2 Managing the delivery of the programme
13. The Department's overall management of the programme
has been weak. It is yet to establish arrangements for controlling
the programme such as a budget, implementation plan, joint risk
management, appropriate financial incentives, a performance management
framework for delivery partners, public reporting on progress,
and measurable performance indicators. Of the 48 management tasks
that the National Audit Office said it would expect the Department
to undertake for the Thames Gateway, it found mechanisms and processes
in place for only 14. The Department is currently putting in place
processes to carry out 26 more. This reform of its programme management
will only be completed after the Department has spent its current
allocation of £673 million.[14]
14. The Department has allocated the £673 million
through a competitive bidding approach. Grants have been allocated
against set criteria including whether the project would be quick
to get going and thus use the funding available. Such a project
by project approach is dependent on the bids received, and assessing
projects one at a time does not allow the identification of those
projects most critical to achieving the programme's objectives.
It also caused a lack of funding certainty which reduced investor
confidence.[15]
15. The Government's vision for the Thames Gateway
has not been fully translated into targets and objectives for
the programme. The Department wants housing growth, matched by
job creation, transport infrastructure, improvements to locally
available public services, an increase in local skills, and improvements
to the physical and natural environment. But it only has targets
on house numbers, job numbers and quality of schemes as defined
by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment,
which focuses delivery on gross housing numbers and job creation.
The Department says it will prepare targets covering other areas
of the Government's aspirations after the 2007 Comprehensive Spending
Review.[16]
16. For the areas where targets exist, the Department
does not have processes for measuring the programme's progress
towards achieving them. For instance, the Department has not historically
collected data on the number of homes being built in the Thames
Gateway before 2001 and stopped collecting it after 2005. So the
Department is not able to compare house building to its historical
trend or monitor the levels going forward. The Department believes
it could collect housing numbers through the Government Offices,
but other performance indicator data are not available for the
Thames Gateway.[17]
17. The Department estimates that the total capital
spending in the region was £7 billion from 2003 and 2006
but it is unable to collect information on how this was spent
and so does not know what proportion was part of the Thames Gateway
programme. Much of the programme's investment comes through other
government departments or from the Department via other bodies
such as English Partnerships and the Regional Development Agencies.
Many projects are funded by a variety of partners that are, in
turn, ultimately funded by the Department, making it difficult
to monitor which projects are funded as a result of the programme
and which are not.[18]
18. The Department's lack of performance and expenditure
information provides little assurance that the regeneration of
the Thames Gateway as a whole is delivering value for money. The
baseline the Department established in November 2006 is a good
starting point, but better measurement processes are needed. The
current lack of consistent reporting on progress risks undermining
investor and stakeholder confidence in the programme and limits
the Department's ability to steer the programme.[19]
19. Detailed planning for the Thames Gateway is still
being drawn up at a local level. Local Authorities in the Thames
Gateway are drawing up detailed statutory local development frameworks,
which will set out specific development plans for each area of
the Thames Gateway, but these are not expected to be in place
until 2008 at the earliest. Local regeneration partnerships have
established non-statutory local regeneration frameworks which
may inform these statutory plans.[20]
20. The Department has not established an overall
implementation plan or budget for the programme. The lack of an
overall implementation plan is not unusual for large regeneration
programmes in the UK, but of particular importance to the Thames
Gateway because of the scale of the area, the number and variety
of stakeholders involved, and the amount of infrastructure investment
needed. The Department intends to publish a plan following the
Comprehensive Spending Review which was published this autumn.[21]
14 C&AG's Report, paras 2.3, 2.14, 3.14, 3.19;
Figures 7 and 10; recommendations 2, 3, 4, and 5; Appendix one
and footnote 12 Back
15
C&AG's Report, Figure 18; Qq 121-122 Back
16
Thames Gateway Interim Plan, Department for Communities
and Local Government, November 2006; C&AG's Report, Figure
7; para 2.3; Q 125 Back
17
C&AG's Report, footnote 13; Q 6 Back
18
C&AG's Report, para 3.15; Figure 2; Qq 63-64 Back
19
C&AG's Report, paras 2.3, 2.4 Back
20
C&AG's Report, paras 2.10, 2.11 Back
21
C&AG's Report, paras 2.12, 2.14; Qq 9, 114, 122, 136 Back
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