Evaluation of the North Wales Regional Growth Vision Enabler Project

Date: 2023

Prog. Value: £5.8m          

Eval. Value: £30k

Ambition North Wales is a partnership of six local authorities in North Wales, in addition to regional FE and HE institutions. The private sector has also supported the partnership through the North Wales Mersey Dee Business Council and the Business Delivery Board.  Via delivery of Growth Deal projects, ANW’s ambition is to facilitate clean growth, supporting an uplift in GVA and the creation of a significant number of new jobs through investing over £1bn in the local economy with £240 million of the investment coming from Welsh Government and UK Government through the North Wales Growth Deal. 

A Portfolio Management Office (PMO) was established to deliver the Growth Deal on behalf of ANW, part funded under ESF – Priority Axis 5 Public Services Reform and Regional Working. A requirement of ESF funding was a systematic assessment of the implementation and outcomes relating to the ESF-funded North Wales Regional Growth Vision Enabler (NWGVE) project, which funds the PMO to deliver the Growth Deal, highlighting areas of best practice, providing recommendations for improvements, lessons learnt for future planning and completing an assessment of the overall impact of the intervention. TIP was successful in its bid to undertake the evaluation and delivered a three-stage review – inception report, mid-term evaluation and final evaluation. Evaluation activities included:

  • Comparative review with other regional Growth Fund management teams

  • Personal interviews with partner bodies, including Local Authority representatives 

  • Personal interviews with wider stakeholders, including UK and Welsh Government 

  • Development of case studies to highlight the role of the PMO and the impact of Growth Deal funding.

The role of the PMO in delivering Growth Deal projects was examined in terms of:

  • Progress against funding indicator targets and long-term objectives laid out in the business plan and Logic Model.

  • Development of tools and methodologies to ensure/facilitate value for money, delivery of societal and environmental benefits, and alignment with strategic policy.

  • Its governance, capacity and communications and their impact on successful Fund distribution and delivery.

  • The facilitation of collaborative regional working.

  • Contribution to the mainstreaming of Cross Cutting Themes (CCT).   

TIP produced mid-term and final reports which provided conclusions on performance of the PMO to date, recommendations on how to improve Fund delivery going forward (under the themes of  ‘building capacity and skills’, ’maximising value and impact of public funds’ and ‘fostering relationships and growing collaborations’ with the overarching aim to enable efficient regional delivery), and an ‘Action Plan’ for the PMO outlining required tasks (responsibilities and costs) under the recommendation themes.

In addition to the above exercise, team members have supported ANW as independent advisors on portfolio, programme and project benefits realisation, including advice on the range and suitability of Key Performance Indicators and have developed economic cases for a number of Growth Deal projects following HM Treasury Green Book guidelines. The team has also forecasted benefits for several Shared Prosperity Fund bids, Big Lottery Coastal Community Funded projects (Llofft, Y Felinheli), modelled the potential wider socio-economic benefits of private sector Wales tourism proposals for potential submission to Development Bank of Wales, generated economic impact forecast for ERDF-funded Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre, Bangor, along with estimation of the economic impact of Bangor University. The former included assessment of the impact of additional visitor numbers attracted to Bangor interested in arts and culture, the impact of student/staff spend as well as institutional spend in construction and operational phases.

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