Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Minutes of Evidence


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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