Walk Norwich - Programme Report

By Dan Harris, Programme Coordinator

Contents

Background

Branding and Online Presence

Summary of Activities Carried Out So Far

Programme Update

1. Programme Visibility

2. Programme Engagement

3. Partnership Working

Project Specifics

1. Beat the Street

2. Norwich Health Walks

3. Community Street Audits

4. Personal Travel Plans

Summary of Evaluation

Department of Health Reporting

1. Progress against related milestones

2. Anything else DH and DfT should know

3. What’s going well and not so well?

Targets

Norwich City Council Programme Summary

Finance

Appendix

Background

Norwich’s ambition is to make walking a natural and attractive choice whether for

recreational purposes or local journeys, enabling people to easily integrate in to their

communities, access services and reach their place of work. Thereby enhancing physical and

mental wellbeing, reducing carbon footprint and making Norwich a safe and pleasant city to

visit, live and work in.

To achieve this, the city will work in partnership to maximise the value of investment in

sustainable transport for the benefit of pedestrians

Norwich City Council received £228,500 from the Department of Health to deliver a

programme of work from April 2014 until March 2015 focusing on reducing health

inequalities within the city through walking initiatives. The key target wards will be

Heartsease, Thorpe Hamlet, Lakenham, Mancroft, Wensum, Bowthorpe and Costessey.

These wards are adjacent to the Pink Pedalway, a cycle route which has received Cycling

Cities Ambition money to be developed. The funding for Walk Norwich comes from the

Department of Health and is linked to the receipt of a Cycling Cities Ambition Grant.

Branding

Online Presence

Website – www.norwich.gov.uk/walknorwich

Facebook – www.facebook.com/iwalknorwich

Twitter – www.twitter.com/walknorwich

Pinterest – www.pinterest.com/walknorwich

Flickr- www.flickr.com/user/walknorwich

Executive Summary

The programme was launched publically on Tuesday 13th May 2014 at the iconic Norwich

location of The Forum to over 40 local stakeholders, decision makers and health

professionals. The launch was covered by BBC Radio Norfolk, Mustard TV and local press.

The launch set the tone for the first three months where we’ve looked to make as much

noise as possible about the programme publically to quickly bring participants to the early

initiatives and encourage future stakeholders and partners to get in contact. This approach

has so far successfully seen over 5000 participants talking part in walking activities, social

media accounts populated (for example Twitter – 508 followers) and contact being made

with future partners like Hellesdon High School, Mile Cross Sure Start Centre, Slimming

World and StudyVox FM.

At the end of July 2014 the Walk Norwich programme finds itself with the successful

delivery of Beat the Street under its belt and a Health Walks Programme building

momentum. Over the 9 weeks of Beat the Street the target distance of 25,000 miles was

walked by well over 2000 participants. This high level of participation also offered us the

opportunity to trial several community engagement approaches. Event formats like the

Zombie Walk Off and Lego Treasure Hunt with Pedestrian Pledges appears to serve a need

and successfully attract large numbers of attendees. Beat the Street also offered the

opportunity to understand teenager engagement strategies, finding that the approach taken

with Sprowston Teen Café hugely successful. Their team won the initiative over all.

The high programme participation levels from May to July were also capitalised on to launch

a smartphone app and a social networking campaign called #FeetieFriday. The app is free

and will deliver programme content like an event calendar and photos in one location. The

app has already received over 50 downloads. The #FeetieFriday campaign rewards people

for celebrate their favourite walks by sharing a feetie (a selfie of your feet) photo on Twitter

or Facebook, there by also sharing engagement with the programme with their social

networks. The best feetie photos receive a prize and participation is growing steadily.

Connections within the Sports Development Team have also allowed the programme to

establish a Championing Active Travel award as part of The Norwich City Sports Awards and

create a video promoting Beat the Street for regular screening on a public outdoor screen

outside The Forum.

Launching within National Walking Month further strengthened the news worthiness of the

start of the programme. Week long Living Streets Walk to School Week challenges were

offered to Norwich’s infant and primary schools and take up saw over 2000 students

participate in these week long walking challenges.

