IN THIS ISSUE...
- From your ADEPT President
- ADEPT in the news
- SMART Places winners announced
- Spring Conference – booking now open!
- New policy position: Resources and Waste
- Personnel changes
- Membership renewal: Invoices going out soon
- Corporate Partner event: Climate change
- The impact of ADEPT: Research results
- Proving Services success
- Autumn Conference feedback
- Parliamentary Round-up: View from Westminster, Consultation Tracker & Parliamentary Monitoring
- General Meeting minutes available
- Brexit update
- ADEPT meeting updates
- EVENTS: MOVE 2019, TRAFFEX 2019
- Upcoming ADEPT meetings
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From your ADEPT President
Welcome to the first newsletter of 2019!
The last two months have been busy – and successful. On 30th January we published our Resources & Waste policy position (see below), with supporting statements from some of our corporate partners. The document received lots of media interest, which was great. It will inform ADEPT’s response to Defra when it consults on various aspects of the Government’s Resources and Waste Strategy, published in December 2018. My thanks to the Waste Group who drafted it.
And on 31st January, the winners of the SMART Places ‘Live Labs’ initiative were finally announced. Readers will recall we launched this initiative last summer, publishing a Prospectus and putting out a call for Expressions of Interest. The final ten bids went through a gruelling Dragons’ Den assessment in November. The seven winning bids were announced by the Secretary of State Chris Grayling, which indicates the level of interest within the Department of Transport. DfT is contributing £22.9m over the next two years. Many congratulations to the winners (see below).
The Leadership Team meeting discussed the outcomes of the independent evaluation of the Association (see below). The aim is to share proposals for ADEPT’s future business model and strategic influencing priorities with members over the next few months. We also discussed the role of smaller places in helping to deliver the economy with colleagues from the MHCLG / BEIS Cities & Local Growth Unit.
Finally – I am delighted that we had so much interest in the ADEPT / SOLACE Leadership Development Programme. We received 26 applications, and have been able to set up a second cohort as a result. The launch event for the first cohort is next week, which is really exciting.
As always, please get in touch if you have any queries or comments.
Neil Gibson
ADEPT President 2018/19
negibson@buckscc.gov.uk
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ADEPT IN THE NEWS
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SMART PLACES WINNERS ANNOUNCED
The winners of the ADEPT's SMART Places Live Labs competition were announced by Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling on 31 January.
The seven winning bids, who will each receive a share of £22.9million funding, are:
Buckinghamshire County Council, Central Bedfordshire Council, Cumbria County Council, Reading Borough Council, Suffolk County Council, alongside joint entries by Solihull Council and Birmingham City Council, and Kent and Staffordshire County Councils.
The two-year SMART Places project has been supported by the Department for Transport (DfT) and ADEPT’s corporate partners – SNC-Lavalin’s Atkins business, EY, Kier, O2, and Ringway, with the specific aim of introducing digital innovation outside the Strategic Roads Network.
You can read more here and find more details about the winning seven bids here.
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SPRING CONFERENCE – BOOKING NOW OPEN!
The ADEPT Spring Conference 2019 will take on Thursday 27 June at One Drummond Gate, London.
The meeting offers the opportunity for ADEPT members to collectively sit back and take stock. Place shaping is a long term business; meanwhile potholes still need fixing, bins need emptying and houses need building. We want to talk about what the short to longer term future might look like; what will be our strategic priorities; and where can ADEPT add value and make a difference. We have invited some external speakers to present different perspectives and to stimulate debate. The Annual General Meeting will take place at the end of the day, with the new President being sworn in.
The day ends with the Annual Dinner and presentation of President’s Awards, which once again will be held in the magnificent Gladstone Library at One Whitehall Place. More details on the awards will be published shortly.
To book, please click here. |
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NEW POLICY POSITION:
RESOURCES AND WASTE
ADEPT launched its new policy position on Resources and Waste in January.
The document calls for a fundamental review of how waste services are managed, with a new Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme that would see the costs of collection, recycling and disposal of packaging met by producers rather than councils.
