Development of an Impact Assessment Framework, Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust

ERS were commissioned by Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust (WLCT) in late 2007 to develop an Impact Framework for Leisure and Culture Services.

The overall objective of the study was to develop an agreed impact framework, with the full involvement of WLCT service managers and partners, clearly linked to the Community Plan, the four Local Area Agreement blocks and priorities and the WLCT Business Strategy. The work included all service areas of the Trust, with a focus on LAA blocks and priorities.

The study was carried out using a three phase approach:

Phase 1: Paper on Measuring Impact for Leisure/Culture Services - which looked at methods and approaches to impact measurement adopted in comparable leisure and cultural areas, outlined lessons, and informed the development of impact measures.

Phase 2: Facilitation of Workshops – which included both internal workshops with WLCT staff, and workshops with the four LAA project working groups. The internal workshops focused on assessing the strength of the relationship between WLCT activities and LAA priorities, whilst the external workshops were focused on challenging the findings of the process already undertaken and discussing and contributing to the measures being developed to demonstrate impact.

Phase 3: Impact Framework Documentation – which involved the production of a final report, an impact framework matrix and a series of impact tables and relationship maps for each of the 14 LAA Priorities for Wigan that WLCT makes a major contribution towards. It also included the use of a range of intermediate measures to clearly show the linkage (and strength of linkage) between WLCT activities and LAA priorities and indicators.

ERS Contact: Andy Parkinson aparkinson@ers.org.uk 0191 244 6103