The future options for England's National Parks

It is disappointing to read the solutions offered by the English National Parks to the challenges set out in both the CSR and DEFRA’s subsequent settlement. Rather than look at reengineering their businesses they are simply salami slicing the whole. A job here, opening hours there, charges at this place and run this with volunteers (we hope).

There appears to be no long hard look at the whole business, the back office, options for shared services etc. I understand that a small special purpose local authority would not want to join forces with neighbouring leviathans of unitary authorities, especially as they spent the best part of 40 years getting away from them. As the much smaller partner in any shared service they would have to play entirely by big boys rules but they could get together and look at share services across English NPAs.

Modern business systems mean that they could share a whole raft of services whilst still retaining local delivery and governance,

There are 10 National Park Authorities in England. That means there are 10 HR departments, 10 Finance departments, 10 IT departments, 10 Fleet Managers, 10 procurement systems, 10 PR and communications teams, 10 commercial, information and retail departments

In the search for delivered value business has moved to shared services, group together with similar organisations to buy services, use outsourcing to get better value, use group buying all the time. Quality, value, whole life cost and price are all very important. Even the outsourcers outsource!

As “National” parks it might seam sensible to some share some “national” arrangements that could and would deliver significant benefits and efficiencies.

If resources are well provided and procured through share national arrangements these can then be government, directed and delivered locally, in local colours, for local beneficiaries.

This is all made more frustrating by one Chief Executive stating that despite the changes being made business would continue as usual and there would be no variance in the services provided. Everybody wants to hear this but very few will believe it. At best this Park Boss looks naive.

The changes that The Coalition have made will have a profound effect across all of English society. In areas such as National Parks, nature conservation, landscape protection and outdoor recreation the impact will be profound. As with all government policy change, the key to success is to embrace it and get ahead. The history books are littered with the corpses of local authorities and their residents who tried to buck central government. The old urban metropolitan authorities such as the socialist republic of South Yorkshire fell to the reformation of Thatcher and the shire counties lost out to the zeal of Blair.

National Park Authorities are an interesting group of special purpose local authorities. Created with an in-built tension between a National title and almost entirely local governance they have struggled to deliver on their implied promise from day one. That promise is mixed up with our collective values about the brand National Park. Its one of those ubiquitous global names like the Coke, The Pope and Al Qaeda! When we plan to visit a National Park we expect to find beauty, space, recreation, clean air, clean water, full car parks, other visitors, somewhere to stay, to eat, to spend. We also find a couple of other things in UK parks that we may not find in other countries; working landscapes and living communities.

These spaces are governed by two sets of local political governance. The normal county, district or unitary authorities that individually will not cover the whole geographic park but will provide the usual services of education, highways, social welfare, housing leisure, etc. These traditional authorities are complemented by the National Park Authority. A single issues, special purpose authority responsible only for protecting the special characteristics of the park as described by their own enabling legislation.

The Parks are all small, in public body terms, around 200 people with a budget of £10 -15 Million. They compete with each other, The National Trust and the normal local authorities for air space in the locality. They cooperate with all the above and others on specific projects and in their own little ponds they are big fish. The issue they now face is now do small special purpose public bodies continue to do the good work they have a hard won reputation for, when they are not core government business and have limited ability to respond to customer needs.

The Big Society agenda is not really a help, as The Parks have been using the BS approach for as long as I have known them. Their undoubted success in delivering projects through partnerships stands as a long term case study of how having little but big ambitions can achieve massive results in the public sector.

The issue today is about representation and spanning the geographical and intellectual divides that keep these powerhouse’s of local innovation in check. Delivering the goods on a local level has not protected their resource base. The Parks attempts at banding together have been worthy but not successful. ENPAA the English Parks joint advocacy body does good work but in the same small pond that The Parks occupy. The NGO sector will value what they do, as will DEFRA, when it suits them but they have not demonstrated any real understanding of how the game has changed or the modern delivery systems that are available.

