News Update

Week Ending 15th July 2005

Assistant Director – Beth Loudon

Beth Loudon, will be leaving her role as Assistant Director at the Centre of Excellence on the 12th August. She will be joining the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency on the 1st September to lead the Sourcing team through the roll out of the NHS Collaborative Procurement Hub national programme.

Beth has worked hard to establish the Centre of Excellence and its work plan, and she will be sorely missed. We hope you will join us in wishing her every success for the future.

Collaborative Services / Partnerships

The NWCE needs to understand the range of activities that are taking place within the region and to understand how ready authorities are for shared service delivery and partnership working.  There are a number of pieces of work that are now underway to facilitate this.  In the first instance we are looking to understand council’s views and experiences on public/public partnership working.  Peter Lightbown, Head of Customer Services at Wyre BC has agreed to lead a piece of work looking at forming partnerships and a questionnaire is attached which looks at understanding people’s readiness.  Please can you complete this questionnaire and return it directly to Peter by Friday 12th August 2005  - Plightbown@wyrebc.gov.uk.  

To access the questionnaire, please follow this link www.nwce.org.uk/Pre Partnership Questionnaire.doc

In addition to this, and as one of the actions from the first Corporate/Collaborative Services Workstream meeting we are undertaking an audit of existing collaborations in the North West.  Sarah Bellis-Jones will be contacting authorities by 25th July identifying work undertaken or services provided with other organisations and a full brief for this piece of work will be available on our website from the 18th July.  A report into the current situation will be produced by the end of September 2005 and shared with authorities.

Local Economies Workstream

Sustainability and Environmental issues were also discussed in the meeting and this was felt to be an area of great importance and needed further debate. A future event will take place to discuss the issues further and to decide whether a sub group is needed.

John Ryding and Jo Nettleton from the group have produced a briefing note on environmental and social implications of EU regulations and Jane Smith at St Helens has produced ‘An easy guide to the Small Business Friendly Concordat’. Both documents will shortly be in the Local Economies forum area.

For more information please see http://www.nwce.org.uk/ 

Best Practice in Leisure Services

Wyre Borough Council are currently undertaking some research into known 'best practice' relating to the procurement of leisure services, in particular the operation of leisure centres.

They would like to identify the latest thinking regarding the production of more performance orientated contract specifications along with models/frameworks utilised during the evaluation phase of the procurement process.

If your local authority has been through the process recently and are willing to share information could they please email the Centre – nwce@tameside.gov.uk

Collaborative sourcing of energy

The East Lancashire e-Partnership are looking to do a potential collaborative sourcing for energy (gas & electricity) across the partnership (subject to existing contracts etc.). Has your authority recently been through such a process or undertaking such work now?  If you would like to share information please contact the Centre at nwce@tameside.gov.uk