Regional Centre of Excellence, Yorkshire and the Humber
What is it?
Yorkshire and the Humber Centre of Excellence is one of nine regional Centres of Excellence (RCEs) in the UK.
The Centre’s role is to be the lead change agent in the region for facilitating efficiency gains. Its objectives combine those of the original National Procurement Strategy with those of the Gershon Review.
How does it work?
The Government identified nine individual work-streams in addition to the five cross-cutting work-streams in the Gershon Review, as follows:
- Individual work-streams: Adult Social Care; Children’s Services; Culture and Sport; Environmental Services; Local Transport; Non-school Education; Social Housing; Supporting People and Homelessness.
- Cross-cutting work-streams: Corporate Services; Procurement (commodity goods and services); Procurement (construction); Productive Time and Transactional Services.
These are the areas on which local authorities have been required to identify the annual 2.5% efficiency gains in returns to DGLC.
Funded by DGLC through its Challenge Fund and its Capacity Building Fund, the main roles of Yorkshire and the Humber Centre of Excellence (CoE) include:
- Co-coordinating and analysing data relating to local authority performance.
- Providing support to local authority led projects designed to achieve efficiencies.
- Developing opportunities for shared working across local authorities and the wider public sector.
- Co-coordinating support for local authorities to ensure that the efforts of a number of organisations meet the needs of the region.
What’s in it for my authority?
The Centre undertakes the following initiatives for local authorities. These initiatives:
- Offer support to local Efficiency Champions and others who are taking forward the efficiency agenda work-streams.
- Promote the development of strategies for determining priorities in the delivery of ‘front line’ services.
- Examine how to determine what are public expectations locally and how to make rational prioritisations on the basis of those expectations.
- Explore with elected members the implications of the Gershon agenda for their authorities, including ways of minimising the barriers to collaboration.
- Encourage new projects to develop efficiency gains across authorities and within authorities.
- Promote quality cross-checks.
- Help identify the capacity gaps in authorities and the means to fill those gaps.
- Help development of effective project management skills.
How do I find out more?
Contact: Tony Wiltshire, tony.wiltshire@leeds.gov.uk, tel 0113 2474483
Web: www.yhcoe.rcoe.gov.uk
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