After seven major local authorities in the south-east teamed up last year to explore ways of providing better services and value for money, one of the schemes they came up with is about to become reality.
The final hurdle of academic accreditation was cleared in December for a new masters degree in highway engineering, specifically designed to prepare students for jobs with council highways departments and their private sector contractors. On Monday the first intake of students from the seven councils, known as the SE7 (Surrey, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, Kent, Medway, and Brighton & Hove), and their partner contractors began their studies at the University of Brighton.
The SE7 group realised that its staff are their most valuable asset and the better they are, the better the services they can provide for their residents. That means investing in them, so that they have the skills to do an even better job and the council is fit for the future. In short, having motivated and experienced staff capable of delivering services efficiently and effectively is essential.
That presented a problem when it came to roads. There was a clear skills gap, which meant we weren't getting a steady stream of suitable staff, and we certainly weren't seeing the next generation of senior highways managers emerge.
The reason was simple: the role of engineers is generally to find solutions to technical problems, but in local government they need to have other strings to their bows. While the traditional degree courses turn out engineers in their thousands, they don't equip them with the right blend of technical and managerial skills that a job in local government demands.
These engineering graduates haven't been taught how to go about negotiating major contracts with private sector businesses that can often run to tens of millions of pounds, and how to ensure they represent the best value for taxpayers when they do. They do not know how to apply general engineering skills to road maintenance, and they don't have any understanding of the annual cycle of highway activities, including winter gritting work in ice and snow and grass cutting in the summer.
Importantly, they have often not gained any insight into working in the public sector – and in particular a political environment – which means building a strong relationship with elected members from the grassroots right up to senior leaders.
Our unique degree course, which sees students' time divided between learning on the job at SE7 councils or one of their contractors, covers all those areas and allows us to build capability within our organisations without losing capacity.
The skills issues addressed by the new MSc are also being highlighted by the highways maintenance efficiency programme, a new Department for Transport-funded scheme that aims to help highways authorities nationally, and we'll help shape that by sharing our progress.
This progress won't be confined to our university course. The SE7 group is now looking to develop another course to address a much broader range of skills – useful for all staff, from those fixing potholes to our senior managers.
That way we will have access to all the skills we require to run the best services while at the same time providing more local jobs, through for example setting targets for apprenticeships, and achieving even better value for money for our work on roads.
David Hodge is leader of Surrey county council, a member of the SE7 Group
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