The council will be expected to fill out an application form outlining the aims, purposes and objectives of the challenge. If the challenge is successful, the council will be responsible for project managing the challenge from start to finish, organising how the challenge will be run and all the logistical elements it will entail.
Each host authority has an assigned LGA staff member who is the ‘challenge manager’. The LGA will bring its experience from previous challenges and work with the council to ‘sign off’ the challenge and briefing and timetable documents to ensure that: it is not too similar to other challenges, will make sense to the contestants, and help ensure the council can realistically get what they are looking for out of the challenge.
Challenge managers also attend the event, and help with the event management throughout the challenge (for example helping with the filming, attending any site visits, making sure everything runs according to the schedule etc.) Aside from a site visit, most of the interaction with the council is via email/phone calls.
We send two LGA officers to act as team observers, and we would request two observers from your council too. These four are split into pairs and shadow the two teams and score the contestants. We would send a head judge from the LGA and would want you to have senior colleagues from the council on the judging panel. The challenge typically starts with a welcome and briefing from a head of service (connected to the challenge theme) or the chief exec.
Finally, the LGA is responsible for organising the logistical arrangements for contestants, such as travel and hotel bookings.
Other than the time required to design and project manage the challenge in the run up to the event, hosting a challenge requires a two day commitment to the challenge itself, which will be allocated across the months January – June.
One of the key benefits to hosting a challenge is the exposure you obtain through social media to raise your council’s profile. In order to achieve this, the LGA team will put you in touch the comms leads at the LGA who can advise around tweeting and promoting the challenge throughout the duration of the event. The challenge will be filmed by a professional videographer, and will therefore require relevant colleagues to willingly say a few words for the camera. The LGA team will also write an article that goes into The MJ, the LGA’s first magazine and onto the LGA website. Copy will be shared with you beforehand for sign off.
You can view some of the challenges from this year to give you a sense of how they are formatted and run https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/officer-development/lg-challenge/lg-challenge-2019
All councils are advised to read our terms and conditions before applying for the challenge.
For more information regarding what is expected of the council in hosting a challenge, please contact [email protected]
