Tim Byles: 'LEPs are here to stay' (Profile)

Tim Byles took over as the new chief executive of Partnerships for Schools last month. He tells James Atkinson why the Building Schools for the Future programme has progressed so slowly - and how he is planning to speed it up.

Tim Byles, the new chief executive of Partnerships for Schools (PfS), has only been in the job for four weeks, but already has a clear message to deliver.

"The message I want to get over is that the original timetable for Building Schools for the Future (BSF) was very ambitious and we are resetting it on the basis of reality, knowledge, experience and benchmarking," he says.

"There is a big job to be done in sharing the experience of these projects as they mature around the country, and I want to do a lot of that. The process going forward is one where we are clear that local authorities are ready to deliver. Everyone is clear about who delivers what and the pace of delivery will increase."

It's confident stuff and it's also clear from the way he talks about the BSF programme that Byles is passionately engaged with what he calls this "once in a lifetime opportunity".

Getting his message out to the wider world is obviously something he feels strongly about and he has spent the past few weeks talking to people in both the public and private sectors.

The private sector, and to some extent the local education authorities themselves, have been dismayed by the slow pace of delivery, and Byles' first message is to assure them that it is speeding up.

He is, however, sure that the original programme was wildly ambitious. "What's quite clear to me is that the original assumptions about the programming of BSF were far too optimistic and everyone with the experience of the reality recognises that.

"The reality is, if you benchmark the delivery of the programme against other similar schemes, it is doing pretty well considering the constraints it was put under."

Twin-pronged approach

Byles is adopting a twin-pronged approach to speeding things up by ensuring the Wave Four schemes are much better prepared and by helping projects in difficulty in the first three waves.

The Wave Four projects will be announced by ministers later this month.

Byles says there are a number of features in the latest wave that are different from previous projects. The organisation of the partners within the Local Education Partnership (LEP) has been improved and the projects have been better scoped and defined. "There is much more certainty in the process now," says Byles.

Of the early BSF schemes, Byles observes: "The very early projects were, for good reasons, identified as the local authorities with the greatest need and most challenging circumstances. Very often that meant the local authorities themselves didn't have the levels of procurement expertise that some other authorities had. BSF suffered from that problem early on."

Adequate resources

He says: "One of the biggest issues we need to get right in local government is adequate preparedness and resources. Some local authorities will be doubling their turnover in a period of seven years. Their teams need to be properly resourced and the corporate centre needs to be linked properly to it. That way, when there are issues of affordability or programming, they can be digested within a local authority, rather than emerging as an unexpected problem in mid-negotiation."

But Byles is adamant that the delivery of waves one to three is accelerating. "We had 14 projects that were causing great concern when I arrived," he says, "and we've managed to reduce that in the four weeks since I've joined to eight, and last week another two have been brought substantially back on track.

"I'm not saying everything in the garden is rosy," he concedes, "but we have been able to identify practical and sensible ways to take projects forward that had been suffering difficulties. Often these were for good reasons, such as the planning process or project definition questions. But those early projects will deliver and that's the encouraging thing."

The Bristol BSF scheme was the first to close last June and another two have reached that goal. Byles reveals he is expecting a further six to have closed by the end of this financial year, while 12 are at preferred bidder level.

Reluctance to adopt

Byles seems happy with progress so far and he is quick to defend the LEP model, which some local authorities have shown a marked reluctance to adopt, believing it to be slow, expensive and inflexible.

Byles insists this is not so, but adds: "There are a number of areas where we have discovered that you don't have to have an LEP, especially on schemes that are smaller than £80m - it just doesn't make sense to do that in both commercial and in delivery terms."

But he is clear that non-LEP models for larger schemes will be the exception. "The fact is you have to work very hard to find something that is better value than an LEP," he says.

"If there are good reasons not to use an LEP then we will look at it positively, but I'd be surprised if we saw large numbers passing that test," he says. "So, if you're asking me have I got a message that LEPs are here to stay, then I'm quite sure they are. I think they stand up very well to scrutiny."

The two main challenges to the BSF programme now are the requirement to integrate the government's academies programme into BSF and to ascertain the impact of the new EU procurement directive on competitive dialogue.

The fear within the construction industry is that the latter will mean two to three bidders being taken down to the wire with all the additional time and cost that entails.

Byles isn't too worried that it will add any significant delay to the process, although he concedes that there is a need to keep the lid on excessive bid costs where possible.

However, he thinks that most people in the private sector recognize that the process requires investment.

"Compared with other similar kinds of procurement the bid costs are not high," argues Byles, "which isn't to say that it is not quite a lot of money that people are having to put together, but it is not peculiar to BSF.

"We will be keeping an eye on how many sample schemes we ask for and so on, as we've got to make sure we don't place an undue burden on any part of the process."

Balancing needs

On the academies front he says: "It's a very interesting challenge to balance the needs of a whole local authority area, and the needs of every young person in it of school age, with a need to make a targeted investment in areas of educational failure."

Byles says one of the things PfS is spending the most time on is getting the academy element right and locating it within the logic of the LEP.

"We need to set the academies investment in a way that helps, or certainly doesn't hinder, the development of a whole schools estate strategy. But that circle can be squared. It is a matter of discipline, structure and understanding and that's where PfS has a role as broker."

Summing up he says: "I'm not here to say that we have the thing solved, but what is really encouraging is the degree of positivism and enthusiasm that I am getting from discussions with both the public and private sectors."

Partnerships for Schools factfile

Partnerships for Schools is a non-governmental public body delivering the government's secondary school renewal programme, Building Schools for the Future. It is working with local authorities and the private sector to rebuild or renew each of the 3,500 state secondary schools in England across a 15-year, £45bn programme. Earlier this year the government's academy programme was also brought under its control.

CV: Tim Byles

• Tim Byles officially took up his post as chief executive of Partnerships for Schools in November 2006.
• He was chief executive of Norfolk County Council from 1996 until August 2006, and previously director of economic development at Kent County Council.
• Other posts Byles has held include: chairman of the Local Government Taskforce national procurement champion for the Department for Communities and Local Government and chairman of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives.
• He is also an adviser to the Local Government Association's Economic Regeneration Executive, and is a member of DEFRA's sustainable procurement taskforce.
• Byles received a CBE in the 2006 Queen's Birthday Honours list, for services to local government.

[Contract Journal, 13 December 2006, p 5]