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The Local Government Challenge is a competition to find local government's future top executives. Here Claire Holloway describes the latest challenge in the shoe town of Northampton. Barely had our two teams recovered from the excitement of the Waverley Challenge, when they found themselves on the road again, this time heading for Northampton. The beautiful Guildhall – a testimony to the town's affluent heritage, as a thriving market town and centre of the shoemaking and leather industries – provided the setting for the delivery of the challenge by Northampton BC chief executive David Kennedy. Today, despite a focused economic development plan, some high quality historic restoration in the town centre, a university and a thriving theatre, Northampton has yet to build its reputation as a destination of choice for a night out with friend and family. So over to our two teams – the Red Stripes and the Anarchic Stars – to come up with plans and proposals. The drawback – they have less than 24 hours to do it and none of them have been to Northampton before. The teams' first priority is to speak to key business and community representatives from the town's pubs, clubs, theatre, police and council, who had come to the Guildhall to offer their ideas and perspectives, and then to get out on the streets to find out first-hand what people think of Northampton and its night time economy. With one team member injured and unable to take part, the Red Stripes, led by Von, planned their operation like a military exercise, splitting up into pairs to speak to all the assembled stakeholders, and visit six different venues across town. Meanwhile, the Anarchic Stars, with Anthony at the helm, continued with their own unique brand of organised chaos, quickly highlighting the need for improved signage as their quest to find the site of the town's new marina landed them instead at the station. Continuing their quest to understand Northampton and how it ticks, Anarchic Stars Helen and Michel, and Red Stripes David and Jess, donned their stab vests and joined police officers from the community safety unit on night patrol. As the outside temperature dropped, the clubs hotted up and the contestants witnessed first hand the impact of a vertical drinking culture, where pubs compete to offer incentives to drink alcohol, on a generally quiet and pleasant town. A visible police presence means that any trouble is quickly nipped in the bud – but at both a financial and a reputational cost. At 2.00am, with the clubs still in full swing, the intrepid four left the police to complete their job and headed back to base. Three and half hours later, their team mates headed out with environmental services, clearing the debris of Friday night so that Northampton's Saturday morning shoppers would arrive to a clean and orderly town centre. At 8.00am, bleary-eyed but with information-gathering complete, the teams headed back to the Guildhall for four hours of frantic brainstorming, researching, sifting and organising in preparation for their presentations to the judges – this time headed by the IDeA's Paul ‘no more Mr Nice Guy' Roberts, joined by Northampton chief executive David Kennedy and Neil Bartholomy, chair of Northampton Pub Watch. Despite successive technical hitches during the morning, both teams presented a coherent set of proposals – but their thinking and approaches reflected their very different styles. The Red Stripes played safe, opting for a segmented marketing strategy and improved evening use of the town's impressive Market Square (pictured left), whilst the Anarchic Stars presented an eclectic mix of ideas ranging from better signage from the station (yes, they learnt from experience) and formalising the Bridge Street pedestrian area to rickshaws and knitted lamp posts. It is fair to say that in the time available neither team were able to develop fully rounded and detailed proposals. In the end creativity and imagination won the day – the judges, supported by the assembled audience of business and community interests, felt they could build on at least some of the ideas presented by the Anarchic Stars, who were duly declared winners. The competition is now past the halfway stage and the feedback and questioning are getting tougher. The question is, have our contestants got what it takes to make it through to the end? Find out in six weeks' time when we go to Gravesend in Kent for the fourth challenge. The Local Government Challenge is co-ordinated by the LGA Group and sponsored by Liberata plc. Click here for more information or contact Adam Pokun on 020 7664 3048 Claire Holloway is project director of the Local Government Challenge at the LGA

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WHITEHALL

The shoe fits for the latest local government challenge

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