Friday 14 March 2014

Walking back to happiness

Well I walked 21 miles in 7.5 hours on the Sussex Downs last Saturday, and to prove it wasn't a fluke I have the day off today to repeat the same walk. All this in prepartion for the "Y to Y" Marathon Walk on Sunday 23 March.

The week has been completely dominated by our detailed Due Diligence work on the costs/income potential of Surrey Youth Focus taking over the management of the Woking Youth Arts Centre. I met with our pro bono property lawyers on Tuesday morning and with Peer Productions in the afternoon about our proposed pricing model. I have since written most of a detailed report on the Business Case. The requirements of Surrey CC Property make it a very difficult proposition as we have now worked through the detail.

The key learning point is that if you approach running a youth centre as a business, albeit a charitable business, that has to wash its face, balancing income in, against costs out, you have a very different perspective from a local authority for whom this is just one of hundreds of buildings that have costs that are offset....not by income earnt...but by the taxpayer. The difference becomes between running a business and needing to earn income on the one hand, from deciding how to carve up the cake of competing priorities for taxpayers' cash that is automatically received. These are culturally and operationally very different perspectives.

Meanwhile, there was an excellent workshop at County Hall with Youth Service commissioners about HOW to re-commission the £35 mill total budget. In the past the default has been open competitive tender, against which I have constantly argued. However there is now a real prospect of a much more collaborative approach. Very encouraging.

The first pop concert I ever went to was by Helen Shapiro who had a great hit with "Walking back...!" 

Enjoy the sunny week-end...hmm... now where are those boots?
          Mike

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