Applying GreenSTAT

Accurate and reliable visitor feedback is an essential element of informed decision making. The Gershon review reinforces the requirement for performance assessment (www.hm-treasury.gov.uk), whilst the new White Paper ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’ reinforces the need to demonstrate that managers understand and respond to visitor and wider community needs (www.communities.gov.uk).

GreenSTAT can be used to achieve a variety of organisational and management goals:
Click on a link to find out more about GreenSTAT and:

Parks and Open Space Strategies
Management Plans
HLF Parks for People
Green Flag Award
Best Value
Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA)
Audit Commission
Towards An Excellent Service (TAES)
Local Area Agreements (LAAs)

Parks and Open Space Strategies and GreenSTAT

GreenSTAT has been designed to assist in the development of parks and open space strategies and meets the requirements of PPG 17 "Assessing needs and opportunities".

• By providing a choice of questionnaires and enabling responses to be obtained in a range of ways, GreenSTAT data can be used to address user demographics, use patterns, activities, accessibility, catchment area, and various satisfaction indicators.


• The opinion surveys included within the Service questionnaire test residents’ perceptions about the generic value of green spaces, as well as providing an opportunity to test the popularity of more specific locally based strategic proposals.

Management Plans and GreenSTAT

The primary purpose of creating a site-management plan is to aid efficient and effective management of a green space, over a specified time.

• GreenSTAT identifies community needs and informs management on where improvement should be directed.

HLF Parks for People and GreenSTAT

• HLF requires applicants to carry out visitor surveys about current users before applying for Stage Two of the grant, using a standard questionairre such as GreenSTAT. Click here to view the HLF guidance on this matter.


• Applicants are required to repeat these surveys once the project is complete to compare results and demonstrate improvement.


• Applicants should allow for the costs of the first surveys under development costs and the second under delivery costs.


• To find out more about the HLF's involvement with parks and GreenSpace click here.
  

GreenSTAT and Green Flag Award

Green Flag Award entry requires that community engagement is shown and that the management reflects the aspirations of visitors and residents.

• GreenSTAT helps find out what the aspirations of visitors are and will contribute to the community consultation aspect of the Green Flag Award assessment.


• The system allows recording of Green Flag Award self-assessment scores and official judges' score over time.

Best Value and GreenSTAT

Under Best Value, Service Providers are required to Challenge, Compete, Compare and Consult

• Authorities can consult their residents using GreenSTAT by allowing them to give their comments about any space at any time.


• National and Local benchmarking through GreenSTAT will allow comparison between local authorities.


• Respondents’ comments on the GreenSTAT website may challenge the way services are delivered Competition should be considered both in terms of cost and the quality standard achieved.


• Competition should be considered both in terms of cost and quality standard achieved. The views of visitors are a viable form of quality assessment which can be used to set a measurable quality standard against which alternative methods of service delivery can be required to compete.


• Best Value performance indicator BVP 119e is included in the question set of both GreenSTAT questionnaires

CPA and GreenSTAT

Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) aims to provide an overall view of the performance of councils and their arrangements for improving services.

• CPA seeks to categorise Best Value authorities according to relative performance, driving improvements in service delivery. The benchmarking potential of GreenSTAT could be used in the review of relative performance.


• The Audit Commission have confirmed that they view GreenSTAT as an appropriate and effective tool for consultation.


• CPA calls for Self Assessment and GreenSTAT could be a key component of this process.
• Potential benchmarking facilitated by GreenSTAT could be used for "Peer Assessment".


• GreenSTAT is relevant to all the themes of CPA where it is used to drive service delivery methods, prioritise actions and improvements, set targets and monitor performance and feed into the development of strategies and site plans.


• Performance indicators for ‘Corporate Assessment’ and could be largely based on the results of GreenSTAT e.g. various measures of satisfaction, increased diversity of users, increased length of stay.

Audit Commission and GreenSTAT

Local authorities need to be able to demonstrate to the Audit Commission that they are listening and responding to the needs and views of their local community.

• GreenSTAT gathers the views of residents, allowing for very specific action or improvement plans to be developed on a site by site or whole service basis.


• By using a consistent method as provided by GreenSTAT clients will be able to set targets and measure their success over time.


• As GreenSTAT clients grow in number they will be able to measure their results against others in more and more sophisticated ways.

TAES and GreenSTAT

The Towards An Excellent Service (TAES) model provides organisations with a basis for self-assessment, enabling them to identify areas in which they are performing well together with priority areas for improvement. It is applicable across all cultural services with slight modification for each.

• TAES focuses on the establishment of an improvement culture in service delivery


• The assessment enables organisations to identify improvement priorities and measure progress over time.


• TAES relies on producing evidence that aspects of the performance framework are in place and being implemented.


• TAES enables organizations to measure themselves against a range of criteria under eight themes. GreenSTAT is identified within TAES as part of the evidence base for Community Engagement, showing that the views of residents are being effectively gathered and that service delivery is developed in response to those views.


• GreenSTAT is also relevant to other TAES themes such as Policy and Strategy, Use of Resources, Standards of Service and Performance Measurement and Learning.

Local Area Agreements (LAAs) and GreenSTAT

Local Area Agreements set out the priorities for an area as agreed between central government, the local authority, the Local Strategic Partnership and other key partners at the local level. The priorities are set against four themes; Children and Young People, Healthier Communities and Older People, Safer and Stronger Communities and Economic Development. Whilst a parks and open space based project could be developed to specifically link to any one of these four themes, it is recognised that cultural services, including parks, cut across all four.

LAAs emphasise the need for targets, established from baseline measurements, which are both output and outcome driven. Local authority services will not be able to secure the grant funding linked to LAAs or proceed with improvement initiatives without baseline information. GreenSTAT is able to provide a range of appropriate baseline information.

LAAs imply a cyclical process of continuous improvement: auditing, target setting, assessment and improvement planning. The use of GreenSTAT can support this process for parks and open spaces.