It is time for the English National Parks to look at the solutions that are out there to join together and reduce the cost of support functions, which I turn will keep the customer focused elements available to meet the needs of the visitors, residents and business of the 10 great landscapes of England.

The future is complex as well as complicated. The thinking that is needed to work through the options will needed to be both deep and diverse. The solutions will be disruptive. Business cannot be as usual. All that I have learnt in the last six moths convinces me that The Coalition are very committed to significant change in how the UK goes about its daily life. The big players in this, large local authorities, central government, the NDPB’s are all grabbing the reality with both hands and making it work as best they can.

The small guys and that’s the National parks are still looking a bit dazed and hoping they can stay under the radar (its worked in the past). This time its probably a high risk strategy if all that embodied innovation is not to be lost. Defence, especially long term defence is exhausting, its better to use the your energy to be creative, build wider alliances and move forward.

The future is bright if change is your business.

Radio 4 in the Fog

Just a quick thought on electric cars and noise. I am listening to a great podcast “An aside with Joe” on Sidepodcast.com. Joe Seward, a brilliantly well informed F1 journo, has been discussing a possible electric car race in Paris in 2010 and talked about the need to add sound effects to electric cars as people do not see them and get knocked over. All very funny idea but its true.

A week or so ago I took the dog out for an early evening walk. Its dark and foggy and we were wandering through our unlit village to be met by one of the strangest sights of my life.

Drifting through the fog were 2 bright lights and Radio 4. A very strange and mysterious UFO for rural Wiltshire. The truth was that this was a Prius on battery power. Not a sound other than the radio, no visual warning as the fog hid the car behind the lights.

So I feel noise is a good thing. Nominations please. I reckon Lakme by Delibes would be brilliant. The sound of that coming through the fog would have spooked both me and the dog.

SNOW WOW !

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How slow I have been to realise how often I am wrong!

I am very slow to get things. It’s a me thing, not a dad thing. In the last few months have learnt a few really important lessons. I am wrong about lots of things (not everything) and I am finding anybody who cannot admit that about themselves very, very annoying. So what? You say.

I have spent most of my working life in the public sector. Mostly having fun and trying to do my bit to get it to work better. To have a focus on leading the way, serving the customer, user, tax payer, what ever the appropriate label is at the time. Making a difference, helping people to enjoy their lives, get more out of what’s on their doorstep, feel and be part of a community, etc. All the apple pie stuff. Pretty much without exception I thought I was in the right place doing the right thing.

Over the last eight years the lack of the public sectors ability to change and actually DO all the above has frustrated me and on occasions made me very cross. Sorry if I was ever unreasonably cross at you, it wasn’t personal but it does happen.

There are lots of perfectly reasonable people in the public sector, many work very hard doing some pretty difficult jobs, most of which we wouldn’t want done by anybody else. That means you have to really want to be a social worker because you will never be well paid or celebrated, that’s just the way it is. The same applies to the basic back office paper pusher that make civil society function. Planners are celebrated by those who hate wind farms when they stop them and reviled by those who see the need at the same time. It’s a tough job and I doubt if there is a planner in the world who has not been on the end of a political lobby over almost every decision they make.

Its no fun, its not right but it is the cost of having some sort of functioning local democracy. We must never ignore it and always try to improve it.

For every hard working person here are 20 in employment “alpha state”, on auto pilot just getting to the end of the day to go and live the rest of their lives. Is that bad, no, there are even more flipping burgers and stacking shelves, driving vans, picking mail order items in a vast shed or answering the phone in an anonymous box, both in some middle earth, peri-urban ghost land.