Conscious that programmes connections into communities could be the key to success we

thought carefully about the voluntary role to recruit into, settling on the job title City

Walking Champion. The recruitment drive received front page coverage on local newspapers

and attracted over 20 applicants for the role. Of these applicants 18 have been trained to

lead our health walks and continue to volunteer their time to deliver the Health Walks

programme. The Health Walks programme was launched in May into two neighbourhoods

with high levels of inactivity. We spread the first forty two walks over a range of weekend,

weekday and evening time slots to build up a picture of up take during the first three

months. Programmes were distributed through the Prescription Delivery Service and

participation levels have been encouraging. Attendances have been steadily growing, and

we have been inspired to see the walks attract people new to walking for health with

inactive lifestyles. Partnership work with Sure Start Centres, Slimming World and parish

nurses offers new referral route over the coming 6 months. Hellesdon High School students

of Health and Social Care will start using placement time to lead walks in October 2014.

As we approach August, it’s encouraging to see the Job Centre + pilot of Personal Travel

Plans being ready to roll out with the scheme embedded in Job Centre Plus + management

and staff processes. We await feedback from the pilot before planning next steps with our

remaining Personal Travel Plans.

The presence of a Living Streets Local Group in Norfolk has given the programme a great

source of local pedestrian knowledge. With their support the programme has been working

with the Save Our Schoolrun Eaton campaign to reopen a school walking route. A closure

that’s seen an estimated 75% drop in walking to Eaton schools. One Community Street Audit

has been completed and we’re positive a solution will be found before September 2014.

Programme Overview

1. Programme Visibility

We received good coverage of Walk Norwich when the programme began in May 2014.

Launch

Attended by over 40 decision makers from local stake holder groups.

Press Coverage (see appendix)

Front page coverage of Champion recruitment on Evening News

Champion recruitment coverage in EDP and Norwich Advertiser

Article covering Launch event on Mustard TV

Interviewed about programme on BBC Radio Norfolk

Interviewed about programme on Future Radio

Interviewed about programme twice on The Mustard Show

Social Media

Facebook – 72 followers

Twitter – 506 followers

Pinterest – 26 followers

2. Programme Engagement

With well over 2000 people who actively participating with Beat the Street, and the

programme still at a point where it could be shaped by learning, it was key to create some

strong community engagement in the first three months of delivery.

Events and Campaigns

Zombie Walk Off 1 & 2 – Attracting over 100 participants between the two

events, the format proved successful for engaging primary school children and

parents and the attendance showed a need.

Lego Treasure Hunt – A single event attended by over 100 people. A successful

trial of an event format that can include walk pledges.

#FeetieFridays - A social media campaign which has grown slowly. Aimed at

engaging young adults has received 30 responses in the first month. There are

plans to promote the campaign across the summer.

Tools

Secured use of Pop-Up radio unit from The StudyVox Foundation to create high

quality case studies and podcasts as a route into engaging with schools and

workplaces.

Walk to School Week 2014 – 9 Norwich schools ran week long Living Streets

walking challenges engaging over 2000 students.

Smartphone App created for Android + Apple phones and launched on 28th June

– It contains up to date Events Calendar, Photos, Podcasts/Case studies and news

from Facebook and Twitter feeds. The app has received just under 50 downloads

in less than a month.

3. Partnership Working

Partnership working is crucial to the success of this programme and the first 6 months of

planning and delivery with project partners Active Norfolk, Intelligent Health and Liftshare

have been a great success. The coordinator has also sought to build additional partnerships

with a range of other organisations including:

Exploring the embedding of Health Walks into Slimming World’s monthly schedule

through a Norwich CCG connection.

Developing referral routes onto Health Walks through Mile Cross Sure Start Centre

Worked closely with Sprowston Teen Café in planning Beat the Street and as a result

received great buy into the initiative from the young people who attend the café.

