During the annual gala dinner on the first day of President’s Conference, awards were presented to people and organisations that have excelled in the past year.
Members (individually and collectively) have faced another incredibly challenging year. We’re extremely proud of what you do and want to celebrate your success and the hard work of our local public services community. There’s lots for us to shout about with so much achieved by so many.
2024 Socitm Awards
| Member Advocate of the Year: Tim Spiers |
|---|
| Highly Commended: Shelley Heckman (Tameside Council), Graham Jordan (Gateshead Council) and Yunus Mayat (Bradford Council) |
| Shining Stars of Socitm! |
| We were on the hunt for members who went above and beyond, making waves across their communities. Leading with passion, and leaving a mark on everything they have done within Socitm over the past year. Tim has demonstrated this by uniting people within Oxfordshire County Council and the wider community. He has shown commitment in showing the value Socitm adds, particularly with regards to partnerships, equality, and inclusion. |
| Partner of the Year: Canon UK |
|---|
| Highly Commended: Netcall |
| Partners in Progress |
| We were searching for partners who’ve not only made an impact but have become essential allies; leveraging their expertise, technologies, and unwavering commitment to elevate the experiences of our members. Canon has been a dedicated partner and advocate of Socitm over the years. Whether that’s promoting and connecting people and organisations who would benefit from engaging with us right through to providing free venues for leadership training. This award is truly deserved for their enthusiasm, dedication and support to the society. |
| Leadership Advocate of the Year: Irene Docherty (Wiltshire Council) |
|---|
| Highly Commended: Graeme Murrell (Kirklees Council) |
| Leadership Legends |
| This award honours the visionary leaders who’ve tirelessly championed the essence of our Leadership Academy, paving the way for greatness and inspiring others to follow suit. Irene’s seen the value of our learning interventions and encouraged her colleagues to benefit from the personal development opportunities on offer. |
| Service Delivery Project of the Year: Southampton City Council |
|---|
| Highly Commended: Walsall Council |
| Service superstars unleashed |
| Southampton has delivered service improvements relating to starters, leavers and movers. A full Agile delivery model was used, setting up a cross organisation Scrum team from scratch, learning the methodology and the technology stack whilst delivering the service improvement. By utilising existing investments in their platforms they minimised additional costs whilst maximising the opportunities to share with partners. |
| Transformation Initiative of the Year: Walsall Council |
|---|
| Highly Commended: Newcastle City Council |
| Transformers: Unleash the future |
| Walsall Council has reshaped landscapes, driven change, and completed their remarkable transformative journey. They have delivered impressive results, increased customer satisfaction, a place-based health and care partnership, innovative working to name but a few have achieved significant savings and benefits. Their Proud Programme has demonstrated its capacity for improvement, innovation, and collaboration and has set strong foundations for the next stage of their journey. |
| AI Initiative of the Year: AI/Copilot subgroup of Microsoft’s LocalGov Innovation and Collaboration Forum |
|---|
| Highly commended: Swindon Borough Council’s Simply Readable |
| AI Trailblazers: Where innovation meets intelligence |
| We wanted to be dazzled with details on how AI has been practically deployed to revolutionise organisations within the last year. The forum subgroup is delivering incredible benefits at a huge scale driving collaboration across the sector for the benefit of the sector. They are collaborating to find the tangible benefits of AI and most importantly sharing those insights. It’s the fastest growing public sector AI community globally to date, and has most notably seen impressive outcomes around the challenges of social care. |
| Data Initiative of the Year: Walsall Council’s Geospatial Team |
|---|
| Data Dynamo Awards: Where insights lead to impact |
| We wanted to see data prowess with case studies highlighting successful deployments and implementations of analytics solutions in the last year. Walsall’s small but mighty team thrive on spatial data. In their words, “everything happens somewhere”! They constantly follow the ethos of how they can use that information and turn it into data which they can then use for decision making to shape and improve their services |
| Sustainability Initiative of the Year: University of Exeter’s Local Climate Adaptation Tool |
|---|
| Highly Commended: Connected Places Catapult – CReDo |
| Sustainability Stars: Charting a greener tomorrow |
| Document your sustainability journey, proving your commitment to making a positive impact on the environment and society. LCAT has been developed by the University’s European Centre for Human Health, Cornwall Council and with input from The Alan Turing Institute. It’s been supported with co-design with partners from local government, the NHS, emergency services, and the voluntary and private sectors. |
“This is amazing news. This tool was co-designed with over 100 different local decision-makers across the UK and it is their insight and advice that shaped the design. They told us they needed a simple online tool that brought together all the data and advice they might need to understand how local climates will change, what the climate impacts might be for their communities and, crucially, what action to take. With little adaptation action happening across the UK, LCAT provides support to local decision-makers in their work to build healthy and resilient communities.”
Jess Dicken, Research Fellow on LCAT
| Innovation of the Year: Project Knapweed (Bruce Thomson at Information Security for London) |
|---|
| Innovators Unleashed: Designing tomorrow, today |
| We wanted to see demonstrations of exceptional product/service design and innovation, showcasing a commitment to novel ideas or approaches. Cyber-attacks on public services can have devastating effects. We’ve all seen that. It’s much harder, though, to keep an eye on extended supply chains. Project Knapweed monitors ransomware gangs, trawls the dark web for compromised public sector data, and lets us know when it finds any. This means we get a head start on mitigating impact, protecting those whose sensitive data has been compromised and preventing further damage up and down our supply chains. |
| Partner and Customer Collaboration of the Year: Netcall and Lancashire County Council |
|---|
| Highly Commended: Walsall Council and PWC |
| Harmony in collaboration: Partners and customers unite |
| We were looking for those extraordinary collaborations that have gone beyond the norm, achieving outstanding outcomes through effective relationships. Show us how partners and customers, have brought new ideas to life through collaborative efforts. This year’s winner shows us exactly how partners and customers can collaborate in new ideas to demonstrate value in a variety of ways throughout the organisation and wider community. Their new Welfare Rights Case Management system, built in a low-code platform records detailed and confidential casework in a secure environment. Staff can now effectively support the most vulnerable people in Lancashire and ensure they get the right advice to solve complex benefits issues. Staff now enjoy instant visibility of and access to casework across the welfare service. Real-time responses and efficient process flows mean manual workarounds are a thing of the past. Along with a 25% increase in overall service efficiency, the welfare service can now help an additional 400 people every year. |