You can read more here and download the full document here.
The policy position on Resources and Waste joins those on Housing, Highways Maintenance, and the Industrial Strategy which ADEPT launched last year.
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PERSONNEL CHANGES
- As Darryl Eyers (Staffs County Council) prepares to become the next ADEPT President, Adrian Smith (Notts County Council) will take over his role as chair of the Midlands Board.
- Stuart Jarvis (Hampshire County Council) is stepping down as chair of the South East Board. The role of chair will be shared between Sue Halliwell (Oxfordshire County Council) and Matt Davey (West Sussex County Council). Many thanks to Stuart and his team.
- Nicola Parkins will be leaving the ADEPT secretariat at the end of February, to be replaced by Helen Leach who will be taking on the bulk of the work from 4 February (contact via secretariat@adeptnet.org.uk). Our heartfelt thanks to Nicola for all her hard work whilst at ADEPT, and best of luck with new ventures!
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MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL:
INVOICES GOING OUT SOON!
A heads up that June Meadows, ADEPT’s Finance Officer, will be emailing out membership invoices for 2019/20 in the next few days. As agreed at the General Meeting on 23 November, membership fees have gone up by 2.2%.
Did you know: The Association now represents 78 local authorities, plus 2 sub-national transport bodies and one combined authority. We have 12 Local Enterprise Partnership members and 16 committed Corporate Partners. Associate members include Transport for London, the London Environment Directors Network (which represent 31 London Boroughs), CCS Wales and Department for Infrastructure Northern Ireland.
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CORPORATE PARTNER EVENT:
CLIMATE CHANGE
ADEPT currently has 16 corporate partners, who are drawn from key service sectors. We are launching a series of seminars for them that will debate the ‘big ticket’ strategic issues that cut across the interests of businesses and local government alike.
The first seminar will focus on climate change, looking at both the drive towards a low/zero carbon economy and developing resilience to the changing climate. Speakers include the Environment Agency, Greenpeace and Defra (tbc). We intend to publish an ADEPT policy position on climate change adaptation following the event. The seminar takes place in London the afternoon of Thursday 28 March.
If you’re interested in attending – and spaces are very limited – then please get in touch with Hannah Bartram as soon as possible: hannah.bartram@eastsussex.gov.uk
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THE IMPACT OF ADEPT:
RESEARCH RESULTS
Last Autumn, ADEPT commissioned Shared Intelligence to carry out research into the impact of the Association in terms of the services we provide to our members, our relationships with key stakeholders and our success in influencing government and key agencies. Interim results were shared with delegates at the Autumn Conference last November.
The consultants have now submitted their final report, which draws on two sources of evidence: an online survey of ADEPT members; and 22 non-attributable interviews with members, non-members, business partners and key stakeholders. The research shows that there is a high level of satisfaction with the information ADEPT provides to its members:
- 60% of respondents said they used information from ADEPT regularly in their work
- 52% see ADEPT as the first port of call to share intelligence
- Two-thirds of respondents agreed that ADEPT is strengthening its influence with government
- There was a strong message that members want for the Association to have an even stronger influencing voice
To read more about the results of the research – click here.
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PROVING SERVICES SUCCESS
ADEPT’s research partnership with Proving Services has proved very popular with existing ADEPT members and other highway authorities.
The venture has already brought new members to ADEPT and a number of new and existing ADEPT members have now joined the Future Highways Research Club (FHRC) and the Value for Money Benchmarking Club. Given the numbers now wishing to become full members of the FHRC and participate in the research programmes, Proving will shortly announce plans to host two quarterly FHRC meetings: one in the south (Cranfield University) and one in the north (University of Leeds).
Plans to introduce a Future Waste and Resources Research Club (FWRRC) have also generated a lot of interest. Proving hosted a Waste Reference Group meeting in November which started the process of defining the focus for the research and how the value for money of future options for the sector may be measured. With Defra’s national strategy for the sector now published, the Reference Group will meet again in the Spring, prior to the launch of the Research Club itself.
