The aim of the Handbook is to enable GO staff to support local delivery.

Although many GO staff have been doing this for some time, there is now a feeling of a ‘step change’. The focus on localities and meeting local outcomes has to be combined with delivering against the PSAs from the region.

This can be challenging and means that all GO staff are now working more closely with localities, whether you are a thematic or PSA outcome lead, or a Locality Manager. In turn this will need more cross-cutting work between different GO staff and also more reliance on using evidence – with increasing input from analytical staff to the delivery agenda.

Working in a more analytical, evidence based way means liaising with GO analytical staff – they are a great resource, so use them – and also having more confidence to use some of the relevant tools and techniques yourself. If nothing else, this additional knowledge will help you ‘ask the right questions’ – whether of partners, in your GO challenge role or of GO colleagues to draw on their specialist analytical or thematic expertise.

The Handbook is not designed to delay or add bureaucracy to an already difficult process. The process is designed to ensure the best possible decisions are made making it more likely that the right outcomes are met.

The Handbook is designed to help you to find and use different tools and techniques to support partners to deliver change on the ground. It is organised in four sections, reflecting the key elements of the delivery cycle:

• Analysis - what is the problem?
• Planning - what are we going to do about it?
• Delivery - how are we going to do it?
• Performance - how are we going to know we have we done it well?

Although it is ordered in four sections, the delivery cycle is a continuous cycle where each element feeds into one another. Good delivery depends on being able to draw upon each of these four elements.

The Handbook is for all GO staff who work with places, whether that is in a locality management role, as a theme-lead, in a policy-focussed role or as an analyst. It has been designed to support all GO staff in locality management – rather than just being for Locality Managers. It should help GO staff with different roles to work better together around ‘place’ as a GO priority – as well as with particular places in your region.

One of the main audiences is likely to be theme leads in GOs, as the Handbook will help you to work more closely with your colleagues with localities and on the GO place agenda. However, it doesn’t duplicate specialist thematic data sources or other information which you will either know about or know who to contact in the relevant Government Department. Other GO staff who are interested in this type of information should contact their GO theme lead.

Although the Handbook is for all GO staff, there is a particular link with other GO resources for Locality Managers in that it can help you develop the skills set out in the Ladder for Development which sets out a framework for continuous, professional development in locality management.

As well as being for all GO staff, the Handbook can be used by people with different levels of knowledge and experience. The main text doesn’t assume previous knowledge of the tools and techniques though so it can be used by new staff or people who have taken on new roles and responsibilities. For users with more knowledge there are places you can click for embedded documents and links to external documents and sites for more in depth information and additional resources. This design should also mean that you can use the main text in one section, drill down to more detail in another, and maybe skip a third all together if this covers your main specialism.