A seminar jointly organised by the Institute for Local Governance and Council for Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR) will take place at Teikyo University, Durham, Friday 10^th July, 2015, 9.30 – 1.00.

Details of the seminar can be found here.

In 2013, construction of a major new manufacturing plant began in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, giving an immediate initial boost to the local labour market. The new train manufacturing plant will be handed over to Hitachi in September, and in the months that follow 700 new jobs will come to the area.

Hitachi’s arrival represents just one amongst many welcome journeys that Japanese companies have made to North East England, including Nissan, Nifco, Komatsu and NSK Bearings, amongst many others. These companies, alongside the supply chains they have built with UK companies, play a major role in providing an economic boost to the region.

Undoubtedly, the North East wants Japanese companies to stay here and would welcome more if they choose to come our way. But what, precisely, do we have on offer to encourage this to happen? Has the North East gone the extra mile fully to welcome such investment? But perhaps most importantly of all, what are we learning from the companies that have come to the region and how well is the region responding to the massive economic contribution they make in business terms?

This seminar looks at the contribution Japanese business has made to the enterprise culture in North East England. But the debate should not be an historical one. What we need to ask is what can be done to build stronger links with existing and new companies? The conference also aims to think about ways to increase levels of enterprising activity in the region in the localities where major new Japanese firms are operating and identify reasons why such opportunities might be grasped, missed or stifled.

This conference provides an opportunity to tackle such questions in a constructive way from many different standpoints in order to inform policy makers and industrialists in the region about the contribution of Japanese inward investment to the local economy. The conference will be opened by Professor Ray Hudson, Vice Chancellor of Durham University and will be closed by Professor Masao Imaseki, Principal of Teikyo University, Durham.

To lead the debate, a number of speakers have agreed to present their ideas and talk about their experiences.

• Phil Wilson, Member of Parliament for Sedgefield, County Durham
• David Coppock & Tasleem Baqir, North East Region, UKTI
• Simon Goon, Managing Director, Business Durham
• Kazuya Shima, Director, Japan Local Government Centre (CLAIR London)
• Andrew Stevens, Chief Researcher, Japan Local Government Centre (CLAIR London)
• Professor Tony Chapman, St Chad’s College, Durham University

The seminar will also provide an opportunity to network with industrialists in key Japanese firms in the region, including the new Hitachi plant in Newton Aycliffe.

The seminar is free to attend. Please register your attendance via: Janet Atkinson, Institute for Local Governance, Durham University janet.atkinson@durham.ac.uk. Please note that we have limited places for this seminar so allocation will be made on a first-come first-served basis.

The Institute for Local Governance is a North East Research and Knowledge Exchange Partnership established in 2009 comprising the regions Universities, Local Authorities, Police and Fire and Rescue Services. Further information about the content of the event can be obtained by contacting:-

Assets or Liabilities DCC paper (FINAL 15 May 2015)Local councils, especially in the North East, are having a tough time. Funding from central government has been cut—and there are more cuts to come—and demand for services keeps rising. As a result, they have had to find ways to keep services going by being creative and doing things differently.

Over the past three years we’ve been working closely with Durham County Council on theAssets or Liabilities DCC paper (FINAL 15 May 2015ir asset transfer programme. The council has many community buildings, such as community centres, that it has been struggling to maintain. The council felt that the only way to ensure that they have a long term future is to encourage local groups to take on full responsibility for repairs and maintenance as well as management. These groups are able to access funding that the council can’t—and they are best placed to respond to local needs. But it is asking a lot of them.

Our job has been to work with council officers and other agencies to strengthen these local groups, help them think through what asset transfer would mean, and find ways of generating more income. Actually, our role has been to serve as go-betweens, building trust between these organisations and the council.

It’s been fascinating and it’s worked well. We’ve done a report on the whole experience—that’s available here. We came to the conclusion that asset transfer has really been about relationships, not just buildings. Building confidence and capacity takes a lot of time and careful negotiation. But we got there and we are hopeful that these centres will now have a long term future as a key local resource.

