Inspire East closing down
Inspire East will close on 31 March 2011. However, work is on-going to ensure that Inspire East leaves a considerable legacy in the form of continuing networks, services and good practice resources.
Changing priorities for RDAs meant that EEDA consulted on the future of Inspire East in early 2010. It concluded that 2010-11 would the last year of funding for Inspire East from EEDA. Clearly, the more recent announcement of the closure of RDAs themselves has underlined the finality of this decision.
Similar decisions have been reached by other RDAs and a number of Inspire East’s counterparts have already closed. EEDA’s early notice of withdrawal of funding allowed other options for Inspire East to be explored. However, it soon became clear that the transfer of Inspire East as a whole to another organisation was unlikely due to a number of factors. Instead, the focus has been on transferring services to new homes.
As of January 2011 progress looks like this:
The Excellence Framework has been transferred to the Building Research Establishment (BRE). BRE are committed to continuing a ‘free to user’ service and are currently making some revisions to the toolkit. The Excellence Framework, including a new website, will be re-launched before the end of March 2011.
Our Design Review Panel sat for the last time in November 2010. We will be publishing a ‘legacy document’ which will attempt to capture our learning and experiences from running the Design Review and Enabling Panels since Summer 2006. The future of Design Review at a national level is currently under review. Inspire East is working with partners inside and outside the region to ensure existing regional capacity is built into future plans. We are working with Shape East and the Kent Architecture Centre to develop alternative funding models for a regional panel.
The Enabling Service will deliver existing commitments until we close. The continuation of a regional service beyond Inspire East’s closure is intrinsically tied to the future of Design Review.
Our community empowerment programme brings together a number projects and activities funded through a range of national and regional funding streams. All of these activities are due to end in March 2011. Whilst there is no identified funding to support their continuation, partners are keen to ensure the networking that has been a key success factor is retained. We are working with partners to see how this can be best achieved.
Inspire East has produced a vast range of good practice resources across all of its programmes. These are generally accessible through our website or in hard copy format. Partners are encouraged to download copies of anything they feel useful. The Inspire East website is likely to close at the end of March 2011 or soon afterwards. Key Inspire East documents are planned to be transferred to an EEDA website but it is unknown how long this site will be accessible.
If you have any questions about the future of Inspire East services please contact a member of the team (before 31 March 2001).
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