What’s my point? Simple climate change, sustainable communities, real social justice will not be delivered by the public sector. As government department manger said recently “I head up sustainable procurement and I have 3 staff to help me. On the other side of the office is the sustainable policy team, there 40 of them. In government we can right policy but only you, the private sector, can deliver it”

So governments of all shapes and sizes, national, international and I hope local are in Copenhagen. There are a few reps from industry but not enough. It is those in the private sector who make, sell and sustain all things that we use that will solve all the above. We as consumers will influence them, as will regulators. Am I getting old or has the frequency of that word use in the lexicon increased in the last 20 years? But it will be possible to be in business and not change for at least anther 20 years. Probably not big business and defiantly not if you are a government contractor (the will be lots more of those as we search for even greater efficiencies) but there are many small and medium size enterprises across the northern hemisphere who have a poor safety record after 50 years of trying to kill fewer people at work.

I an amazing conversation this morning where we agreed that 30 years ago the cost of 15 deaths on a major construction project was an above he item. Today even talking about it over coffee would have serious career limiting effects in most companies.

Sustainability is not there yet but it is within reach. For me 2010 has to be less think and less blog and lots more DO. If you are looking for a new years resolution forget going to he gym or loosing weight, accept the fact that the collect of parts in the shed will never become the 1968 Triumph Bonneville or boat-tail Alfa spider of your dreams. Instead decide to do lots of little things, tidy out the shed, switch of the light, take the train, walk, ride the bike you found at the back of the shed (it just needs the tyres pumping up). For me its to get my business to put the same time and thought into environmental action as we do into safety. We believe in zero harm to people, mostly staff but anyone else we come across, mostly at work but we like people to come to office with all there fingers, no back injury, from 2010 we need to believe in zero environmental harm. Not only must we believe and practice 360 degree zero harm but so must our contractors.

That’s a big DO, should keep me out of trouble for a while.

Lessons learnt in 2009.

· I am wrong, so often its fun, so are you, admit it, its very empowering.

· Business will get us out of the hole we are in not government. Big or small they are better talkers than actors.

· Go hug a social worker, they won’t that you and they may prosecute you but why not try.

· Gotta Do not think.

What have you learnt?

Copenhagen, Dicky Drax, The Carbon Army, Life and Boris. A busy weekend.

So Obama is going to the end of the Copenhagen not the beginning, or is the beginning and the end? Not sure but what’s your view of the best time to be at a meeting. I always recon its all the way through if it important. I am not that familiar with the way these COP’s work but I suspect there are endless meetings inside meetings, at the side of meetings and over the top of meetings. Heaven help anybody you actually attends as they could end in the wrong place. I am sure that is what happened to “W” at the talks he attended. The bar is always a big draw. Incidentally has George W Bush created his own super élite club for those who are universally recognised, not just by there Christian names, but by just one letter?

I got in a black cab this week and asked for City Hall, the cabbie asked

“Which one?”

“Boris’s house.”

“Right you are”

10 minutes latter we were at the right place. Opps I used a cab not public transport, sorry but I was late and it was raining. Life just gets in the way some times.

That is my point, it was in the last blog and it will be until someone gets the message. Sadly the first serious Politian to actually talk realistically about incentivising people to change has been the man Cameron. The Greens, who you would have thought might have been leaders in this matter are stubbornly sticking to their fascist big stick approach of legislation and regulation.

Today the Tories were trying to convince anyone listening that the best way was to hand over predicted savings to householders once an energy saving installation was commissioned rather than leave us to benefit from the savings in our time. I can see lots of people signing up to that but the opportunity for fraud is enormous. Credibility is vital in this sort of thing, the leaked e-mails from UEA have dented the scientific consensus, hopefully a flesh wound and not fatal.

Back to my point if we are to see the much need change take place in our day to day life we need to make it easy and better still fun. Climate change is fun as fun! That should put the Daily Mail, Telegraph and Lord Lawson on the back foot.

On the much loved subject of the ranting Daily Fail can I point you all to http://tinyurl.com/yaaexgf for a very un-Fail outing of Cameron Uber De-Toff, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax. If there was ever a made up name (badly) that has to be it, but its real!!!. The overwhelming image in my mind is of a sinister, drunken highwayman plotting world domination or the mugging of Horace Walpole, from a hi-tech lair buried in a volcano. Or have I been watching to many movies.

