Initial involvement with B&NES involved training and development activities in the Housing and Social Services Department. This commenced with the Leadership team and has since cascaded across this Directorate involving many colleagues in a variety of ways from Welfare to Work programmes to Influencing and Persuading, from Leadership to Personal Competence Development.

This work led to specific mentoring for one of the Single Regeneration Bid teams focusing on teamwork, project management and implementation of the strategy for community involvement in the process of bidding for government funds.

Following this work in the first half of 1997, we were invited by the Chief Executive to facilitate the development of the Management Board working with individuals as well as with the Board in the review of organisation strategy and preparedness to meet the changing local community needs as well as the governments agenda for 'modernising local government'. This led to the establishment of a Culture Change Programme and we continue to facilitate this process through workshops, mentoring and specific projects. Work has been done with Group Leaders, elected members, Directors, and all Directorate leadership teams. Culture Change workshops have involved many in the organisation in the process of thinking about what is working well and what will need to change or be developed to meet the 'new' agenda from central government as well as the local communities expectations' of this comparatively recently formed Unitary Authority. This process built on to existing service reviews as well as enabled reviews to be more appropriately focused. It brought more colleagues into the process and enabled the Council to clarify and share its strategic direction.

To support this initiative 25 facilitators were trained internally to act as a resource to teams and team leaders who felt that they wanted help when tackling service reviews and other local change/improvement initiatives. We continue to facilitate organisation strategy meetings that build/review the strategic direction of the Council in terms of action planning for the next 18 months.

Key Achievements
These were:

• the development of a strategic plan for B&NES as well as revised organisation structure and management roles in order to align the organisation more clearly with the 'modernising local government agenda' and elected member aspirations for service improvement
• the involvement of some 140 managers across the organisation in culture change workshops and planning for organisational improvement to deliver the vision and values of the organisation within the context of the government's plans for 'modernising local government'
• through 360-degree feedback, many colleagues are focusing increasingly on what they need to do personally to be more effective and to lead the changes sought in the organisation
• team working and the principles involved in getting a relatively unfamiliar group together to deliver hard outputs quickly and effectively are more clear and colleagues are more skilful in leading such projects
• the organisation has a team of some 25 trained internal facilitators who support ongoing development, problem solving and meeting facilitation in the organisation
• the process gained the support and continued involvement of the elected members of the council.