Orkney's Local Economic Forum (LEF)

Following an enquiry by the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee of the Scottish Parliament into the delivery of local economic development services in Scotland, the Orkney Local Economic Forum was established in March 2001. The composition of the forum was formally approved by Scottish Executive on 29 May 2001.
 
The first task for each of the 22 LEFs in Scotland was to streamline the delivery of local business development services in the area, by identifying any areas of congestion, duplication, confusion, overlap or gaps in provision.

Background   
National guidelines on the formation and running of Local Economic Forums were published in March 2001. The Scottish Executive looked to the Local Enterprise Companies to facilitate the setting up and servicing of the forums based on LEC boundaries.  The guidelines specified that each forum must have a central core of the private sector, local government, the enterprise network and the local learning sector and should ideally have ten members plus a chair.

The role of the forums was to agree a local shared vision and programme of action for the streamlining and improvement of service delivery. The specific remit included tackling first the streamlining of business development services and thereafter considering local delivery mechanisms for lifelong learning, better local labour market co-ordination and other areas such as trade and tourism. 

Key messages from the national guidelines:

• Forums should agree a shared vision and action plan to achieve greater value for the considerable sums of public money spent on economic development.

• The focus of activity should be to achieve genuine rationalisation of provision at the local level. They should tackle duplication as a means of releasing resources to fill gaps and create new opportunities.

• Businesses are the key drivers of wealth creation.  forums should therefore look at the most effective way of engaging businesses, including those in the social economy, in service design and delivery.

• Forums should be small and focused with a core of businesses, local authorities, the local learning sector, tourism agencies and the LECs but can include wider consultative mechanisms.

• Forums working effectively have the opportunity to be the major contributor to the economic dimension of the community planning process.

• Forums will lead a process of evaluating 'what works' for streamlining existing delivery processes and partnership structures.

• Key tasks will be set on at least an annual basis. The initial priority for forums will be to focus on business services including eradicating wasteful duplication and improving standards.

• The use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) should be at the heart of this service redesign process. The forum process will be web-enabled.

• If forums are to achieve sustained superior growth they must be outcome-based with jointly approved targets that delivery greater efficiency and effectiveness in delivery.  The Scottish Executive and Audit Scotland will assist in this process.

A mapping exercise assessing service delivery was carried out. This revealed that there were few areas of overlap, although there was some evidence of perceived confusion amongst the client group and the awareness of the activities of all agencies needed to be improved.  The agencies involved continue to work to address these issues.

Following the mapping exercise, an economic strategy for Orkney was drawn up and this can be accessed, together with other documents on the right hand side of this page.

The homepage for the national website can be found at: www.scotland.gov.uk/enterprise/localeconomicforums/

Further information is available on the following pages.