Project Specifics

1. Beat the Street Four participating schools: Open Academy, Heartsease Primary, Falcon Junior,

Cecil Gowing. Two youth clubs: Sprowston Teen Café and The Place

Total number of game cards in use 2059

Total mileage walked collectively over 25,000 miles (once round the world)

Launch engagement event (Zombie Walk Off) attracted over 80 participants

Over 100 participants attended Lego Treasure Hunt with a walking pledge.

Beat the Street has proved to be not only a valuable initiative in its own right but also a

valuable tool at the start of a year long programme. Beat the Street has offered the

perfect platform to: make noise about the arrival of Walk Norwich, start building the

community engaged by not only Beat the Street but also the broader programme and

pilot some engagement approaches with harder to reach individuals.

2. Norwich Health Walks

First brochure of walks in Heartsease and Mile Cross into third month of delivery

Walks successfully attracting our target audience

Partnership with Hellesdon High School for Health & Social Care students to lead

health walks to start in the new academic year.

Planning complete for the new programme which will cover August to October, and

introduce walks in Bowthorpe, Eaton and Wensum

The introduction of the Health Walks programme has been keeping pace with our

expectations, but not exceeding them. This doesn’t come as a surprise due to the

behaviour change we’re looking to see in potential participants. As we now start to

deliver our second quarterly programme the exciting thing is the partnerships and

referral routes that are starting to open up. Distributing the Walks Brochure through the

local prescription delivery service has proved successful. Discussions with Slimming

World, Mile Cross Sure Start Centre, Heartsease Parish Nurse and Norwich CCG offer

routes for more rapid growth over the coming months and good learning for any future

work.

3. Community Street Audits

We’ve completed one street audit of a school route to Eaton Primary School, which was

attended by 11 members of the community. The report will be available in August.

4. Personal Travel Plans Pilot project with Job Centre + due to start in July 2014. 250 travel plans

contributed to this pilot.

Conversations have been had with Liftshare and Norfolk County Council to ensure a

joined up approach in distributing the Personal Travel Plans that we both have. Walk

Norwich has been holding back on placing capacity into workplace recruitment pending

discussions with Active Norfolk and the outcome of the Job Centre + pilot.

Summary of monitoring and evaluation

Upshot is now live to monitor and help evaluate broader elements of the Living

Streets programme delivery.

Additional targets for Living Streets engagement events are on page 9.

Beat the Street

Participants have answered the single item physical activity questionnaire on

signing up for the initiative, and will be asked to fill out further questionnaires

following the initiative.

The data from the 9 week challenge period gives us really good information on

how people engaged with the initiative.

We have been lucky in Norwich to have been offered some bespoke monitoring and

evaluation of the Beat the Street initiative by Professor Andy Jones from University

of East Anglia. This piece of monitoring is being conducted with accelerometers split

between 50 students at a control school and 50 students at a participating school.

Student activity levels have been monitored before and during the intervention and

the final piece of monitoring will take place after the summer holidays in September.

Health Walks

Active Norfolk already has the structure and processes in place from their county

programme to monitor the Walk Norwich walks. This process includes the single

item physical activity questionnaire

Personal Travel Plans

Liftshare have monitoring and evaluation built into there processes. Participants will

be asked to respond to a survey at points following the intervention.

Department of Health Feedback

Progress against related milestones

Programme Milestone Progress Against Milestone

Funding decision announced Funding notice received Oct 2013

Media launch for successful Norwich walking programme

Full media launch held for 13th May 2014 as delivery began.

Press release Jan ‘14 deadline hit

May ‘14 press release well received

Advertise Living Streets Coordinator post

Post advertised in November 2013 ahead of interviews in December.

Member 'champion' begins advocacy

Draw up detailed project plans with partner organisations

This took place once coordinator was in post between Feb - May ‘14

Interviews for Living Streets Coordinator post

Interviews took place early December.

Agree led walks delivery schedule - recruitment & training of volunteers, marketing strategy

This took place once coordinator was in post between February and May 2014.

Community engagement events Community engagement events started in May 2014, and will happen monthly throughout the programme delivery period

Introduce the programme to GP's, practise managers, Health Trainers, community engagement officers

This has become an on going process that started in April 2014 and will continue throughout the year.

