the unlined face looking back in the mirror is mine, etc. Anyway, the answers are yes and yes, and so here we are, welcoming WMCA Board back to the Birmingham City Council Chamber.
Performance Reporting
At the June Board, the many Leaders of this fair region (undoubtedly in grey suits), accepted the following purposes of the Performance Management Framework of the future:
- Inform policy, strategy and strategic interventions designed to transform/change the SEP outcomes (long-term);
- Inform programme development and investment decisions so that they contribute to the ongoing delivery of the SEP outcomes;
- Monitor the impact of WMCA activity (programmes and investments) on the outcomes;
- Enable evaluation of effectiveness of WMCA activity, and WMCA partners to redirect resources/redesign programmes as appropriate;
- Identify threats to strategic objectives and capture as strategic risks with appropriate mitigations developed;
- Capture benefits realised and use insight for continuous improvement and investment in the right outcomes.
In essence, as well as measuring progress against the SEP (Strategic Economic Plan) and any “threats” to that progress (…starts with B, ends in -xit…), the framework is intended to ensure that investments and policies are developed according to a strong evidence base, and that any evidence can be used to improve performance and practice — across the WMCA and its partners — as we go along.
Some thoughts — we had the first full report of the Performance Management Framework in July, and there is a plan to publish an annual update. All good, but there should be some serious communications around this, at different levels of detail and perspective tailored to the audiences — councillors, staff, partners, and citizens across the WMCA area. This should help people to assess what the WMCA does, who it does that with, how well it does it, and in general, what it cares about.
I have pushed Swindon’s live dashboard before as an effective way to show progress against a set of goals and priorities. In a discussion held under the Chatham House Rule (so their identity is a secret I will take to the grave), I was told that Swindon Borough Council had been genuinely nervous about the ‘go live’ of this dashboard, because it is so clear where progress is and isn’t being made. I get that. But it is worth being brave if you want citizens to get behind these goals.
The papers also include some examples of how the ‘narrative’ around each indicator is presented to various Boards, namely Apprenticeships and Youth Claimants. Apprenticeship starts are down — but it is interesting to see that the Black Country LEP area is bucking the trend, with an increase of 5.2% between 2014/15 and 2015/16 (p23 of pdf):
The increase in the Black Country is due to the targeted approach the Black Country has taken to drive new apprenticeships starts, with a focus on high value manufacturing, as part of the City Deal programme and the Skills Factory initiative. In addition, there has been significant financial investment into economic regeneration from local authorities in schemes such as Walsall Works which makes available grants for SMEs recruiting apprenticeships and other initiatives such as Sandwell Guarantee, Wolves@Work and the joint Black Country IMPACT programme which provide targeted assistance to support residents into local jobs and apprenticeships.
So, the Black Country LEP’s ability to link specific programmes, including their Growth Deal, to apprenticeship starts, has delivered — so it is good to see something like a commitment to learn from this across the other two LEP areas.
The apprenticeship starts are also broken down by sector:
So, I can see a few areas where we are headed in the wrong direction which are pertinent to our Strategic Economic Plan/regional Industrial Strategy — Arts, Media and Publishing, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies, and Health, Public Services and Care in particular. This is why it would be so useful to see this in real time — our understanding of what is working and what has an impact would be that much richer for it.
Youth claimants are included, and their proportions seem to be falling, but the ONS is encouraging caution on those figures due to the impact of the Universal Credit clusterfuck (fine, fine: rollout), which has introduced volatility to the seasonal adjustment.
West Midlands Competitive Positioning Project
Competitive Positioning. Sounds both exciting and painful. Like Twister. Anyway, this is a good initiative, on the development of the WMCA brand into something that makes it clear that we are all part of a collaborative, interrelated whole.
I have often wondered how the brand ‘family’ could be developed and used. The proposal here is function-driven, with some distinction at LEP level made for the different areas of the WMCA:
We are to expect a “detailed presentation” at Board. I am rather excited. Has anyone told our resident branding experts, the Transport Delivery Committee?
Financial Monitoring 2017/18
So, a few things to note here. Transport — the most significant area of spend — is currently in surplus, but the report states that additional ‘pressures’ are likely to change this before year end.
