Lancashire County Council St Michaels and Carnforth Footbridges - United Kingdom

<p>Lancashire County Council (LCC) in UK are a forward thinking and innovative local authority with a significant number of bridges in their asset stock. They commissioned Jacobs to carry out a detailed options study for eight footbridges following concerns that were raised during principal inspections. The options report considered refurbishment and replacement options and the possibility of using new construction materials with the aim of maximizing durability and minimizing maintenance. The recommendations for all footbridges was replace them with Fibre Reinforced Polymer. LCC divided the eight bridges into packages of two according to their budget constraints and issued tender documents to contactors for the first two packages. The first package contractor has successfully delivered two replacement FRP Footbridges of 28m span over railway in Ormskirk. These are the longest simply supported FRP footbridges in the UK. The second tender package to be issued to tender was for St Michaels and Carnforth Footbridges at 37m and 31m spans. The Council wanted FRP Bow String Trusses for these bridges that crossed a River and a Canal respectively. Nothing like this type and scale of footbridges had ever been realized in the UK. This tender was won with an alternative proposal to replace these footbridges with an aluminium solution explaining to the client in doing so the risks and costs involved in designing and fabricating these structures in FRP would be significantly greater. These are the longest aluminum footbridges in the UK of this type.</p>

The Issue of the Utilization of Thermal Resources in Somogy County (1960-1990)

The purpose of the study. To examine how the situation of thermal tourism in Somogy county developed during the period of socialism. The importance of the use of thermal wells for tourism or industrial purposes was considered by the county council and the organizations of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP). Applied methods. Literature review, especially the development of thermal tourism. The overview includes general processing of economic and tourism history. We place great emphasis on the use of archival materials. It is also important to examine the local press and use the collections of legislation. Outcomes. In Hungary, more and more economic policy measures have been taken since the 1960s to develop tourism. In some rural areas, this was linked to the increased number of oil drillings at the time, as hot water was found in many cases during the test drillings, on which thermal tourism could later be built. Despite the fact that Somogy County was already a prominent tourist destination through Lake Balaton, until the mid-1970s, 22 springs were found during the test drillings where the temperature of the water breaking to the surface exceeded 35 °C. Some of these wells were closed, but the issue of their exploitation could not be circumvented, which caused a number of problems due to a lack of material and human resources. At the same time, the Somogy County Council and county organizations of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) took the issue of thermal tourism extremely seriously and developed a concept for their development on two occasions. However, this only applied only to four major spas: Nagyatád, Igal, Csokonyavisonta and Kaposvár. The smaller spas were entrusted to local maintainers.

Promoting Intergenerational Justice Through Participatory Practices: Climate Workshops as an Arena for Young People’s Political Participation

In the fall of 2019, Trøndelag County Council, Norway, organized a Climate Workshop for children and youth. The intention of the workshop was to include children’s and youth’s perspectives as a foundation for a policy document titled “How we do it in Trøndelag. Strategy for transformations to mitigate climate change”. The workshop involved a range of creative and discussion tools for input on sustainable development and climate politics. In this article, we aim to (1) describe and discuss innovative practices that include children and youth in policymaking related to climate action, and (2) discuss the theoretical implications of such policymaking in relation to children’s rights, young citizenship, and intergenerational justice. We employ a generational framework and perceive climate politics as inherently ingrained in intergenerational justice, where no generation has a superior claim to the earth’s resources, yet power is unfairly concentrated and accumulated among adult generations. We draw on contributions by various stakeholders involved: Two young workshop participants, two county council policymakers, and an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Childhood Studies and Design.

A systems approach to the exploration of research activity and relationships within a local authority

Background Organizations with responsibilities for public health are increasingly required to use evidence-based practice to inform programme delivery, requiring research to generate relevant evidence, and dissemination and use of evidence to inform decisions and practices. Understanding how relationships between organizational structures, systems and processes influence evidence-based practices is critical to improving practice at both an institutional and system level, yet how these relationships should best operate is not well understood. Understanding how to better support research within local authorities, the elected administrative bodies responsible for services including public health at a regional level in the United Kingdom, is a priority for the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Public Health Research. This study is based on Norfolk County Council, a local authority in the east of England. We aimed to apply a systems perspective to develop a better understanding of the structures, systems and processes that support a local authority in becoming research-active, identifying gaps in understanding and recommendations for action to address them. Methods Taking a participatory action research approach, we applied qualitative methods to explore research activity and relationships in Norfolk County Council. We surveyed employees and used network analysis to map individuals, departments and external partners involved in research activities and the connections between them. We then applied participatory approaches to conduct a series of focus groups and semi-structured interviews to explore stakeholders’ experiences and perceptions of being involved in research at, or with, the authority, and their ideas for recommendations for future actions. Results A range of research activity is undertaken at the local authority, with an emphasis on applied work to improve service delivery. We identified several examples of effective practice and models of research collaboration in some departments. Challenges such as limitations in resources, capacity and knowledge exchange were evident, yet there was a readiness amongst key stakeholders to develop and implement actions that may better support the authority in becoming more research-active. Conclusion In large complex organizations, a key challenge is how to share learning across teams and implement good practice at an organizational and system level. Our findings highlight the potential for developing improved collaborative partnership models and systems to support sustainable processes and practices for research and knowledge exchange at an institutional and interorganizational level. The insights gained and shared will support other local authorities and similar large, multilevel organizations with responsibilities for evidence-based public health to explore their own setting and implement change where needed, and provide stimulus for further research into system-level change.

