Archived decisions

Contact : Jill Lovelock Ext: 7591

Heidi Hack Ext: 7731

1. Summary

1.1. This report presents the PRC with options for developing international relations in the County Council following the Best Value Review.

2. Introduction

2.1. This report concludes the second phase of the international relations review. The review project brief was agreed by Policy and Resources Policy Review Committee 6 June 2002 as a cross-cutting review to test the effectiveness of international links and partnerships in supporting corporate objectives. This report invites members to choose an option from the five presented and on the basis of this decision an improvement plan will be developed and brought to the next meeting.

2.2. The vision for the review identified the following which are required for an excellent international relations function:

_ a vision and strategy

_ 2 way internal engagement

_ effective communications

_ willingness to listen and learn

_ monitoring and evaluation

2.3. The issues to be addressed were identified as:

_ political networks and lobbying

_ funds and projects

_ traditional links and partnerships

_ trade and investment

_ policy development and legislation

_ information dissemination

_ best practice

_ promoting Hampshire

_ staff development and retention

2.4. The current framework for the Council's international relations has developed as opportunities have arisen and has had a strong focus on European links. The main areas of activity over the past years have been:

_ political networks and partnerships - particularly those where the County Council can influence and input to the regional debate at European level. The County Council is a member of the Assembly of European Regions (AER) the Atlantic Arc Commission (AAC) of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR), POLIS and Arc Manche. The strongest bi-lateral partnership is with Basse-Normandie Region in France, while formal links with Bizkaia in Spain and New Hampshire in USA are currently dormant. There is also a range of other project related networks with cities and regions across Europe.


_ Brussels office - a partnership with Isle of Wight and West Sussex County Councils and co-located with all other representative partnerships in the South East. The partnership has two members of staff based permanently in Brussels, employed by Hampshire County Council. The main functions of the office are to promote the profile of the partners, provide advice and early notice of opportunities for influence and funding, developing contacts with Brussels based institutions and networks, and offering an office base in Brussels.


_ funded projects - individual departments have bid for and successfully delivered a wide range of projects over the years funded from a variety of external funding streams. These have been linked to mainstream priorities and services where external funds, skills and partnerships can add value to work the Council is already doing. Successful projects bring business and opportunities to involve local firms as partners. The Citizens panel saw trade and business opportunities as important reasons for international relations work.

- The County Council currently operates a mixed economy approach whereby opportunities for EU funded projects in particular are highlighted by both the County Council, through departmental leads etc and existing public/private sector partners. In order to progress bids and the projects themselves the County Council may do such work internally or contract it to an external consultant/company based upon factors such as price/experience/added value. Such arrangements have generally worked well providing the flexibility for the County Council to employ the most suitable external assistance when required.

2.5. The structures that currently support these activities are:

_ Leaders portfolio includes responsibility for regional links with Europe


_ Executive Member for Economic Development has responsibility for co-ordinating the Council's involvement in European issues


_ Members nominated as representatives to attend AER, CPMR, POLIS and Arc Manche


_ Chief Executive's Policy Unit manages the Brussels office, supports Members at political networks and partnerships, provides advice and support on request to departments and co-ordinates European activities as appropriate


_ each department has a nominated European contact who acts as the main channel of communication with the Policy Unit and within the department.

There are no dedicated officer posts that are full time European/international officers apart from the two posts based in Brussels, who work for the partnership and not exclusively for Hampshire County Council.

2.6 The Policy Unit manages a budget of £99,600. This covers corporate activities including the Brussels Office, subscriptions to AER & CPMR, Policy Unit support for Members attending AER & CPMR & the annual meeting of the Accord with Basse-Normandie.

2.7 The team has collected information on resources (staff and revenue) devoted to international relations work across the authority and numbers and costs of overseas trips. The results indicate:-

- lack of consistency across the departments in how information is collected and in practices such as staff taking leave to travel.

- Overall a very small proportion of resources is devoted to IR work.

- A significant proportion of travel costs funded by projects

- Overseas travel is a small proportion of overall departmental travel budgets.

Any corporate vision or framework resulting from the review needs to put this information in perspective. While it is valuable to have a sense of the scale of the current level of activity and to have some consistency across the authority, it is more important to ensure that resources and travel support agreed priorities and add value to mainstream activity.