If you want any further information on the research clubs, please contact:
Future Highways Research Club – Simon Wilson s.wilson@provingservices.co.uk
Future Waste & Resources Research Club – Karen Farquharson
k.farquharson@provingservices.co.uk
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AUTUM CONFERENCE FEEDBACK
Thank you to everyone who completed the feedback survey on ADEPT’s Autumn Conference. The results were once again broadly very positive.
96% of respondents felt that the balance of presentations and plenary sessions was about right, with the presentations by Graham Pendlebury (DfT), Jesse Norman MP and Nathan Baker (ICE) particularly well received. The Dragons’ Den session also went down well, with 88% of delegates judging it extremely or quite interesting.
Many participants also took the trouble to submit written comments on particular aspects of the event, or suggest ideas for future conferences. We do take all comments seriously and will use these to inform our future planning.
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:
ADEPT Spring Conference / Annual Dinner & Awards – London,
Thursday 27 June 2019
ADEPT Autumn Conference – Bath, Thursday 21 & Friday 22 November 2019
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Parliamentary Round-up
To read the latest 'View from Westminster' please click here.
Click here for this month's Parliamentary Monitoring.
Click here for the Consultation Tracker.
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GENERAL MEETING MINUTES
The minutes of ADEPT's General Meeting held on 22 November 2018 are available to download here.
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Brexit update
Buckinghamshire County Council kindly share with us their monthly round-up of policy documents, research and publications about Brexit. You can read the latest round-up here.
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ADEPT meeting updates
We have the following reports from Boards/Working Groups that met in December and January:
- Engineering Board (update here)
- Environment Board (update here)
- East of England Board (update here)
- Waste Group (update here)
- Flood & Water Management Group (update here)
- National Rights of Way Managers Group (update here)
We hope to include reports from recent meetings of the Transport Board, South West Board and Energy Working Group in our next newsletter.
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EVENTS
Below are details of two external events supported by ADEPT which may be of interest to members.
To suggest events for inclusion in future newsletters, please email:
secretariat@adeptnet.org.uk
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***ADEPT PARTNERED EVENT***
MOVE 2019
London ExCeL, 12-13 February
FREE TICKETS and 15% DISCOUNT FOR ADEPT MEMBERS
MOVE is the world’s most important urban mobility event, where visionaries and disruptive technology meet to drive the future of transport.
A comprehensive and cross-modal conference experience covering everything from Mobility as a Service to Smart Cities, Urban Supply Chain, Connected & Autonomous Vehicles, Auto Futures, Batteries & Charging, Construction & Smart Infrastructure, Roads & Highways, AI & Analytics, IoT, Business Models and more.
– 388 speakers, 280 sessions, 8 conference streams, 120 exhibitors, 2,500 attendees –
15% discount on 2-day conference pass to ADEPT members
For more information and bookings click here.
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***ADEPT PARTNERED EVENT***
TRAFFEX 2019
NEC, Birmingham, 2-4 April
ADEPT President Neil Gibson will be speaking at Traffex 2019, the UK's largest exhibition for those involved in the highways and traffic engineering sector. Traffex also features:
- New conceptual road feature working with leading consultants to take visitors on an interactive journey and showcase some of the latest products, concepts and services
- A ‘Trading floor’ area for exhibitors
- Central themes of collaboration and how technology is driving change on the road network
- Live hackathon – the Data Discovery Centre – using real industry data to help create solutions for challenges on the network
- Directors' briefings – a series of briefings to help local authority and private sector directors to deliver more efficient services and create better places to live and work
- Round tables – a series of invite-only round table debates reflecting the latest thinking
- TRAFFEX Community – TRAFFEX dinner, Exhibitors drinks reception and TRAFFEX themed bars around Birmingham
- Two conference theatres delivering the latest strategic high-level thinking and best practice operation delivery
Entry is free but registration is essential. For full details click here.
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