Durham County Council is now developing this approach further. Local communities are being asked to take on the running of other services in order to keep them going. We are working with the council on that, and will be evaluating the process and the results over the next two years. A Briefing paper on the process can be found here: Assets or Liabilities DCC paper (FINAL 15 May 2015)

In recent decades financial pressures on local authorities (LAs) has resulted in significant changes in the ways their services are provided through, for example, contracting out services, co-production, asset transfer, volunteering and establishing new types of organisation (such as social enterprises and mutuals).

Such developments have presented internal and external organisational, cultural and operational challenges for LAs when forging new relationships between commissioner, producer, and customer/citizen. Building on evidence-based hypotheses from previous academic and action research, this project will help LAs produce new solutions to increase the impact of social policy interventions.

The new two-year project, beginning in September 2015, will work with six local authorities in North East England to do this work, including: Darlington Borough Council, Durham County Council, Gateshead Council,, Northumberland County Council, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council and Sunderland City Council.

The project, jointly funded by the ESRC and Institute for Local Governance will be undertaken by Professors John Mawson (ILG), Tony Chapman and Fred Robinson of St Chad’s College, Durham University.

The aim of the proposed programme of work is to assist LAs in navigating change in a complex political, social and economic environment which may demand fundamental change in the way that service delivery is conceptualised and effected.

To do this, LAs need to consider and embed new ‘ways of thinking’ about their working relationships with external organisations. Their ultimate purpose is to reduce the costs and improve the quality of services through new approaches to delivery whilst at the same time engaging more directly community organisations and citizens in the process.

The work will address six areas of policy and service delivery where impact can be achieved by 2019:

• Transfer of community assets (achieving impact by increasing the number and quality of asset transfers of community centres, libraries, leisure centres, etc. so maintaining the continuity of service and facility in communities).
• Commissioning and procurement (achieving impact by working with local government in designing processes which are more responsive to innovative delivery solutions thereby increasing the quality and outcomes arising from out sourcing decisions and thereby producing stronger social impact and best value for money investment in service delivery).
• Mutualisation of council services (facilitating effective approaches to mutualisation by shared knowledge and experience amongst local authority participants and access to professional advice; impact to be measured by the number and economic value of ventures established and sustained).
• Employee supported volunteering (raising awareness of the potential of ESVs for achieving community objectives in each LA; through co-production and collaborative working increasing levels and quality of ESV activity; and, exploring joint LA ventures in this domain. Impact can be measured by growth in ESV activity and proxy measures for economic value of such activity).
• Assessing the impact of interventions (making good decisions on where measures of impact assessment should be employed: increasing the quality of economic and service quality impact assessment where needed and adopting other mechanisms to make good judgements on the social value of less measurable small-scale interventions)
• Partnership working between LAs (impact to be assessed by showing where LAs have developed effective joint-working models as a result of the programme; co-produced economical shared innovation on service delivery and appraisal; where shared learning developed as a part of the programme has been implemented in practice).

The complete report and summary reports can be found here: Keeping it Simple (Summary Report) October 2014;

Professor Tony Chapman and Dr Margaret Masson, Vice Principal of St Chad’s College, met up with Dr Itsuki Kitani who is visiting Durham’s Teikyo University campus this month.   Dr Kitani, an alumni of St Chad’s College and now a lecturer in the Department of Education and Culture, is helping to build links with academics in the University’s Department of Economics which is based in central Tokyo.

Professor Chapman will be making a return visit to Tokyo and Yamagata in March to continue research on social enterprise which has been running for several years with colleagues from Tohuko and Sanno Universities. A second purpose of the trip is to explore patterns of investment in the UK from Japan and consequent return investment of British firms in Japan. This will include meetings with academics at Teikyo University and with senior officials at the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan and the UKTI team at the British Embassy in Tokyo.

A seminar for the Institute for Local Governance on inward investment of Japanese firms in North East England, which will be held at Teikyo University here in Durham in July, will be informed by the study visit together with a scoping study in North East England with local authorities, Japanese and UK businesses.

