Devon County Council Community Renewal Fund Programme

Devon County Council received £9.3 million to fund 13 projects through the Community Renewal Fund (CRF) and are now responsible for managing a large portfolio of innovative projects. The council received the largest allocation across the UK for a single area. Their projects include:

• Ability not Disability - co-designing an employment pathway
• Blue & Green Biosphere Natural Capital Accelerator (BGB)
• Devon Agri-Tech Accelerator (DATA)
• Devon Elevation Fund (DEF)
• Devon Enterprise Support Programme for Social Enterprises (DEPS)
• Devon Start and Grow
• Digital Devon
• Innovation for Youth & Community
• Promoting Innovation & Entrepreneurship
• Retrofit Skills and Business Accelerator
• Stronger Together
• The Eden Grounds
• VELOCITY: VCSE Devon

The government identified Torridge and West Devon within the Devon County Council administrative area so bids from these districts and boroughs were encouraged. Devon received 75 bids overall but through an extensive assessment process, 19 were ultimately submitted to government as Devon’s CRF shortlist.

Devon County Council took the decision to delay detailed communications about the scheme by one week to ensure that they had all documentation in place and a thorough process established. Throughout this time, they focused on clear and regular communications, sending messages about the core criteria and themes through pre-existing networks including their network of district councils and business support networks such as the Chambers of Commerce. This gave organisations time to begin planning and building consortiums.

There were around 400 organisations on the initial mailing list including key socio-economic partners. Three sets of webinars were then held at which partners were able to ask questions regarding the content of bids. Devon has always taken a proactive approach to skills and employment initiatives through their role in previous EU funding schemes, for example and members of the CRF team were in discussions around priorities with the LEP throughout.

Lessons learned from the process

Devon County Council was not as successful in the bidding process for the Levelling Up Fund (capital monies) and so has been keen to capture the lessons from both funds. The team approached the CRF as a learning process, accepting that they may not be successful in achieving any funding. The work that went into the application process was viewed as extremely worthwhile and will inform future approaches.

The monitoring process and the evaluation system that has been put in place for the CRF has allowed them to develop a strong approach as a lead authority. There is now a key set of staff and a solid process in place to be carried forward to future bidding opportunities. The council has reflected internally on lessons learned and presented them to an executive group.

Devon benefitted from having embedded partnerships with the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) and Team Devon. It is now prioritising work around joint projects, with the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) and other future growth funding streams in mind.

The CRF provided funding for projects which would otherwise not have been funded. An important lesson for future programmes is that support for smaller and unexperienced organisations to apply for funding is integral in the application stage. Their portfolio is a mixture of innovative new activity and the expansion of existing projects, engineered around their current portfolio but delivering new elements. This includes a focus on their existing digital and green skills programmes. The council also used learning from managing ERDF and ESF programmes as members of the team had prior experience of delivering such programmes.

In defining local ambition, the council considered their mixed geography and sector profile at a locality level. Exeter, for example, is a higher skilled, technology focused city which contrasts with the coastal zones and deeper rural areas which fed into their community focus and the narrative of their bid.

The council took an early decision to keep a clear division internally between appraisal and application writing to keep the teams independent from one another. It had a dedicated team of 15 officers who acted as contact points for key organisations and a smaller appraisal team that could focus on ensuring the bids were compliant. This allowed the council to be constructive in terms of project development whilst also being unbiased in evaluating the submissions against the criteria.

Devon County Council also decided to close the application call later than other councils to allow partners more time to put together good applications. In doing so the team had less time for appraisal but the appraisal team was able to score the projects on value for money and impact in addition to eligibility.

In the first stage of the assessment process, the bidding pool was reduced from 75 to 34 bids. The main reason for this reduction was the number of bids that were under the £500,000 threshold. However, although the Eden Grounds Project was the sole project under this threshold, it was considered strategically important to the county and was seen to add to the county’s national profile. From this collection of 34 bids, 29 passed the initial gateway criteria and underwent two further rounds of assessment which included an external independent team.

