Board/(MINS14)1
BIG LOTTERY FUND
MINUTES OF BIG LOTTERY FUND BOARD MEETING
HELD ON WEDNESDAY 22 JANUARY 2014 AT 1000
AT THE BIG LOTTERY FUND, PLOUGH PLACE, LONDON
PRESENT:
Peter Ainsworth Board Chair
Anna Southall Board Vice-Chair
Tony Burton General Board Member
Frank Hewitt Northern Ireland Chair
Maureen McGinn Scotland Chair
Rajay Naik General Board Member
Nat Sloane England Chair
Sir Adrian Webb Wales Chair
IN ATTENDANCE:
Dawn Austwick Chief Executive
Mark Cooke Director Finance & Corporate Services
Dharmendra Kanani Director for England
Jackie Killeen Director for Scotland
Joanne McDowell Director for Northern Ireland
John Rose Director for Wales
Rob Atkins Deputy Director Strategy Performance & Learning
Mark McGann Deputy Director Strategy Performance & Learning
Samir Rahim Deputy Director, IT
Tim Davies-Pugh Deputy Director, England (by VC, for item 8)
Shaun Walsh Deputy Director, Communications & Marketing (for items 1 – 10)
Huw Thomas Deputy Director, Communications & Marketing (for items 11 - 18)
Tom Guiney Senior Head of Policy & Learning (for item 11)
Greg Moore Corporate Manager (Governance – Board) (Secretariat)
1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
1.1 The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting and extended his congratulations on behalf of the Fund to Astrid Bonfield, who had been awarded a CBE for services to the charity sector both domestically and internationally. The Chair also took the opportunity to remind members that Andrew Barnett, Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in the UK, would be joining the meeting over lunch to share his thoughts on the development of the Fund's strategic framework; he looked forward to hearing his thoughts which he hoped would stimulate discussion.
2. APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE
2.1 Apologies were received from Astrid Bonfield (General Board Member), Ceri Doyle (Director, Strategy Performance & Learning), and Linda Quinn (Director, Communications & Marketing).
3. DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST
3.1 There were none.
4. Approval of Minutes of Big Lottery Fund Board Meeting held on Tuesday 5 NOVEMBER 2013 (Board/(MINS13)5)
4.1 The minutes of the meeting held on 5 November 2013 were approved.
5. MATTERS ARISING
5.1 The list of matters arising from the meetings held on 5 November 2013 was received, with the progress of the various items noted.
6. CHIEF EXECUTIVE’S OVERVIEW (Board/(P14)1)
6.1 The Board received a report of the Chief Executive which provided an overview of the key business issues facing the Fund since the last meeting. The report had been presented in a new format and members were encouraged to comment on the style and any additions which might prove beneficial in future iterations.
6.2 The current period represented a particularly busy one for the Fund, with the next six to twelve months set to be challenging as numerous important issues were addressed, including the FMS, operating cost pressures, EU funding issues, internal restructuring, and the development of the new strategic framework. During discussion, the following main issues not covered later on the agenda were touched upon:
· Triennial Review: Dawn had met with Emma Boggis, the Review Lead, who had outlined the headline findings to date. She and the Chair would be meeting Emma again in late February to discuss the preliminary findings in more detail.
· Camelot: The situation with Camelot was discussed, with members expressing disappointment at Camelot's conduct of late. There were concerns that the price rise had not increased revenue as hoped and it would be prudent to consider planning for a sustained drop in lotto income. The diversion of funds to prize money was particularly concerning and both Dawn and Mark would be seeking to raise the issue at forthcoming meetings with other lottery distributors to discuss a shared strategy. Members also expressed concern about potential reputational issues which could arise should this emerge in the press, as some members of the public might confuse Camelot with the Fund; the political context should also be borne in mind given the forthcoming Scottish referendum. Working with other distributors to put practical suggestions to Camelot around increasing good causes awareness could be a useful move in preventing further sales dips and also increasing awareness of the distinction between the Fund and Camelot.
· Lobbying Bill and Charity Commission Consultation: The Senior Management Team’s proposals around the Lobbying Bill were welcomed, and it was asked if a summary of the position on the Lobbying Bill was available, with it agreed that the paper discussed by SMT could be tweaked for the Board and circulated.
6.3 The Chair took the opportunity to advise the Board that the Cabinet Office sponsor to the Fund, Lucy Sydney, would shortly be leaving to take up a new position within government. He thanked her for her work with the Fund and expressed the Board's best wishes to her in her new role.
6.4 The Board agreed to note the content of the report.
7. PORTFOLIO UPDATES (Board/(P14)2)
7.1 The Chair thanked Country Chairs and Directors for their input in to this report, which he felt was a useful way of ensuring the Board was kept up to date with portfolio developments.
7.2 The Northern Ireland Chair took the opportunity to provide an update on the ongoing difficulties around appointing new Committee members in Northern Ireland, where regrettably the Fund continued to be unable to elicit a response from the Minister on the matter. Fortunately, a number of existing Committee members had agreed to extend their terms for the interim but there was a real risk that this situation was unsustainable and the Committee could be left unable to command a quorum in the near future, and thus be prevented from making any decisions. He suggested that efforts be made to arrange a meeting between Dawn and the Head of Civil Service in Northern Ireland when she was next in Belfast, in an effort to progress the issue.