Durham University has an international reputation in many fields of study. But in one area, at least, it seems to have been hiding its light under a bushel. There are well over 50 academics and doctoral students at the University studying the situation of young people.

These researchers explore a huge range of applied issues from the evaluation of government youth engagement programmes to corporate social responsibility initiatives. There are many other pure research projects being undertaken too which can inform applied research – but only if the researchers all know each other and are aware of what they’re doing.

Policy&Practice at St Chad’s College are bringing together researchers from across the university on 12^th March to open dialogue so that people can learn from each other and also promote the impact of findings from Durham University more widely. Academics are attending from departments and schools of Applied Social Science, Health, Geography, Anthropology, Education, Psychology and the Business School.

Everyone will present a five minute snap shot of what they’ve found out that they feel other people should know. After the event, a briefing will be produced to show the range and depth of work across the institution.

There’s been tremendous speculation over the last few years about the level of demand for loans in the third sector. What is happening on the ground has been clouded, to some extent, by a current preoccupation with ‘social investment’ as opposed to borrowing in general. Government enthusiasm for social investment is reflected in its establishment of Big Society Capital in April 2012, a wholesale lender, which provides capital for financial intermediaries to allocate to TSOs. There are now many financial institutions which serve the third sector marketplace including: Charity Bank, The Keyfund, CAF Venturesome, Social Finance, amongst others.

Most analysts agree that, to date, there is more money available to lend to TSOs than there is demand to borrow. One of the most probable reasons for this, commentators have concluded, is that TSOs have not yet entered the ‘investment readiness’ zone and need information and support before they do so. Furthermore, it has been shown that amongst those TSOs that are in the investment readiness zone, including those which have been strongly supported by potential investors, the ‘conversion rate’ into loans is, as yet quite low and transaction costs for investors are likely to remain high. Recent survey research from the Northern Rock Foundation Third Sector Trends study casts new light on the level of demand for different types of

Headline findings show that only a small minority of TSOs borrow money. About 14% say that borrowing money is at least of some importance to them as an organisation. By contrast, 87% of TSOs say that grants and 67% of TSOs say that earned income is of at least some importance to them. These headline percentages mask underlying differences.

Almost 95% of the biggest TSOs state that grants are at least of some importance to them. Indeed, fewer than 5% of the three largest categories of organisations state that grants are of no importance. Earned money (by doing contracts or other forms of trading) is of more importance to TSOs the larger they become (although the percentage of the biggest TSOs is slightly lower than for large organisations). Borrowed money is regarded as a resource of at least some importance by fewer than 6% of micro TSOs, but this rises steadily to 39% of the biggest organisations.

How many TSOs have a ‘tangible’ interest in borrowing? The research shows that about 16% of TSOs have a ‘tangible interest’ in borrowing money, and that only 4% have actually borrowed money in the last two years. Having a tangible interest does not, of course, mean that TSOs will actually borrow money in future – only through future waves of the research could it be known how many TSOs translate this tangible interest into action.

When organisations of different sizes are compared is it clear that few micro and small TSOs show interest in the idea of borrowing money (ranging from 7% to 12%), but few have actually done so (fewer than 1% of mi cro and small TSOs). Organisations are progressively more likely to have a tangible interest in borrowing the larger they become: 19% of medium sized organisations have a tangible interest in borrowing rising to around 41% of the biggest TSOs. The two biggest categories of TSOs are the most likely to have borrowed in the last two years: in fact over half of the biggest organisations with a tangible interest in borrowing have actually borrowed money.

Building demand for loans is not just a question of raising awareness about the benefits of loans and getting TSOs into the investment readiness zone. But rather, it will be to ensure that a range of factors converge simultaneously.

(1) That more TSOs make a commitment to take the risks of borrowing because they identify a good business case to do so.

(2) That there is a growing commitment by government and social investors to share the relatively high transaction costs of providing loans to TSOs that are new to this kind of activity. It is also necessary to be patient when waiting for a return on investment and be realistic about the level of return.

(3) That there is a commitment by government (and the public sector bodies it funds) to: let longer-term contracts/social investment bonds to deliver public services which are sufficiently secure and have social objectives which are clearly stated, measurable and achievable.

