Examination of Witnesses (Questions 114
- 119)
TUESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2006
MS JULIA
BRACEWELL, MR
STEPHEN CASTLE
AND MS
JULIET WILLIAMS
Chairman: Good morning everybody. This
session is part of the Committee's on-going inquiry into preparations
for the 2012 Olympic Games. I am tempted to say that our opening
session with the Nations and Regions Group is the starter before
the main course—but the Committee does attach huge importance
to ensuring that there is a benefit of the Games throughout the
entire United Kingdom and, therefore, we do see the work of the
Nations and Regions Group as extremely important. Can I welcome
representing Scotland Julia Bracewell, from the East of England
Stephen Castle, and from the South West Juliet Williams. Perhaps
I can invite Adrian Sanders to begin.
Q114 Mr Sanders: Given the interest
this morning, I am beginning to wonder whether we ought to be
asking questions about stadium capacity later on! You talk a lot
about the working groups that are involved. I wondered how large
are each of your working groups, and what steps you have taken
in them to ensure that all relevant sectors are represented and
not just the "usual suspects"?
Mr Castle: Thank you, Chairman.
Firstly, may I thank you very much for inviting us to be here
this morning as your hors d'oeuvres. We are very pleased to carry
out that role for you. The three of us have worked together now
for around three years in the Nations and Regions Group, really
since before London was successful in the Singapore bid. We are
incredibly excited about not only the opportunity to help deliver
a fantastic Olympic Games for London but also, more importantly,
to actually drive the benefits of those Games outside of London
into the wider country. This is very much sold as a UK Games hosted
in London, and we very much believe that. A lot of the work we
have been doing is to ensure that we deliver that. Each of us
represents, I guess, different areas within nations and regions
coming from: obviously Juliet's perspective and RDA background;
my own local government background and Sport England background;
and Julia from Scotland and sportscotland background. Each of
us in terms of our own regions has slightly different structures
in terms of the way we operate. From the East of England perspective
we have a very broad church, a broad engagement, key government
agencies—the "usual suspects" as perhaps you would
describe them—but also just as importantly we have very
broad geographical representation of the various of the six counties
around the region. In each of those counties, and in our regional
group, we have a number of thematic working groups that pick up
certain areas of work. Sport is very strongly represented right
the way through our region, and indeed nationally at a nations
and regions level where some half of the nations and regions representatives
are directly involved in sport as chairs of regional sports boards.
There is also a broad range of other engagements: whether it be
tourism through VisitBritain; tourism in my case through the East
of England Tourist Board; tourism also being represented at a
county level. There is a strand of different engagements, different
involvement of different sectors depending upon the structure
and the particular level we are looking at in the organisation.
Ms Bracewell: Within Scotland
I chair the Scottish Steering Group for 2012, and obviously I
am the representative on the Nations and Regions Group. We have
a full-time secretariat in the Scottish Executive, three people
there, and one of those is our NRG coordinator who goes to the
co-ordinators' meetings. On our Steering Group we have got arts,
sports, business, tourism, volunteering, disability, sport and
the business sector represented through a range of national bodies
and national agencies. Below the Steering Group we have three
permanent subgroups: an economic and business group; a sport group;
and a culture and education group. We bring together ad hoc groups
on specific issues, for example training camps (which may come
up later) that look at specific projects. That Steering Group
is about 14 people, and the subgroups range from about five to
10 to 12; but what we have tried to do is ensure that we have
got the key influencers and the key movers and shakers that can
make things happen on those groups.
Ms Williams: The situation is
pretty similar in the South West. To give you just one example
of the way in which we are bringing the sectors and sport together:
we have somewhere in the region of 200 accredited beacon companies
in the South West, and next week there is a conference chaired
and facilitated by Sir Clive Woodward to help those companies
be creative and innovative with the way in which they actually
step-change their performance in response to the Games, in order
to make 2012 a catalyst to the way in which business performance
itself changes rather than necessarily having a direct influence.
Q115 Mr Sanders: Would you say you
have all got a strategy at this stage and have agreed a strategy?
What is your timetable for carrying that forward?
Mr Castle: Each of the regions
has just completed developing their strategy. Those strategies
are currently being reviewed by Government and by LOCOG and, depending
upon which region that is, some will have more immediate issues
around delivery. A good example, for instance, in the East of
England I addressed some 100 businesses in your Chairman's constituency
a couple of months ago because businesses in the East of England
are very interested in their engagement in the supply chain. We
have a big SME base there, particularly in the construction industry,
which really wants to engage in part of that process. In other
parts of the country that delivery phase, the timetabling of that
delivery, will be different for different elements; but each of
the regions has now submitted their initial plans through into
LOCOG for review by LOCOG, and the relevant government departments.