An Assessment of the County Review Process in Hampshire 1929–1932

Under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1929, Hampshire County Council along with other administrative counties was required to review the boundaries of the second and third tier authorities within its borders. As well as being a time-consuming process, it could also be a particularly contentious one. In the event, Hampshire used the opportunity to reduce significantly the number of relatively small second tier authorities, particularly rural district councils, and to adjust boundaries which sometimes gave rise to spirited local opposition. The arguments used by the County Council to justify changes and those resisting them, many of which were aired at an Inquiry conducted by a Ministry of Health Inspector at Winchester in late 1931, are considered.

436 - Scaling up a community-based intervention for people affected by dementia: what is the value?

The Meeting Centres Support Programme [MCSP] provides community-based social, emotional and practical support for people affected by dementia to adjust to the changes dementia brings. Since development in the Netherlands the MCSP has been successfully adapted and implemented in the UK led by the Association for Dementia Studies, University of Worcester. In January (2020), Worcestershire County Council announced £540,000 to scale up the provision of MCSPs across the county: Worcestershire Meeting Centres Community Support Programme [WMCCSP].The novel county-wide approach will build real capacity, increasing the amount of people accessing post-diagnostic support, integrating services, reducing inequalities, and improving health and wellbeing; fundamental to the COVD-19 recovery plan (Department of Health and Social Care, 2020). This raises questions about the type of ‘value’ interventions such as the WCCMCSP should seek to achieve, including how it is captured and measured (Redding, 2016). This becomes more relevant when recognising only a portion of outcomes will be related to health, but much of it is likely to support individual and community wellbeing and development. In this context, understanding and measuring the ‘value’ is timely.A Concept Analysis (Rogers, 2000) of value in the context of community-based interventions for people affected by dementia informed a robust and systematic definition to assess the value created and/or destroyed by the WMCCSP. The research will develop definitions of value in this area from the perspective of key stakeholders including people affected by dementia.Social Return on Investment principles will be employed to understand outcomes created and/or destroyed by the WMCCSP for stakeholders and measure them within an endogenous framework that encapsulates what is, per say, valuable. Progress on the process, challenges, and breakthroughs of this innovative and developmental approach will be presented at the conference.

The ‘History of Everyday Life’ as a Cultural Policy in London Local Government

The second part of this book, of which this chapter is the last, is about the ‘history of everyday life’ in practice. This chapter looks at how popular social history became part of the cultural policy of local government in London, via the activities of the Education Office of the London County Council (LCC). It examines how the ‘history of everyday life’ was used in LCC extra-mural educational programmes to offer a radical model of London citizenship during the heyday of local authority reach and influence. This LCC project had its origins in turn-of-the-century Arts and Crafts thinking and came to fruition in the collectivist climate of wartime, Blitz-shaken London. This chapter again highlights the prominent role of women as producers of popular history, focusing in particular on the work and ideas of Molly Harrison as curator of the Geffrye Museum in Hoxton, East London, during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

Sir Frederick Edward Warner. 31 March 1910—3 July 2010

Frederick Edward (‘Ned’) Warner's childhood home was a London County Council flat in north London. He won a scholarship to Bancroft's School, where he was successful in both academic and sporting activities and was awarded an Exhibition to read chemistry at University College London. Following this chemistry degree he took a diploma in chemical engineering. Sport, debates and left-wing politics dominated his student years. Warner was at the forefront in developing health, safety, risk assessment and environmental policies, particularly in their implementation to chemical process plant; early professional experience in several chemical manufacturing companies and extensive wartime work associated with acid manufacture had driven this commitment. He was a leading figure in the creation of the consulting company Cremer and Warner, and was appointed court expert to the Court of Enquiry following the Flixborough explosion in 1974. As treasurer of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, he chaired three of its major projects: Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War; Pathways of Artificial Radionucleotides; and Radiation from Nuclear Test Explosions. His expertise in the environmental effects of radiation put him in a position to lead the first international team to Chernobyl after the reactor meltdown in 1986. Warner served on many governmental, professional and academic bodies, particularly the Institution of Chemical Engineers, of which he was president in 1966–1967. He was knighted in 1968 for services to chemical engineering, was elected to the Royal Society in 1976 and was a founder fellow of the Fellowship of Engineering (now the Royal Academy of Engineering). He died in 2010, aged 100.