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Week in the life

A week in the life of the Head of Services - North and Central

As the Head of Services - North and Central , no week is ever the same!

My work and the work of the North Central Services Team spans Locality’s national programmes, membership support, and specialist consultancy delivery. We work with organisations of all sizes – small groups of neighbours with great ideas right up to large community anchors with £1m+ turnover.


Monday

I begin the day checking on emails, including those from the tender portals to explore whether any of them are suitable for us to bid for.

I re-read my diary for the week and prepare for the North-Central Team check in meeting. We start by going round of the staff team inviting them to flag up any new opportunities and particularly discussing any issues that they are wrestling with. I also take the opportunity to remind the team to update ours “days delivered” spreadsheet to ensure we understand where we are against the target at and remind them that the board report is due at the end of the week.

I spent the afternoon working on a business plan for Yorkshire based organisation, which is trying to raise capital and revenue funding for a vibrant arts centre. The group have made a good start but are having problems with the structure of the plan and despite being a really passionate group of people have written it in a very dry style. I tackle this issue with a carefully worded email to them.

Tuesday

I start the day with a meeting with the Communications Team about a tender to undertake some high-level community engagement work within a coastal area of Lincolnshire. The Council wants a community vision document which will demonstrate how the investment would come into the area if the community agrees. The Communications Team agree it looks like a good opportunity and they can provide support on the structure and visuals within the document. I then spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon developing an outline plan as a Gantt Chart which identifies how we can deliver it within the timescales.. I email it to colleagues and set up a meeting for next week to discuss in more detail.

I then take the opportunity towards the end of the day to read over the papers for tomorrow’s Community Shares Unit Investment Panel Meeting. This Panel considers requests for equity investment and business development grant funding from organisations (mostly Community Benefit Societies). I read all the papers last week, but new information has arrived from one of the applicants which has been asked to provide more information.

Wednesday

The morning and early afternoon are taken up by the Community Shares Panel and it’s great to see colleagues from Co-operatives UK and The Plunkett Foundation. Some really interesting applicants have com to today’s panel including a solar farm, a pub (the last pub standing in the village), and the potential acquisition of farmland by a community growing enterprise. All raised different issues including whether financial projections were accurate, whether the organisations were truly underpinned by community ownership, and particularly how safe our investment would be if we were to invest. In the end we agreed to invest in two out of three.

In the afternoon I jump on a local train and was able to go a see a member in Preston which provides support for homeless people and those in vulnerable housing circumstances. They have grown significantly in the last three years as a result of taking on property including housing. They wanted advice and are looking to commission some work to set up a subsidiary organisation. I agree to provide them with a quote and on the way back I draw up a simple proposal outlining the costs.

Thursday

An early start this morning, getting a train at 7.15 am to travel to Birmingham to meet with a Big Local area we have been working with under a programme funded by Local Trust, to support Big Local areas to develop successor organisations now their 10-year funding is coming to end. The train journey gives me the opportunity to re-read the background information and the information I have prepared to support the session.

The meeting is with a group of residents of a housing estate to the west of the city. The group are interested in establishing a new local charity that will work with local volunteers undertaking environmental improvements. I facilitate a business planning exercise with them exploring the activities they hope to undertake, the nature of the organisation they wish to establish and the explore the nature of the impact they could create.

Later in the afternoon I take advantage of being in Birmingham and go a visit the West Midlands Development Manager for an in-person supervision session. It gives me a good understanding of his workload, the new delivery opportunities he’s exploring, and how the other Midlands based staff are getting on.

I spend the train journey home writing up some of the information from the session with the big local group in the morning and starting to integrate it within a business planning template.

Every day, week, and year is different. I have loved the variety of work the role has involved, and this has increased my knowledge and skills exponentially over several years. Managing the North Central Team has been a privilege and whoever comes into the post inherits a highly skilled team, passionate about Locality’s mission.

Head of Services

Friday

I spend the morning discussing our work on Equality Diversity and Inclusion with colleagues. At Locality you have the opportunity to get involved in developing our own policy and practice, and we then support the rolling out the resulting action plan. We spend the meeting reviewing areas we still need to improve and we start to plan the next steps.

After that I attend a national Locality team meeting. We meet weekly online to check in with everyone, hear the latest updates from our national and local policy and programmes work and share good news. Like the smaller team meetings, it’s great to connect with others.

Early in the afternoon I attend the Wider Senior Management Team. We start the meeting with updates from Tony (CEO) about a meeting he had at Number 10 and an update from Ed (Policy Director) about our Lottery funded UK Connectors Project. We also review the progress against the budget and the targets in the business plan and update the risk register.

I’ve got a few bits to finish off including emailing delegates which attended my workshop at Locality’s recent Convention, which explored the symbiotic benefits of collaborative working including speakers from North Yorkshire and Manchester City Councils. I email them offering a perspective on questions that were asked which we didn’t have time to properly answer before the workshop ended.

I finish mid-afternoon as it’s been a busy week!