Ms Williams: One thing I can add
to that is that we all shared our plans at the Nations and Regions
Group meeting last week. In terms of the strategic process, what
we are trying to do is to ensure that our strategies have a real
bearing at the grass roots and on the ground. We have, for example,
looked at legacy perhaps separately from the need to take tourism
as a particular initiative. What we are trying to do is to be
sensible and appropriate with the kind of strategic processes
that we are adopting.
Ms Bracewell: Within Scotland
we are very clear that what we are trying to do is maximise the
benefits of the Olympic Games to Scotland and everything flows
from that. Looking at what we are already doing through the Scottish
Executive and through different national agencies to make sure
there is an overlap and where we can make things fit within normal
strategic objectives we can do that. We have set the vision and
set the objectives quite clearly, but for us one of the huge benefits
is actually bringing those people together, sprinkling the magic
dust of the Olympic Games over it and getting lots of cross-cutting
work done and bringing bodies together who traditionally maybe
should have worked together but have not been able to find a way
to do that in the past. The Olympics are enabling us to join up
and do that. We have a strategy for what we want to achieve; we
set objectives; we are working through that with nations and regions
obviously to work out what the overall objectives for the Nations
and Regions Group should be but within each of that there is also
an opportunity for us all to do things that we want to do ourselves
anyway.
Q116 Mr Sanders: How much of these
strategies are actually being driven by guidance through DCMS
and LOCOG, and how much is actually being driven by grassroots
interests?
Mr Castle: The strategies are
very bottom-up. Certainly in my experience in terms of pulling
that together it is a combination within East of England of the
county working groups working with the regional group. The county
groups have got their own strategies; indeed the Essex one is
being launched in two weeks' time; and in fact the East of England
one is being launched today and I am rushing back to chair that
particular session. It is very much grassroots, but at the same
time clearly it tackles issues and priorities that we have been
asked to look at by DCMS, but it is localised because every region
is different.
Ms Williams: I would very much
endorse what Stephen has said. Ours is very much from the bottom
up. The first summit that we had, which was cross-function and
cross-interest, was in March of last year, three or four months
before the bid was won, in order to start to build the kind of
interest and the buy-in to the whole process. I would say that
in every single strategic process we have put in hand it has certainly
been driven through a consultation process at the point where
it is actually going to make the greatest difference.
Ms Bracewell: We are probably
slightly different because we started with Nations and Regions
Groups. We were all involved in the consultation on the setting
of the Olympic objectives by DCMS, LOCOG and the Olympic Board.
We have looked at those Olympic objectives within Scotland to
see where they fit with what we are doing. We have obviously got
some stuff that is coming from the bottom up; but when the LOCOG
strategy was written we were given a document to fill in so we
were guided by LOCOG in the areas that were part of the Olympic
objectives anyway. Although some of the stuff is coming from the
bottom it is certainly sitting within an overall national planning
framework.
Q117 Alan Keen: Good morning. Stephen
Castle started off saying he was excited but Tim Lamb, Chief Executive
of CCPR, seemed to be just the opposite; and he said that most
local authorities seem to have an Olympic director tearing about
fighting other local authorities trying to get what they could
grab. Is there a lack of coordination? Is Tim Lamb completely
wrong, or is there some truth in what he is saying?
Mr Castle: I am surprised, from
reading his evidence, that he was not positive about it. Local
government have an interesting relationship with the Games. The
decision was taken at a fairly early stage during the bid phase
that engagement outside of London would be driven through by the
Regional Development Agencies and by the Regional Sports Boards
and that has, I think, caused some issues about the way in which
local government is now part of that process. A lot of the work
I have been doing back over the last two or three years is to
really engage local government. I am very pleased that Chris White,
who chairs the LGA's Culture, Tourism and Sport Board, has now
been appointed to the Nations and Regions Group. I have been there
representing local government, but I have also now got a colleague
from the West Midlands who is a senior Cabinet member there as
well. Local government is now being very much brought into it.