Dicky Drax to his mates, which include “just call me Dave”, appears to be a former Guardsmen and BBC Journo who now occupies himself looking after his Dorset Estate.

He is the PPC for Dorset South which according to the Fail is an ultra marginal and he is shoe in. Dorset South is the constituency of Employment Minister Jim Knight who increased his majority from a super thin 153 to a more comfortable 1,812. Helped in some part by the Pm launching the election in Weymouth and some very hard working election staff who really did get the vote out.

Jim has done a fantastic job for Dorset as well as serving as a minister for most of the past 4 years. I doubt very much if Drax will be able to do any better. South Dorset stick to the man you know with one the best records in the Commons. Stick with Jim.

Moving on the sounder ground can I point you all to The Carbon Army. BTCV are running 3,000 days of positive carbon action. Go to http://www2.btcv.org.uk/display/carbonarmy_signup and sign up. It’s probable the best thing you will do that doesn’t need any carbon. BTCV is very close to my heart as above all they deliver in their promises to change peoples lives. If only more promisers could claim that.

I have spent a hour this evening in the company of the BBC’s Life offering in HD. If anything convinces the viewer that we live in an amazing world it’s the sight of 250,000 spider crabs marching to the reef where they will sped their shells and grow a new one. Its an annual migration that is reminiscent of the H.G Wells’s tripods in War of the Worlds as they march across the floor of the pacific and then, after new shells have grown, they march back through a battlefield of discarded bodies and legs. Almost Spartan in its pathos.

To return to our opening hero president Obama for a fleeting final thought. The best party conversations are always in the kitchens so head for the food prep area, behave like a gown up, emboldened by some cheap Chardonnay and promise the earth.

Change, how it can be easy.

The ability to change is in all of us but how do we flick the “change” switch ? Is it just carrot and stick or is there some other way?

I have just had one of those typical business experiences where a huge amount of travelling is done for a short face to face meeting, that in this case was not entirely successful. I went all the way to Inverness for discussions with a supplier to try a resolve an outstanding issue. After less than two hours my colleagues and were on our way back, some progress made but no one very happy.

It’s the travel element of this and my attitude to travel that is exercising me at present. I went by train for the majority of the journey, a bit of car sharing at the other end to link station to office and very short trip in my very small Yaris too my very local station at this end. So I am feeling very smug on that front.

A bit of advanced planning and clever booking on the lovely internet meant the whole thing was done first class for less than the standard flight costs . The first class bit is important, not because I am, but because it enabled me to work for much of the journey.

My view of train travel has changed, I have always enjoyed travelling by train or at least said I did but for some reason I have usually opted to fly or drive. Odd!, yes, why? not sure, something about the ease of booking, some residual glamour that is still attached to flying and a travel desk that does flights but not railways. So why change? Experience and ease.

Somewhere else I have mentioned that if we do want people to change their way of living it has to be easy and sold as easy or worth it. I think trains have got there and now I am an evangelist. In the car journey back to the station we were discussing why, as a business, we did very little train travel and a lot of flying. One of our number trotted out the usual ease, simplicity and cost arguments. I have heard these, and in some cases used them, many times before. But since my trip to The Hague on a train and the amount of work that I did during the journey, I am converted. The great thing about a train journeys, especially long (4 hours plus) ones, is the peace, quiet and therefore concentration that is available. The benefit of the first class option is that even on my return leg, on Friday night from Edinburgh to London, when the rest of the train was packed and the guard constantly reminding people sit in their reserved seats or they would have to stand for the whole journey, the first class cars were busy but civilised and most people were working. All of this for £98.50. There was free WiFi, coffee and tea passing every twenty minutes, at seat service for food etc. The tables are big enough for 4 laptops to be in use at once and there is mains power to keep things going etc. This is better than my office on most days. Very little disturbance, and an atmosphere that encourages one to work. Or is that just me.