Meet Intelligent Health to agree timeframe for Beat the Street delivery

Timeframe agreed once coordinator was in post.

Living Streets coordinator takes up post

Coordinator in post at start of February 2014, which is slightly late.

Project steering group meet Steering Group preparing to meet for second time on 29th July 2014.

Project delivery board meet Amalgamated with Steering Group.

Begin Health Walk pilot in one target community. Draw up full programme using experience gained from pilot

Pilot didn’t take place. Coordinator wasn’t in post until Feb 2014.

Meet Liftshare to plan roll out of Personal Travel Plans

Meeting took place on schedule and approaches were discussed.

Begin engagement with local businesses

Business engagement delayed to allow for conversations with County Council and Job Centre +. Engagement to begin over the summer.

Community street audit Audits started on 17th July ‘14

Referrals on to Health Walks programme

Referrals commenced with the launch of the programme in May ‘14

Launch full health walks project Launch held until May to coincide with Programme Launch and the start of Beat the Street delivery.

Provide Personal Travel Plans through chosen employers

Now proposed to take place during late summer early autumn 2014

Provide Personal Travel Plans through Norwich Job Centre

Delivery of a pilot project through Job Centre + starts early in July 2014

Provide Personal Travel Plans to participants of Health Walks project

Not yet delivered this. Currently evaluating approach and benefit.

Local community walking challenge First local walking challenges took place during Walk to School Week. Planning for further challenges to take place over the summer.

Launch Beat the Street within target community

Beat the Street launched slightly late on 16th May 2014.

Beat the Street evaluation On schedule for August

Anything else DH and DfT should know

With such a tight window for the delivery of this programme, there are three things that

have been invaluable in hitting the ground running:

1. Having some of the initiative mapped out at application stage with delivery partners

established meant we could create a noisy launch within three months of the

coordinator being in post.

2. The coordinator role being hosted by the City Council team, and being based in the

same office has kept the coordinator in the loop with the broader agenda and

activity within city and county so that opportunities could be capitalised on.

3. Having the resources and experience of Living Streets to pull upon has meant the

programme hasn’t had to create resources and reinvent the wheel.

What’s going well?

Building on the established relationships and partnerships within the Sports

Development team at Norwich City Council has proved incredibly useful.

The programme being part of a national Walking Cities delivery has provided

valuable insights into different approaches.

The presence of a strong Living Streets Local Group has provided good local

knowledge and a great resource for community engagement.

Having a focus on just two neighbourhoods over the first three months allowed

us to achieve more in launching the programme without spreading resources too

thinly across the city.

The voluntary role of City Walking Champion recruited a great team of

individuals to lead walks and feed into the programme.

Regularly discussing the programme with Beelin Baxter has been a valuable

source of ideas

I can see Upshot adding a lot to tracking and monitoring the programme.

What’s going not so well?

Getting schools on board on a very tight schedule was a huge challenge in the

build up to Beat the Street in May.

Arranging a time when at least 50% of City Walking Champions can meet

together hasn’t yet worked out. Exploring other options to stay connected.

Targets

Health Walks (delivered in partnership with Active Norfolk) – 500 participants

Beat the Street (delivered in partnership with Intelligent Health) – 3000 participants

Personal Travel Plans (delivered in partnership with Liftshare) – 2400 participants

Living Streets engagement target

Project Beneficiary/output type A-J 14

J-S 14

O-D 14

J-M 15

A-J 15

Total

1. Awareness and information

Number of people reached with a walking message

7000 2000 2000 2000 2000 15000

Number of activities and events 7 12 6 6 12 43

Number of local press pieces 6 4 2 3 0 15

2. Participation and Led Activities

Number of people taking part in a walking activity

3500 300 300 300 500 4900

Number of people walking more after being involved in our project

0 0 0 0 3000 3000

Number of people feeling more healthy after involvement in project

0 0 0 0 1000 1000

Number of schools involved in walking activities ('Schools')

12 0 3 0 10 25

3. Street improvements

Number of Community Street Audits completed ('CSAs')

