When you make the choice to stand for public office, you spend much of your time focused in your ward or constituency on the hyper-local issues that resonate with voters. Once elected, you quickly realise that the City of London Corporation’s responsibilities nationally and internationally, across a portfolio of charities and commercial organisations, which means that most of your time is then consumed by trying to tackle much bigger issues. Issues which rarely hit the radar of constituents, but can make a meaningful difference in public life.
Yesterday, the Court of Common Council approved a new P3 Policy Framework, which has taken almost two years of drafting, amending, consultation and briefings to publish. P3 is an abbreviation for projects, programmes and portfolios. It is the rule book which outlines how we define projects, the stages for scrutiny and approval depending upon the levels of risk and complexity and the consequences of non-compliance.
People often automatically switch off when you talk about policy documents. It sounds like an admin task, but for us at the City of London Corporation, this is driving a wholesale re-set of our culture and behaviours. This policy has stripped back layers of complexity which have historically added unnecessary delays and costs. It has confused Members, Officers and external partners. This policy will encourage our teams to innovate and be creative with solutions – taking measured risk and recognising when is the right time to close out projects early if they don’t work, feeding any learning into future projects.
The policy has also driven the technical requirements for Cora, our new P3 technology solution, providing a single source of truth for all of the Corporation’s projects, with helpful templates, a range of analysis dashboards for different audiences and automated workflows to ensure compliance with governance requirements.
So why does this matter?
The City of London currently has £2.2bn of projects in its portfolio. Many of these will have a national or international impact, including major infrastructure projects and transformation initiatives. In recent years, the allocated budgets aligned to the portfolio have grown considerably due to inflationary pressures and, for example, the need to respond to changing legislation designed to address climate change and energy efficiency. In such a large portfolio, this can have a significant impact on the financial stability of the organisation and therefore enhanced governance, clear prioritisation and the need to deliver value for money is really important.
To support this work, we have established a centre of excellence under the Chamberlain’s Commercial Directorate. Aligned to each department within the City Corporation will be a dedicated business partner to support oversight and scrutiny of their project portfolios. These qualified professionals are drawn together from both public and private sectors, better reflecting the different responsibilities within the Corporation.
The new P3 Policy Framework will come into effect in November 2025
My thanks to Genine, Nadhim, Matthew, Gideon, Michael, Scott, Alessia and all of the team who have worked so hard to push this over the line.
We look forward to publishing our new Procurement Policy Framework later this year!