Economic Support - LGC Awards 2021
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 major role in supporting their local economy, both in their own right and as partners alongside other local bodies, including local enterprise partnerships and (in some cases) as members of combined authorities.
This award is intended to highlight the key role that councils play in supporting their local economy. It is open to projects that secure economic growth locally or, equally important at this present time, to projects that help support or revive existing employers, businesses or sectors by reducing the impact of recession and Covid upon them. It is also open to projects intended to bring about long-term economic recovery. Entries can be in relation to either the response to Covid-19, or be entirely separate to the pandemic.
Among the support in question could be pandemic response measures, infrastructure, regulatory work, their role as employers and purchasers of services, as well as countless other areas.
Submissions should focus on:
- The council’s actions, and their impact, with a particular focus on evidenced achievements and data to prove the scale and success of the authority’s actions;
- Explaining how the council is working with local partners, potentially including businesses, sectors, a LEP or combined authority;
- Setting out the specific local nature of the challenge to which the council is responding;
- The council’s use of business intelligence/data to inform its activities;
- How all relevant council services respond to the needs of business;
- The key programmes and initiatives the council is pursuing;
- Summarising the council’s ambitions for the future of its economy/the sector in question and its priorities for achieving that ambition
Award entries will be judged on:
- The nature of the council’s ambition and the steps it has put in place to achieve it;
- Evidence of the impact of the council’s activities on the economy/sector in question;
- The quality of the council’s relationship with business and its partners and impact of those relationships on action support the economy in its area;
- The quality of the council’s use of business intelligence;
- The relationship between the council’s growth ambitions and the council’s wider strategic objectives;
- Evidence of the responsiveness of the council as whole to the needs of business.
General Entry Information
- These awards primarily cover achievement and performance in the calendar year 2020 and the first two months of 2021, and entries should have a particular focus on that period. However, judges will take into account work that began before that period, as well as achievement and performance since that period.
- The awards will reflect the fact that Covid-19 and the response to it have posed an unprecedented challenge to local government. Judges’ decisions should reflect attributes such as performance, resilience, compassion and adaptability in the face of the pandemic alongside achievement, innovation and vision. However, entries which are primarily not about the council’s pandemic response should be treated equally to those that are.
- You only have to submit a single statement explaining why you should win (up to 1,000 words).
- Please also provide a 100-word summary of your entry. Please use this as an opportunity to make a pitch to our judges about what makes your work innovative and bold.
- Please use the questions in the bullet points below as a guide and break up your submission accordingly. Some may be more applicable than others for your entry.
- Please specify which private sector partners do you work with (if any).
- While you have the option of providing supporting material, we urge you to do this sparingly, and only if you feel further evidence is required to back-up your entry. The critical information should however be included in the main part of your entry.
If you require any help with your entries contact: Rafael Younes on 020 3953 2115, email Rafael.Younes@emap.com or Jae Taylor on 020 3953 2117, email Jae.Taylor@emap.com
