Duncan Flint is Internal Communications Manager at Bournemouth Borough Council.
The Local Government Challenge, which brings together ambitious officers seeking to prove themselves and local councils with problems to solve, got underway earlier this month with the first of five challenges being held in Bournemouth.
The 10 candidates who made it onto this year's shortlist will battle it out over the course of the next six months before one of them is crowned champion of the sector's prestigious talent competition.
The winner will receive a career-enhancing scholarship worth £10,000 from the Bruce Lockhart Leadership Programme, set up in memory of the late Lord Bruce-Lockhart, former Chairman of the LGA and Leader of Kent County Council.
When the 10 contestants learned that they would be heading to one of the UK's most popular seaside resorts for the first of the tasks, they might have expected to be focusing on tourism. But instead the team at Bournemouth Borough Council set them to work on one of the most pressing issues facing almost every council in the country – change.
The theme of the challenge was ‘how can we manage change effectively to ensure the delivery of high quality services to residents, visitors and local businesses during a period of significant uncertainty?'
After the usual introductions, the teams, now self-named Insight and Perspective, began their day by posing for photos on the sun-drenched steps of Bournemouth town hall.
A busy itinerary over almost 24 hours included unusual tasks such as ‘speed dating with BLT.' This involved meeting members of Bournemouth's leadership team who had been lined up in nine ‘speed dating' pairs ready to be cross examined on their views of how Bournemouth was going about tackling the issue of change. The candidates also had to get to grips with instant message blogging as well as the usual mixture of focus groups and frantic fact finding.
Looking at the itinerary, the contestants could see that meetings had been scheduled to take place in HMS Phoebe. However, far from a nautical tour of the coastal waters of Bournemouth, they found themselves working in one of the formal council meeting rooms aptly named after a ship with connections to the town.
After lunch, breakout into individual team rooms provided a welcome respite from the hectic schedule. The teams began their final push by preparing for the presentation and Q&A session – the culmination of a hard day's work.
Both teams delivered their presentations to an audience of senior officers, project managers, chief executives, councillors and LGA representatives in the formal surroundings of the council chamber. The two excellent presentations lived up to the team names and contained many innovative suggestions for tackling change.
Team Perspective's suggestions included a staff innovation fund calling for new ideas to transform services, and a local business charter which had the aim of bringing local business on the transformation journey outlined by the council.
Team Insight also focused on economic development proposing a board to tackle the development challenges of the future. They also recommended a system of new and innovative ways of commissioning through the integration of adult social care and wider health services with neighbouring local authorities.
Although both teams demonstrated that they had got to grips with the challenge, Team Insight emerged winners on the day having shown a greater degree of empathy for the challenges that face Bournemouth and in particular for the staff at the council.
The next challenge is due to take place next month – February – in Rushcliffe. The winner will be announced at the LGA Annual Conference in Manchester in July.