THE POOL

CONSULTANCY WITH CONSCIENCE

Our associates know what they're talking about, but they also know how to listen. They can provide advice and support; training and facilitation; local development work; funding, financing and trading strategies; business planning and due diligence reviews, site assessments, partnership development and mediation between sectors; project management and evaluation.

CONSULTANCY FROM EXPERIENCE

We specialise in ‘collective intelligence’ services - enabling clients to ‘pick the brains’ of some very experienced people without over-burdening them with consultancy days or costing a fortune.

The Constructive Review is designed to achieve a rapid, intelligent, multi-perspective response to a site asset or project proposal. We engage a selection of our most senior associates with relevant experience to visit, interview or read through background papers. They return their comments to us and we prepare for you a synthesis of their contributions – a ‘collective intelligence report’.

All our consultancy is rooted in our collective experience of community regeneration, over many years and in many different places.

Current clients include:

Communities & Local Government - the Advancing Assets programme is supporting 20 local authority areas to make progress on community asset transfer;

Coventry NDC - a due diligence review to advise on the viability of a £10m freehold transfer to the new Moat House Community Trust;

North Shropshire District Council - advice and support in establishing a Community Assets Trust to take on the non-housing assets in the Housing Revenue Account;

Rockingham Forest Trust - support from three experts on developing trading activities as part of a transition strategy;

Leeds LEGI programme - mentoring service to support the establishment of five development trusts in the city;

CapacityBuilders - a series of ‘Viability not Liability’ seminars for third sector organisations considering asset-based development;

New Heart for Heywood NDC - support in establishing a development trust as a successor body for the NDC;

Finance Hub - designing an innovative action learning programme around trading to create new income streams.