Any other form of domestic business travel is madness compared to the reliable, affordable, convenient train service.

My meeting may not have been anywhere near as productive as I had wanted it to be but the journey there and back certainly was.

Book in advance, use the business tools on offer from the train and station operators Lounges, WiFi, tea and coffee, showers etc and access this by travelling with a first class ticket.

If all this was available to the standard class passenger, particularly the peace, quiet and space then I would do that as a preference. On many European trains this is possible, as it is on Eurostar.

Total travel cost of Tisbury to Inverness by train were:

28 miles from office to station claimed at 10p/mile £2.80

Parking Tisbury station: £2.50

Tisbury – Waterloo (first class) £16.00

Tube Fare £1.60

Sleeper Euston – Inverness (first class) £136.00

Collected by colleagues and car share to meeting and then back to Edinburgh

Edinburgh – Kings Cross (first class) £98.50

Tube Fare £1.60

Waterloo – Tisbury (first class) £25.20

5 miles home claimed at 10p per mile £0.50

Total £284.60

Compared too:

38 miles to Southampton Airport £3.80

Parking at Airport £28.00

Return flight to Inverness £274.00

Hotel accommodation in Inverness £75.00

38 miles home £3.80

Total £384.60

The train was £100 cheaper, the whole thing took 30 hours door to door and was productive for 20 of them.

The flight option, if it was do’able (flights from Southampton/Bristol to Inverness are not that frequent) would have taken at as long but the productive time would have been closer to 10 hours.

I will not do this analysis for ever journey and some will not be as cheap or smooth but it has to be the way forward. The last missing piece of the jigsaw is reliable car hire at all stations.

I have changed because I have had a couple of genuinely good and positive experiences. This is the way to get more people to think about their lifestyle and how they can be more sustainable.

Less preaching, more real life relevant examples of how the same or better still more, can be achieved by just being a bit different and thinking near the edge of the box.

Europe's Wild Wonders. Worth a look.

A plug for something is a common site and sound in all our media and I am certain I have unwitting done it many times in this blog.

I this case it is very deliberate. Please go and have a look at www.wild-wonders.com. Under the strapline Unseen. Unexpected. Unforgettable they have commissioned 60 of the best nature photographers in Europe to capture and create astonishing images that celebrate the best the is natural Europe from individual animals, birds and plants, to the most stunning landscapes. All of nature has been brought together in this pan European collection.

I was shown some of the images over dinner last night here at the Europarc conference in Stromstad, Sweden. Yesterday was excursion day and all of us had had a pretty long but exhilarating day, in the clear autumn sunshine that has made this event memorable. However I expect most of us just wanted to sit down eat dinner and get an early night. There was an almost audible sigh when the pa system started up and another Scandinavian with perfect English started talking, “yet another speech, please leave us alone”. The chap on the mic talked about celebrating Europe’s natural wonder and described the Wild Wonders project whilst showing a few of the images.

The tone around our table changed in an instant, Jim Dixon from the Peak National park, Helen Smith for the National Association of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Ashley Thomas from the Wye Valley AONB and I. are not a hard audience for great photos and even greater places. The thing about this slice of the conference was the positive, accessible and enjoyable tone of the project ad its beliefs.

A great change from my last blog. So go look at the site and its photos, sign up to support it when the exhibition comes to a shopping centre near you and plan to upgrade your phone to a Nokia next year as they will be shipping 500 million of theme with many of these images preloaded. Be inspired to go and enjoy these places and spaces. Hey are there for all of us to enjoy.

P.S have a look at Jim’s blog: http://jimdixon.wordpress.com/ Its not often a public bodies CEO bothers to try a communicate his values, experiences and ambitions to a wider audience in quite such a clear, open and accessible manner.