3. Progress in phase two

3.1. Consultation events have been held throughout the review. They included an EFQM exercise, a focus group workshop and a Challenge Event. Attendees included key stakeholders, businesses, Councillors, staff involved in European work throughout the organisation, consultants, other local authorities and partners. Summaries of each event are available in Appendix 1-3.

3.2. The four C's (challenge, compare, consult and compete) were approached through a series of information gathering and analysis exercises. Following the scoping work and internal audit undertaken by the group to establish the current picture of international relations work, three questionnaires were devised and sent out to various groups of stakeholders. For the consult category questionnaires were sent to businesses, Councillors, district authorities and an internal staff audit. For the compare category they were sent to other County Councils in the South East and unitary authorities in Hampshire, and for compete (see Appendix 5), to consultants. The information from the answers received fed directly into the consultation events and a summary of results is available at Appendix 4. Additional consultation was also carried out through the Citizens panel (Appendix 6) .

3.3. The key results from the comparisons with other local authorities in the South East (Kent, Buckinghamshire, West Sussex, Portsmouth, and Southampton) who replied to the questionnaire indicate that, in common with Hampshire:-

· Buckinghamshire, West Sussex, Kent and Portsmouth have formal partnerships with other local authorities

· All responding authorities have formal overseas partnerships

· West Sussex, Kent and Portsmouth have partnership links with private companies.

In contrast with Hampshire, responses showed:-

· Buckinghamshire, West Sussex, Kent and Southampton have a formal corporate policy on International Relations.

· Buckinghamshire, Portsmouth and Southampton use some sort of performance indicator system.

Further details are shown in Appendix 4 but there are no national benchmarks to compare with. Examples of good practice from neighbouring authorities in the South East can be followed up in developing an improvement plan at the next stage.

3.4 West Sussex have provided more detailed comparative financial information. The corporate European team have an operational budget of £75,000 which covers their contribution to the Brussels office, staff travel, support for the Airports Regional Conference and partnership links. This compares with the Policy Unit budget referred to in paragraph 2.6.

3.5 The devolved strategies were considered by a sub group brainstorming the impacts and potential issues raised by equalities, e-government, sustainable development and crime and disorder in the context of the international relations best value review. Several interesting ideas and issues were raised which were brought back to the main group and included in the consideration of the options. A summary of the consideration of the devolved strategies is available in Appendix 7.

4. Summary of findings

4.1. The output from the above review activities have been analysed against the focus areas identified in the visioning exercise (listed in paragraph 2.2) and are presented in the matrix at Appendix 8. The main findings from this are:

_ perceived lack of strategy/clarity of objectives/monitoring/target setting and lack of inter-departmental consistency

_ flexibility versus common approach - avoid stifling creativity


_ strong external support for HCC having a role but this role needs to be clearly defined


_ lack of awareness of benefits to residents (other than money) and poor perception of benefits by the media


_ multi layering/targeting of information to different audiences


_ making best use of existing resources other than money


_ support for Brussels office and European Officers Group - the support and expertise and partnership opportunities they provide.

5. Identified review options

5.1. Option One : no change

This option would continue the framework set out above in paragraphs 2.4 and 2.5 , so would have no resource implications. This method and level of working has served the Council well for many years. It is relatively low cost, but has generated significant benefits in terms of external funding, successful projects which have contributed to mainstream Council services and profile for the County Council. It offers flexibility, the chance to innovate and to respond to new opportunities as they arise.

However, the review has identified the need and the potential for improvements. The visioning exercise suggested that an excellent service would have:

_ vision

_ good communication, internally and externally

_ monitoring and evaluation to benefit from what is successful


and these themes have come up regularly through the review. Currently there is no consistent practice across the authority, no framework or rationale for deciding what new activities to undertake and no systematic sharing of expertise and learning from experience.

