Building Success for Team Aberdeenshire at the Cosla Excellence Awards 2016

The Cosla Excellence Awards 2016 are now open and Team Aberdeenshire is looking to build on previous successes by showcasing innovation and high quality service delivery across the council.

The awards champion Scottish local government initiatives that have an outstanding impact upon people’s lives, spreading inspiring stories and best practice.

Last year, the council was recognised for service delivery excellence with one of our projects, the community library service at HMP & YOI Grampian, achieving the highest accolade of a Gold Award and four more projects awarded Bronze status at the 2015 awards, including imaginative and preventive steps to tackle homelessness, community empowerment in a coastal community, creative placemaking, and school lessons on the creative industries.

Can we match or improve on this further, adding to our tally of two gold, one silver and an impressive 22 bronze awards since 2010? We can, but only if your teams step forward and share their successes with us.

Other initiatives and teams that have attracted honours in previous years include:

• Men’s Shed, Westhill;
• School Travel Planning;
• The Banff Inclusion Project;
• Community Asset Transfer;
• Operation Zenith;
• Kaizen for Daily Improvement; and
• Worksmart and Workspace.

Could you join them in 2016?

We need you to tell us, and Cosla, about what your team is doing that is:

• dynamic and original
• improving efficiency and effectiveness
• delivering early intervention and preventing negative outcomes from arising, or
• developing locally integrated services that tackle inequalities

In particular, what are your teams doing that is making a real and meaningful difference to people’s quality of life and to our communities? How are teams working together to understand, engage and co-produce with local communities based on their needs and aspirations?

Please ask your managers and team leaders to tell us in a short paragraph where Aberdeenshire is leading the way. They need to tell us what their project is about, what it has achieved (or will achieve) and why it is making a difference and delivering excellence. Cosla is particularly interested in assessing the impact of projects, so teams should have a strong evidence base to support their application.

A small awards panel will then identify which projects should be taken forward to the application stage and will work with teams to prepare a potentially award-winning submission.

As with every success, everything is won or lost in the preparation so we need the initial paragraph from teams by 31 August 2015. Submissions should be emailed to Dianne Steven, Performance Officer, atdianne.steven@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

Full submissions will then be drafted for the shortlisted projects and finalised during September. Management Team will sign off applications in early October in time for, pending any changes, submission to Cosla by 23 October 2015. A full timetable can be found below.

For further information, please contact Dianne Steven or visit the awards webpage.