These are demanding expectations and require a measure of culture change from all parties to recognise the pace at which new values and practices can be assimilated and be acted upon.

A fuller briefing on the findings is available here and the full report is available here.

The Northern Rock Foundation Third Sector Trends Study has published its latest report. This working paper by Professors Tony Chapman and Fred Robinson presents headline findings from the most recent round of the TSO1000 survey which has been running since 2010. The findings show that the sector is more robust than the sector itself believes to be the case. That stated, it is recognised that on a day to day basis, organisations do have to ‘struggle against the odds’ to keep going: especially so in the case of middle sized TSOs.

The future is uncertain. It is clear that the financial situation for the sector as a whole is likely to be put under considerable pressure over the next two years as pressure on public spending continues. Furthermore, in North East England and Cumbria, it is apparent that the volume of grant funding to the Third Sector will reduce to a significant extent due to the closure of the Northern Rock Foundation’s grant funding programmes in December 2014.

These pressures will not exert themselves upon all TSOs in the same way. The smallest TSOs may be the most likely to experience income stability, but they are by no means invulnerable – they need grant funding and in-kind support to keep going. They form the majority of organisations in the Third Sector and make a massive contribution to the maintenance of social wellbeing in communities of interest or place. The work of such organisations and groups may not result in the kinds of ‘transformational changes’ that government at national and local level often hope for. But they hold things together – purposefully to neglect them would be a perilous strategy.

Medium sized TSOs are often under the greatest financial pressure and tend to be the most vulnerable to change in the funding environment. Often they are not in a position successfully to bid to undertake public sector contracts individually or in partnership – and often they do not want to. Those medium sized TSOs which deliver front-line services may find it increasingly hard to fund their work – which is worrying because they may provide essential support to beneficiaries. This may be happening when the demand on their services is rising – which may partly be due to the reduction or closure of equivalent or complementary services by local authorities or other public sector bodies.

Larger TSOs are amongst the most resilient in the Third Sector. This is because they have a stronger asset base and work across larger areas. Larger TSOs tend to prepare well for future challenges and opportunities because they have the resources to do so, while medium sized organisations can struggle in this respect – further threatening their stability. But larger TSOs are not immune to pressure. As public sector organisations seek better value for money from the contracts they let, the pressure to do more for less grows. Similarly, larger TSOs can sometimes be locked out from funding opportunities if preference is given to local grass roots organisations, or when it is simply assumed that they are better resourced than is actually the case.

While the future looks uncertain, it is clear that most TSOs are adept at survival. Few organisations in the Third Sector feel that they are on a ‘knife edge’. On the contrary, there is a strong sense that many organisations are adapting quite well to the ‘new normal’. Optimism about the future is relatively high, and indeed it has become more pronounced since we started studying the sector in 2012.

The full report is available here.

A report on the continued success of the O2 Think Big programme has been published by Teléfonica Foundation. Professor Tony Chapman began the evaluation of the Think Big programme in 2010 which allows for long-term assessment of the impact of the initiative. Think Big is a long-term youth programme, established in 2010, to provide young people with opportunities to set up projects to make a difference to their own lives and to the wellbeing of their communities. The aim of the programme, from the outset, was ambitious in scope: seeking to reach 1milliion young people by 2015. The programme engages young people to make positive choices for themselves and their communities. Moreover, the programme sets out to engage with adults, through campaigns, to think differently about the positive role young people can and do play in their communities.

In the Think Big programme it is assumed that young people can work out ideas for themselves and be doubly energised by the freedom the programme gives them to lead and develop projects in their own way. That stated, O₂ employee volunteer mentors, Think Big alumni and youth partner organisations can and do help young people to build core skills including: communication, team work, creativity, project management and leadership skills. Those who support the programme may also be able to recognise that young people have different starting points in experiential terms, and that for some, relatively limited achievements or ‘small steps’ can represent ‘giant leaps’ in developmental or confidence terms.