5.2. Option Two - develop current service in house

The review has identified a number of weaknesses in our international relations work, and these are summarised in the information analysis at appendix 8. All the stages of the review have confirmed the key themes we need to improve, so there is no argument that we need to make improvements. The Challenge Day confirmed not only that this work is important and worthwhile, but that there is a key role for the local authority to play. Comparisons with other local authorities in the South East showed most have a strategic vision/framework and many had systems of PI's to measure success. Dealing with identified weaknesses need not increase the resource input, but make better use of the features that have been positively identified as strengths - such as the Brussels office, the international profile through Member representation on European networks and the network of departmental contacts. If we can work towards the "vision" of an excellent service, the outcome should be a joined up service, working to agreed priorities, with a clear basis for deciding what opportunities to take up or decline, identification of benefits and clear communication of these benefits internally and externally.

This option, however, could be seen as purely a bureaucratic response to the review, and not a radical way forward, despite the benefits it would bring.

5.3. Option Three - increase scale of resources with dedicated team

The basis for this option is that it is possible to speculate to accumulate. If more resources were devoted to international links, the benefits could exceed the additional input. The benefits could be in terms of funding or more intangible in terms of profile at the local, regional, national and international level. The current staffing resource could be expanded to a dedicated, full time team, either based centrally or devolved to departments. Operating within an agreed framework, and to objectives and targets, this would ensure a more pro-active approach to participating in international activities, influencing the debate, for example, on the future of the European Structural funds, and would contribute an international dimension to the achievement of mainstream corporate aims and policies. It would provide staff development opportunities, which have been identified through internal consultation, as a key benefit in engaging in international links.

Against this, it is not possible to guarantee additional income by increasing resources, nor is it easy to assess the benefits from profile and influence. This would not be seen as a priority for resources, particularly in the current climate. The Challenge Day suggested that the County Council does not always have to take the lead role.

5.4. Option 4 - outsource service

This option would involve putting some or all of the service out to external providers. The competition exercise as part of the review indicated that there are providers who would be interested in parts of the service but there is no one who could provide all of it or would want to, and the Challenge Day suggested that partners should be more involved. The advantage of using other providers and maybe a range of providers, is that specialist expertise can be brought in as and when needed, providing best value. This gives the ability to respond to peaks of demand or to take on specialist one-off tasks. It would bring new ideas and ways of working into the authority and may open up new opportunities.

The disadvantages are that splitting the service between a number of external providers could lead to inconsistency, lack of clarity as to where responsibility lies, need for more central input to commission providers and the need for more resource to co-ordinate providers and identify how the service should split between internal and external providers. There is the potential for conflict of interest if the provider is another local authority or works for other authorities. The Council would lose some areas of its own internal expertise and the staff development opportunities would reduce. The Challenge Day clearly saw a key role for the County Council because of its leadership role, political perspective and broad overview. This is not available by outsourcing.

5.5. Option 5 - stop service

Finally, it is an option to stop all international links. It is not a statutory service, so the Council could decide to stop. This would save money, release resources for other priorities, and would be a radical outcome for a best value review.

However, this would mean the Council loses access to funding opportunities and to influencing policy. We would be letting down our partners, and there would be some initial costs to buy out of some partnership activities. In terms of the Council's European activities, the European Union is a part of national life and affects local services, so there must be an understanding of this and the ability to respond and at least reflect European directives in service provision and planning.

6. Conclusion

6.1. The team has identified the above 5 options based on the review outcomes which are set out in the various appendices attached to this report.

6.2. The review team and the evidence throughout the review suggests that Options 1 and 5 are not practical. Options 2, 3 and 4 are not mutually exclusive and advantages from each of them could be selected.

Recommendation

That the Best Value review team develops an improvement plan based on options 2 and 3. This will identify how the current service can be enhanced within existing resources under option 2 and will demonstrate what additional improvements could be achieved with increased resource input under option 3.

List of Appendices for Options Report for IR BV review.

Appendix 1: EFQM summary

Appendix 2: Focus Group summary

Appendix 3: Challenge Day Headlines

Appendix 4: Analysis of questionnaires

Appendix 5: Potential Competitors Table.

Appendix 6: Citizens panel headlines

Appendix 7: Devolved strategies analysis

Appendix 8: Analysis of review evidence matrix

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background papers

The following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB the list excludes:

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

File Location

Records of the International Relations Best Value review team meetings and working papers of the Best Value Review are held by the Review Team Leader and are available to members of staff on the shared drive.