There are also plans to restructure some of the transport borrowing:
Approval will be sought in the mid-year Treasury Management update to change the WMCA Minimum Revenue Provision (MRP) Policy in relation to historic and future TfWM transport borrowing. If approved, this will deliver significant savings against the transport revenue budget with a total of £5.2m available in the current financial year. An update will be provided in the autumn.
Interestingly, the recently announced half-price travel for apprentices and trainees aged 18 or under is being funded out of the underspend on the child concession scheme, which did not require its assigned contingency funds. The redeployment is probably a good idea, given the declining use of buses in the region, and we will need to see whether it bears fruit (particularly taking the declining apprenticeship starts into account). This is a really good example of how looking at what is spent can give you insight into performance, strategy, etc.
Now, in the overall operating budget, here we have something that I am adding to my (weighty, thank you) “I was right!” file — here we see that the WMCA is sufficiently worried about the balance in the General Fund (currently at £2.6m, a little healthier than the rather alarming £1.8m it was in March) to have back-up arrangements for their Commonwealth Games bid contribution:
Whilst the £250,000 approved contribution to the development of the Commonwealth Games bid can currently be accommodated, there may be a requirement to provide this funding from the Investment Programme, depending upon the final outturn for the year.
This is something I have raised in Birmingham City Council’s Cabinet Committee before, so I am pleased to see that the risk is owned here.
The WMCA operating budget is currently underspent, but is heading towards overspending due to “higher than anticipated recruitment and staffing costs relating to senior WMCA posts” (one of these was approved by the Board in the last few months). However, they are confident that some delayed starts to various activities will bring this back in line, and “no further unbudgeted spend will be approved without an additional funding source identified or an existing activity being halted”.
The Mayor’s office is overspending, with both staffing and IT significantly overspending, trends that will exacerbate at year-end — weirdly (or not weirdly) the report narrative (p53), which talks about bringing the budget back in line, does not match Appendix 3 (p57), which clearly shows that the office is already over budget by 9%, and will be over budget by 32% at year end. So, not “back in line” by any working definition I have of that phrase. There is undoubtedly a decent operational case for this, but goodness knows that should be made explicit. People hate this sort of thing.
On the other hand, the Mayor’s office appears to have spent less on external advice/consultants than planned (big tick), and the Mayoral Election looks to have been £100,000 cheaper than anticipated.
Moving onto the Investment Programme, there are:
…concerns over the potential cost over-runs and funding associated with the Metro schemes to Birmingham Airport and Brierley Hill, in addition to a potential cost over-run of approximately £17m on the Wolverhampton scheme.
If you want to view the whole HS2 Connectivity Package (which the above are part of), the table is on p59 of the agenda pack. Essentially, it shows that while Wolverhampton City Council is addressing the extra costs on their city centre scheme, which mostly arose via the procurement process — the other schemes are currently overspending in a way which will not be compensated for over the lifetime of the projects. This is expected to change for the better as more detail on the projects is put into place.
So here, we have some interplay between some delayed schemes, and others that have been brought forward (e.g. Metro Edgbaston and Eastside extensions) in order to unlock other funding. There is a certain amount of inevitability to this, but it needs to be watched carefully.
As a fun aside, it looks like central Government is refusing to provide £699m of grant funding that was “assumed” at the time of the first devolution deal. I mean, that is quite a lot of money not to give us, isn’t it? I am quite aerated about this.
Independent Evaluation of Local Growth Interventions
Essentially, a Locality Evaluation Framework is being developed, by which the success of the infrastructure projects that WMCA invests into will be measured, and the timings of the ‘Gateway Reviews’ (first one in 2020) should determine which projects should have had measurable impact. It is thought that the following projects will be of relevance to the first Gateway Review:
West Midlands Common Approach to Cycling: Bikeshare
I won’t call them B****s Bikes (#pullsface), but Transport for West Midlands is setting up a Swift-integrated bikeshare scheme using the same sponsorship model, and this is to be welcomed (alongside, I hope, significant investment into cycling infrastructure). This should ensure a consistent regional approach.
They plan for between 3,000 and 9,000 bikes, with the lower figure projected to generate revenue of around £700,000 per year. The report notes that it is feasible that this would come at zero cost to either the WMCA or constituent authorities. Perhaps someone would like to sponsor it as part of involvement in the Commonwealth Games delivery and legacy, should we get that far.