The Think Big programme demonstrably provided young people with a safe environment within which to generate and test their ideas, take positive risks and manage problems and disappointments in the process of running their projects. This is important for young people, especially when life chances are more restricted due to economic factors that have severely limited labour market opportunities. When opportunities are limited, research evidence shows, young people are more likely to become fatalistic – to trust in luck – rather than rely on their own abilities.

The Think Big programme is effective because it helps young people to become more resilient and feel more in control of their destiny. What really makes a difference for young people, whatever their backgrounds, is the trust invested in them to make good decisions and to be responsible for allocating the money invested in their projects wisely.

As a social programme, Think Big has wider ambitions than merely to promote the personal interests of individuals. Unlike programmes which concentrate wholly on meritocratic advancement, Think Big promotes positive interactions amongst diverse groups of young people and the communities within which they live. It also widens social horizons, contributes to social cohesion and increases levels of empathy and tolerance.

Think Big achieved these objectives by involving young people from all backgrounds and with different levels of capability and confidence. And that by promoting pro-sociality and social action (in addition to the development of individuals’ personal capability and confidence) there is a strong likelihood that young people will continue to make a positive contribution to their communities specifically, and to society more widely in the future. The full report can be found here.

Professor Fred Robinson has written an overview of research findings from a recent JRF project on universities contribution to social and economic renewal at the local level for Parliaments House Magazine. In the article, he argues that a university can be a fantastic community resource. Through their educational provision, universities can promote social mobility. They have a lot of expertise and some great facilities, and also provide many local job opportunities. And as universities are often located in areas of economic and social disadvantage, they should be well placed to support poorer communities.

Universities that provide students with community placements find that both students and local groups benefit from them. Academics working with local groups find that their research is not only more realistic but also has a purpose. Universities need to be more aware of their corporate social responsibilities, and more responsive to local need. They have much to give – and also much to gain.

Universities that provide students with community placements find that both students and local groups benefit from them. Academics working with local groups find that their research is not only more realistic but also has a purpose. Universities need to be more aware of their corporate social responsibilities, and more responsive to local need. They have much to give – and also much to gain.

Published by The House Magazine 17^th October 2014. The full text can be read here.

The Institute for Local Governance held a conference on 24^th October 2014 to debate the findings from a major new report by Professors Tony Chapman and Fred Robinson on how councils can work effectively with the third sector (which includes charities, voluntary and community organisations, social enterprises and other non profit organisations with a social mission). The event, held at Teesside University’s campus in Darlington, was attended by representatives from all 12 councils in North East England, Cumbria and five councils from Yorkshire and Humber.

A panel of facilitators led discussions during the day including: Karen Bowen, Chief Executive, Cumbria Council for Voluntary Service; Gordon Elliott, Head of Partnerships and Community Engagement, Durham County Council; Fiona Ellis, Trust Manager, Millfield House Foundation and Board Member of Big Society Capital; Kirsten Francis, Principal Policy Officer, Transformation Group, Northumberland County Council; Lesley King, Head of Policy, Improvement and Engagement, Stockton Borough Council and Judy Robinson, Chief Executive, Involve Yorkshire & Humber. The conference was opened by Cath Whitehead, Deputy Chief Executive of Darlington Borough Council.

New ways of thinking about inter-sector relationships were debated at the event in order to help maximise the impact of public sector and third sector interactions. Evidence collected over several years demonstrates that most relationships between the sectors are well established, productive and relatively problem free. But within the public sector, relationships with the third sector are often thought about as being unnecessarily difficult and demanding. This often arises from the circulation of negative stories about interactions which, over time, start to give an impression that all interactions are potentially difficult. A series of discussions took place included:

• How, when and where to develop effective commissioning practices which successfully engage local third sector organisations in service design and delivery.
• How, when and where to invest in the local third sector successfully to improve sector representation, sector intelligence and develop organisational capability.
• How, when and where to invest in the third sector to develop local social growth agendas – and how best to understand (but not always necessarily measure) the impact of this investment.

The debates were then rounded up in a final panel session where practitioners and policy makers reflected on the key questions arising from discussions. A summary report is available here.