0 1 2 2 0 5

Number of residents taking part in CSAs

0 15 30 30 0 75

4. Community and capacity building

Number of Walking Champions supported

15 5 5 5 0 30

Number of volunteers taking action 8 20 5 5 5 43

Number of volunteer hours 16 30 20 20 20 106

Norwich City Council Programme Summary

When Norwich City Council was invited to bid for funding to develop a walking project,

discussions took place with a number of organisations who were prepared to work in

partnership to deliver the project. Considerable though was given as to the best approach to

take and Living Streets were chosen as the key partner. Dan Harris was then appointed by

Living Streets as project coordinator and he joined the Norwich City Council sports

development team earlier this year. This partnership approach has proved to be very

productive and delivery of The Walk Norwich programme has captured considerable media

attention and has exceeded engagement expectations.

The project has particularly benefitted from Living Streets expertise and wider knowledge of

the issues and challenges related to increasing walking. There has also been considerable

enthusiasm and support from all the key partners and organisations which has enabled Dan

to deliver initiatives within a very tight timeframe. Dan has worked tirelessly to ensure the

programme is a great success and has personally gone the extra mile to engage with as

many potential participants as possible.

Dan’s role has also benefitted from being part of a wider team who have local knowledge

and contacts and he has worked particularly closely with Rich Hoey, sport and equity

development officer who helped shaped the bid in the first instance and therefore has a

good understanding of the project.

As the Walk Norwich project moves into the next phase I am sure that Norwich residents

can look forward to further innovative ways that will help and encourage them to

incorporate walking into their daily routine.

On a final note I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dan and all the partners and

volunteers who have helped get the Walk Norwich project off to such a good start.

Martine Holden,

Leisure and Sport Development Manager, Norwich City Council

Finance

Delivery Budget expenditure has been low over the first six months of the programme in

part due to the focus on delivering Beat the Street and launching the city Health Walks

programme.

Expenditure has been focused on maximising the opportunities created by the high

participation numbers generated by Beat the Street and capitalising on our National

Walking Month programme launch.

The table on the following page shows level of current Delivery Budget expenditure against

levels of anticipated expenditure to use the budget within the duration of the broader

programme and delivery period.

Below is a table of the within what areas expenditure has been focused so far.

Total Spent

Resources £1,826.94 Promotional £1,633.83 Evaluation £105.60 Equipment £84.63 Stationary £56.54 Printing £5.60 Postage £3.72

Overall project expenditure to date which stands at

Living Streets £48,000 (coordinator) & £12,500 (delivery)

Intelligent Health £45,000

Active Norfolk £37,500

Liftshare £10,000

25000

24750

24500

24250

24000

23750

23500

23250

23000

22750

22500

22250

22000

21750

21500

21250

21000

20750

20500

20250

20000

19750

19500

19250

19000

18750

18500

18250

18000

17750

17500

17250

17000

16750

16500

16250

16000

15750

15500

15250

15000

14750

14500

14250

14000

13750

13500

13250

13000

12750

12500

12250

12000

11750

11500

11250

11000

10750

10500

10250

10000

9750

9500

9250

9000

8750

8500

8250

8000

7750

7500

7250

7000

6750

6500

6250

6000

5750

5500

5250

5000

4750

4500

4250

4000

3750 Jun-14

3500

3250

3000

2750

2500

2250

2000

1750

1500

1250

1000

750

500

250

Delivery Period

Programme Period

Month Feb-14 Mar-14 Apr-14 May-14 Jun-14 Jul-14 Aug-14 Sep-14 Oct-14 Nov-14 Dec-14 Jan-15 Feb-15 Mar-15 Apr-15 May-15 Jun-15

Table of Delivery Budget expenditure against projections

Appendix

Note - On the accompanying memory stick please find files for:

1. Beat the Street video created by the Programme Coordinator for the big screen

outside The Forum

2. The Spring Health Walks brochure for Walk Norwich

3. A podcast with Sprowston Teen Café on their involvement with Beat the Street.

Fliers

Zombie Walk Off fliers designed by local illustrator Richard Horne

Press coverage

Piece published in Citizen magazine which is delivered to every house in Norwich.