Background
We were selected from the companies invited to tender by the team at Leicester City Council in order to conduct a feasibility study to determine whether there was a need to establish a Groundwork Trust for the City.

We were chosen for our quality research, analysis and facilitation skills, particularly having worked on several major DTI projects for various industry sectors and also our work with the Welsh development Agency.

This, combined with the fact that we had not worked on similar projects in that region before, ensured that we would approach the project from a business viewpoint and be impartial and free from any agendas.

Whilst there were many initiatives within the city, information was not comprehensive on the levels of success and degree of overlap etc for current projects.

Our approach involved initially interviewing the project team to identify their understanding and requirements more fully, then tailoring our research approach to address these needs.

Approach
Our approach involved developing a discussion guide, incorporating information from the discussions we had with the project team, and then conducting interviews with key personnel involved in regeneration projects within the city. Interviews were held by telephone, face-to-face or conducted by post/email in some cases.

We collated the information obtained and then developed a summary of our key findings including:

+ key assertions relating to our analysis
+ information about current/future projects & the areas covered
+ information about areas not currently addressed
+ opinions of the people interviewed about the need for a Groundwork Trust.

We then presented our findings to the project team and then ran a highly interactive workshop with a representative cross section of those interviewed to discuss the findings and agree the way forward.

Our final analysis involved mapping current and planned projects against the key criteria required within the city and those specified within the Groundwork overall strategy.

Various gaps were indeed identified and this then enabled those concerned to develop a plan to close these gaps.

We also mapped the needs identified within the city and cross analysis showed the priorities required for future projects, which could then be further developed into a form of assessment criteria for bids for finding of projects within the city.