Innovation

This award is open to a single council or where appropriate a partnership of councils, or a council-owned company. Private sector partners can enter on a council’s behalf, with the permission of the council itself.

Councils have a long track record of innovation, but the current combination of cuts in expenditure and service pressures mean that innovation is more important than ever. This award is intended to celebrate councils which have used innovation to re-think services in order to achieve better outcomes for citizens and communities at less cost. The project should centre on the relevant timescale.

Submissions should focus on:

• The nature of the policy or service they consider to be innovative;
• The process by which the policy or service was developed or introduced, including the involvement of service users, business and frontline staff;
• What makes it genuinely innovative;
• Evidence of outcomes, for instance how services have been improved and/or costs reduced;
• What learning there is from the innovation.

Award entries will be judged on:

• The extent to which the policy or service design is genuinely innovative;
• The scale of the outcomes brought about by the project in question;
• The degree of innovation in the process by which the policy or service was developed and implemented;
• The extent to which the innovation helped the council to achieve improved outcomes at less cost;
• The extent to which the council has created a wider culture of innovation.