North West Centre of Excellence

About the Centre

The North West Centre of Excellence is one of nine RCEs that were set up as lead change agencies by the ODPM to support local authorities in delivering  efficiencies and service  improvements.

To enable local authorities to effect these changes, the NWCE has several, key, strategic objectives.

• Identifying, promoting and developing effective procurement structures and solutions

• Enabling effective partnerships to develop

• Creating effective structures and partnerships to deliver priorities in the national workstreams

• Effectively linking the work carried out in the region to the national efficiency projects

• Developing and delivering exemplar projects

• Promoting knowledge transfer among member authorities and organisations

• Providing frameworks for measuring benefits

The NWCE’s approach has four key elements. They are:

• Collaboration – the NWCE is uniquely placed to bring together local authorities, the wider public sector and other partners to develop shared working

• Accountable governance – the NWCE is the only change agent run by local government for local government

• Programme Management Expertise – the NWCE’s project team complements existing capacity and adds to it

• Results focussed – the NWCE concentrates on results, not reports

The North West region contains 47 local authorities, more than 80 per cent of whom are engaged in at least one collaborative project supported by the NWCE.

As well as concentrating on regional delivery of savings and improvements, the NWCE is taking the lead on the national passenger transport project. Potential savings here are likely to be around £150 million per annum.