One key thing that could have been improved is the communication from the government, particularly in response to questions both during and after the bidding process. The government did not provide any rationale or scoring to explain why three of the submitted projects were rejected, including district and borough council led bids. Also, there was a long delay between the submission of bids and approval from government which adversely effected the chances of good project implementation. This also added pressure on partners and stakeholders to spend large sums of money in such a short space of time.

Despite the tight timeframe, all 13 projects that were granted funding have been successful in quickly moving into the delivery stage. The county council did find that the more complex projects found it more difficult to mobilise resources and get collaboration agreements signed due to a timing issue from DLUHC. Smaller organisations also can’t afford the risk of starting a project without a signed agreement. This is a consideration for future project proposals against a backdrop of a 6-month delivery timeframe. COVID-19 also caused some challenges, especially with outreach projects requiring face to face interaction. The lack of definitions of outputs/outcomes from DLUHC exacerbated issues. In particular, definition of unemployed individuals having to be unemployed for 18 months and not the typical 12 months.

Overall, the county council has reflected that projects that are related to business support and people-centred skills projects have been more straightforward to deliver due to their prior experience with ESF and ERDF. For example, there has been a natural progression from ERDF projects such as the elevation fund for higher growth and the councils pre-existing knowledge of companies that might be interested in taking part.

The council has managed the majority of the delivery process to date, with minimal involvement from Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC). In comparison, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been more interested in the initial outcomes of projects.

Under the Devon portfolio, each project is contracted to deliver their own evaluation which most had built in at the bidding stage. It is expected that this will bring forward more learning for the success of future projects. Project managers are also working with projects weekly to capture lessons learnt. Building on previous experience of the EU project team they have these sessions to function as an early warning system if there are any issues that need escalating.

Lessons learned from the delivery

Whilst delivering their projects, Devon has aimed to align skills-related projects including youth support. Match funding is coming from local funds and VCS projects are using local authority COVID-19 recovery funding to lever in additional resource. It has not been possible to align more opportunities with national funds due to the pace of delivery however, many of the projects applied for a six-month extension on their delivery without requiring any additional funding. This indicates that the forecasted project budgets were overestimated to cover the projects’ risks and could not be spent in the short implementation period.

Devon County Council has learned that throughout the delivery stage they must be reactive to requests from projects so as not to delay the delivery of outcomes. This has included six officers working on project assurance with a separate Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) and project management roles.

The agreement between Devon and DLUHC was very specific around identifying partners and defrayal of expenditure. But less specific about evidence for match. Consequently, there are certain aspects of the expectations of DLUHC which would benefit from greater clarity. For example, Devon has taken “evidence of defrayal of expenditure” to mean the same as in ERDF, that is, evidence of spend is required even down to the beneficiary. This is causing some issues where the outcomes are more based on improved business trading than detailed evidence that the grant has been spent. Consequently, some of the project deliverers are struggling to provide complete evidence of spend. Additionally, having spoken to another lead authority about these types of issues, there may be an inconsistency across other programmes in the country where the interpretation has been different.

• As Devon has recently been announced as one of the Government’s County Devolution pilot areas, the council has begun to plan a post LEP scenario, concentrating on strategic issues such as productivity, place-making and social mobility. The successful projects through CRF are supporting this approach through the core criteria and themes.
• Devon County Council felt that as the lead authority they went through an intensive process to select appropriate bids that would be viable on a local level, thus they thought that central government did not need to do a second round of assessment to review their decision.
• Resources need to be ringfenced in local government to deliver similar schemes in the future as they need experts and a high-level of resources to create and manage successful bids.
• The council often works closely with Plymouth and other surrounding areas but for the CRF they took a county-wide focus and worked with all local partners.
• Some smaller organisations were excluded from bidding due to timescales and the minimum £500,000 threshold which would have posed too much of a challenge and a risk.
• The LEP is engaging with the UKSPF however there is still uncertainty around their position while they are progressing a County Deal. In the meantime, the council is working closely with district partners to support them in their creation of local investment plans.
• Devon County Council felt that the transition from EU funding to UKSPF requires a stronger strategic focus, taking into account previous learning. There should also be less time constraints in developing proposals to be funded by the UKSPF and other funding streams. A funding commitment to a longer delivery period would ensure that public funds could be spent more strategically.