7.3 It was felt that it would be useful for the biographies of the incoming non-executives across the portfolios to be circulated to Board members as soon as they were available. Action: G Moore
7.4 The Board noted the information provided in the update reports.
Tim Davies-Pugh joined the meeting
8. EU Funding (Board/(P14)3)
8.1 Following the Board’s consideration of the opportunities for the Big Lottery Fund to engage in the next round of European Union funding in the UK in November 2013 (Board/(P13)49), this paper sought the Board’s continued support for the Fund acting as an opt in organisation for the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) 2014-2020 in England. It also provided an update on activity across the UK.
8.2 The Board noted that the England Committee had considered this issue at its meeting on 15 January 2014, where members had been supportive of the proposals in principle but expressed apprehensions about the interim implications. There was a need to identify and understand the costs, resources and risks involved, and how the Fund would seek to manage these; the Board were agreed that the project management plans required a significant volume of work, particularly with a focus on refining the individual deals with Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs) and the various financial arrangements with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and other relevant Government departments, as well as a need for dialogue with the EU to clarify reporting requirements.
8.3 The Chair noted the large volume of complex work that would need to be undertaken in a short period of time and sought assurances that the resource implications had been thought through and the right individuals had been identified to lead on the work. During discussion, the following main points were made:
· There would be a need for a discrete project manager to handle the negotiations with LEPs, Government departments and the EU, and the Fund would need to accurately identify what the current in-house capability was and what additional external resource was required.
· Negotiations with all 39 LEPs would be challenging and require a combination of bilateral discussions with individual LEPs, to build relationships around delivery plans, as well as with DWP as the managing authority.
· The process could not be undertaken in the manner of a traditional IT project or using Prince 2 methodology; the risks specific to the project concerned people and relationships, with nine months’ worth of multifaceted and constantly shifting discussions with a range of organisations, all of whom held different ideas and desires. Streamlined project governance plans would also need to be put in place to allow the lead individual to move the Fund forward and respond to real-time interaction, in order that the project was not held up by the need to repeatedly consult and seek buy-in across the organisation for every decision.
· Individual LEPs would undoubtedly seek to maximise the benefits they might receive from the Fund whilst also seeking to retain full control of their projects; as such, there would be a significant risk associated with trying to have 39 separate negotiations. Accordingly, members suggested that a hard-nosed negotiator was required who would be able to handle manoeuvrable relationships with LEPs and, to an extent, dictate terms to them in order that the same arguments were not had 39 times. A disciplined approach with DWP would also be required, with a strong contract preferred to a Memorandum of Understanding. Accordingly, it was likely that an outside specialist with experience of such negotiations would be needed.
· With this in mind, the Fund should also be prepared to take a reputational hit with some LEP Chairmen, who could be vocal in expressing their disappointment should they receive less from negotiations than they might have hoped for.
· It was also noted that the right individuals to resource the project might well exist within the Fund already, but in any case there would need to be a set of tight guidelines and management protocols for them to work within, with the ability to act proactively and on their own initiative within these parameters.
· The Director for England assured members that they had aligned offer to existing programmes so as to minimise the resourcing implications, thereby ensuring that the resource models for delivery were already in place and accurate plans could be made.
· The Wales Chair shared the learning of his experiences with EU funding, cautioning that if the monitoring and reporting arrangements were too bureaucratic or intensive then people would hold the Fund accountable, presenting another reputational risk to consider. The Director for Wales added that the Fund should remain mindful of how some within the VCS might perceive LEPs and act accordingly, but also urged that officers did not lose sight of the fact that this could be of enormous benefit to the sector.
· It was also cautioned that there would be a need to remain mindful of the ongoing FMS development and how this might impact the Fund’s ability to deliver certain programmes or meet particular monitoring requirements, with a lack of clarity at this stage.
· The Deputy Director England confirmed that approval of the recommendations would still not commit the Fund formally to the project at this stage, but would rather serve as an endorsement to continue work and negotiations.
8.4 The Chair summarised debate by noting that, whilst the Board were not fully satisfied that the tests as set out in the report had been adequately met, the positive potential in being involved with the scheme, alongside the significant risks associated with not being involved, meant that the Board were content for work to proceed. However, there was a clear need for a rigorous project management regime and the Board were keen to have this in place before any further decisions were made, beyond continuing the current work and reporting back at the next meeting. The England Chair concurred, adding that further input from Board members in to the project management arrangements would be useful ahead of the March meeting; the Chair asked that this be factored in at the earliest opportunity when most of the outstanding issues had been adequately addressed, with a progress report to come to the March meeting.
8.5 The Board agreed:
· to note the decision recommended by the England Committee
· that the Fund should proceed as an opt in organisation for ESIF 2014-2020, subject to detailed project management plans
9. 2014/15 Corporate Performance Measures (Board/P14)4)
9.1 The Board considered a report describing the proposed core set of seven measures designed to provide insight about to the Fund’s performance on priority areas for the business in the coming year.
9.2 The Deputy Director for Strategy and Performance introduced the report, clarifying that the information in the report would form the basis for the setting of key performance indicators (KPIs) in March; it was currently anticipated that around 8 to 10 KPIs would emerge. 2014/15 would of course be a transitional year, as the intention was for KPIs and KMIs to be drawn from the strategic framework following its development. The Chair of Audit & Risk thanked officers for the work and commented positively on the alignment emerging across the business. He took the opportunity to mention the potential role of the developing risk framework as a starting point for identifying KPIs, suggesting that a balanced scorecard be implemented, to reflect the range of risks and impacts across the organisation. It was agreed that a balanced scorecard would be beneficial and it was noted that this was being developed for the longer term, once the strategic framework and other key elements of the joined-up approach were in place.