In the East of England it always was, because we saw this as very
much a local government-driven exercise, but I think in other
parts of the country that has been an issue. I am pleased now
that local government understands it has a key delivery role in
terms of delivering the benefits outside of London; and it is
putting some serious investment into it. My sense is that local
government is being wrapped closer and closer into the nations
and regions structure but some things take a little while. Some
parts of local government are very entrepreneurial; sometimes
my own authority is a little too entrepreneurial as well sometimes
they wanted to go and engage perhaps outside of the structures
that would help them to do that constructively. My experience
now is particularly of the work of the LGA. Local government is
now much more engaged and plugged into nations and regions and
I am very pleased about the appointment of Chris coming onto the
Nations and Regions Board nationally.
Q118 Alan Keen: Can you just give
an example of investment by local authorities?
Mr Castle: In Essex in this financial
year we put investment in of £250,000. We have employed an
Olympic co-ordinator, who is actually our strategic sports development
officer. We have put significant investment into supporting the
structures. We see that as a really key community leadership role.
Obviously the benefits for Essex are very real. We have a venue
actually in the county, and we are the closest county to the Games
site; so it is very much in our interest to put that investment
in. Other counties and other local authorities further away are
also investing. They have a sense across a broad range of agendas
and issues, whether it is volunteerism, whether it is culture,
whether it is education, that the Games can have an impact and
actually what they need is somebody in their organisation who
can often challenge, within their organisation, as well as going
out in a more wider community leadership role, and enable people
to understand what those benefits are. I think the critical thing
now is we are seeing that group of, if you like, representatives
at a local government level and officers, coming together, networking
particularly around the Local Government Association. I am really
pleased with the way in which the LGA, LOCOG and Nations and Regions
are now working closer together to facilitate that.
Ms Bracewell: In Scotland we have
COSLA sit on our Steering Group and then we have local authority
representatives on each of the subgroups as well and they are
obviously key to getting anything delivered. Earlier this year
when the London 2012 Road Show came to Scotland, Dumfries and
Galloway and Stirling put on huge sports festivals to coincide
with the bus arriving to really engage their local communities.
Aberdeen put on something special. In Edinburgh there was an existing
event going on, a volleyball event. The local authorities were
very involved doing that. Within Scotland clearly we have got
a national and regional facility strategy so we have got a lot
of top-level venues and training facilities coming onboard in
2009-10. Those have been driven a lot by local authorities, and
local authorities are investing in those. We would hope to be
able to use them in some shape or form around the 2012 training
camps and tester events as well.
Q119 Alan Keen: Are there any guarantees
yet from certain nations as to what they are going to do in the
regions for training camps and that sort of thing?
Ms Bracewell: For training camps
there are a number of different things happening. First of all,
LOCOG has offered each of the National Olympic Committees the
sum of about £25,000 to come and use the facilities in Britain.
That sum of money for some of the smaller countries will be fantastic.
There is a formal process whereby the top facilities in the country
will go into a brochure that is sent to National Olympic Committees
in 2008 marketing the facilities. There are a couple of things
out there I would like to hit straightaway. One of them is the
idea that National Olympic Committees will come in their droves
and in their entirety to training events. That is not going to
happen. What we are expecting is that individual teams or groups
of sports will come, but it will be very rare to sign up a National
Olympic Committee in its entirety. The experience in Australia,
which was very unique, was that some NOCs went together, but predominantly
the one that does it best is Britain. We set the standard for
training camps by taking the whole British team together. We are
not anticipating others doing that here. For us in Scotland we
have done an audit of all the facilities we would expect to be
used; we would go through the official LOCOG approach; but we
would also have informal relationships that we have already got
with international federations, with sports that we know who already
use us as training venues who would come; and when the velodrome
is built they would seek to get cycling teams. The strategy will
be working on what facilities you have got and which teams or
different countries you can bring in, and then how do you link
that into community programmes, sport development programmes,
cultural programmes and everything. LOCOG will give us the big
framework and will give us an opportunity to market at one level,
but a lot of it will also be working on our own links we have
got to maximise.
Ms Williams: Perhaps I could contribute
a couple of things. The first of which is that, particularly with
a sport like sailing for example, training camps actually have
to be within the area where the experience of the type of water
and the type of environment in which the teams are going to have
to sail is to happen. In a sense perhaps, some of the opportunities
would be limited in that case, perhaps to the south coast. Of
course, we have already got world championships and so on in the
various classes taking place year by year so, in a sense, that
whole experience is starting to build. In common with my colleagues,
we also are starting to build a list of applicants, of those who
have the right facilities to offer particular specialist services
to national teams. We have, I think, about 13 applications at
the moment and would expect about 40 perhaps going forward, but
they will all become part of the brochure that then is submitted.
In a sense we are all going through a similar kind of process
which will then create that database.
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