Cumbria

Focusing on business growth, local  investment, job creation, service improvement and cost savings, the highly successful partnership brought a number of benefits to the Council and the Cumbria region.

Flagship Projects:

Cumbria Academies Programme

Capita Symonds supported Cumbria County Council through a strategic review of secondary school provision and statutory consultation which lead to school reorganisation in Carlisle, North Copeland and Barrow in Furness.

The outcome established four new Academies together with other school changes. We provided a wide spectrum of technical adviser and specialist services from the inception of the academy provision through procurement, design and construction to deliver a £110m programme of works. The Academies provide innovative accommodation to contribute towards transformational learning with state-of-the-art facilities. Find out more

Cumbria County Council recently opened a new record office in Carlisle which is the culmination of over five years of planning and project delivery. The £8m record office is located on the site of Petteril Bank House, a Grade 2* listed building, and incorporates that historic building into the new storage, public and conservation facilities.

Giving the building a new lease of life with public access was part of the strategy which helped the council attract nearly £5m of Heritage Lottery funding towards the development. Capita Symonds supported the council and contributed significantly to the successful outcome of the funding bids, and subsequently provided design and project management services to help to deliver a facility which will store and provide access to records for generations.

Carlisle Northern Development Route

Capita Symonds worked on behalf of Cumbria County Council as a technical adviser for the Carlisle Northern Development Road (CNDR) PFI project, a £176m scheme for the construction of an 8.9 km bypass on the west side of Carlisle including major crossings of the River Eden and the West Coast Main Line.

The project also included the management and maintenance of 147km of the existing primary route network for a 30-year period. The main objective of the new road is to relieve traffic congestion in Carlisle and to promote development of Kingmoor Business Park to the north of the city. In order to make the PFI viable, it was the first within a local authority scheme to combine the construction of a new road with the operation & maintenance of the road and a selection of adjacent principal roads. Find out more

Keswick Town Centre

Environmental improvements in Keswick won the ‘Public Space’ category in the NWDA 2007 Tourism awards. Designed and supervised by Capita Symonds, four phases of work were carried out over three years from January 2003. The £1.4m funding came from the Cumbria County Council’s Transport Capital Programme with partner funding from the NWDA, ERDF and the LDNPA.

The overall objective of the work was to remove the conflict between pedestrians and vehicles in the congested narrow streets and market area. This resulted in removal of all non-essential through traffic from the central area, creating total pedestrian priority, with vehicle penetration being kept to a minimum. Find out more

Disaster Recovery

Capita Symonds provided support, capacity and capability to help agencies in Cumbria respond and rebuild. This included providing support through the devastating Foot & Mouth outbreak in the Spring of 2001, severe flooding which hit Carlisle in 2005 and West Cumbria in 2009, and the Grayrigg Railway Derailment in February 2007.

Penrith Leisure Centre

Working in partnership with Eden District Council the £5m Penrith Leisure Centre - designed by Capita Symonds - was completed in July 2005 and well received by the local community. The success of the scheme resulted from working with local interest groups to ensure that the final design accommodated the needs of the various and diverse end-users.

M6 Extension

Working as design partner to Carillion, Capita Symonds designed the £125m M6 extension between Carlisle and Gretna. Funded by the Highways Agency this award-winning link was completed in December 2008 ahead of programme and within budget. Find out more (video)

Regeneration

Capita Symonds has supported a number of regeneration schemes across Cumbria, notably in Barrow-in-Furness and West Cumbria, many funded by external agencies such as the Northwest Regional Development Agency.

The Waterfront, Barrow-in-Furness

Working in partnership with Cumbria County Council and West Lakes Renaissance to provide a high quality business park for the development of new business units, Capita Symonds provided multidisciplinary consultancy services.

£25million has been spent to convert derelict and underused land adjacent to the operational port into prime development land and to provide high quality public realm and landscaping along the newly constructed access roads. This project has been successful in winning a number of awards including the North West Construction Awards and the British Association of Landscape Industries National Landscape Awards. Find out more

Use of technology

A particular success story is the development of the Capita Symonds Innovations team. From purely providing internal IT support the team now numbers over 50 staff and has become a national player in the delivery of bespoke asset and data management solutions.

Within Cumbria the team has supported the highways operation through development of software to track and programme manage highway enquires and responses including the development of mobile technology to allow site based employees to improve service delivery through use of hand held tablets. They have also developed software to manage road lighting information, programmes of work, road traffic accident data as well as hosting a number of shared applications.

Externally the team has won major contracts with the Highways Agency to develop and maintain the National Highways Agency Traffic Information System (HATRIS) providing free access to this data for use by the County Council. More recently Transport for London awarded Capita Symonds a contract to development asset management software. Find out more about our Innovations expertise

Better Ways to School

Capita Symonds assisted the majority of schools in Cumbria to produce travel plans which helped secure £1.5m to fund improvements and initiatives such as walking buses and cycle trains. They also launched the Headstart scheme which enabled 3,000 youngsters to purchase discounted cycle helmets. This scheme won second prize in the Child Safety category of the prestigious Health for Kids Award, a national awards scheme, in 2008.