Preface
Britain has much to offer in an age of growing international understanding and interaction. Our intellectual products, our language and culture, our know-how have never been in such great demand. With its global network and over fifty years' experience, the British Council is in a unique position to exploit these assets.
The Council's third Corporate Plan (CP3), covering the years 1991 to 1994, is designed to explain the Council's priorities for the triennium and the corporate direction and strategy for achieving them. As a management resource for senior staff and a reference document for the Council's sponsors, it describes the Council's objectives, the opportunities and difficulties ahead, the strategic choices made, and how resources will be allocated accordingly.
The introduction (chapters 1 to 4) confirms the Council's unchanged corporate aims of promoting Britain overseas through cultural relations, and providing efficient and effective agency services. It states the Council's priorities for the triennium: Europe, East Asia and Southern Africa; developing our agency role with sponsors; diversifying our income; and major domestic concerns relocation, staff development and public relations.
The operating context for these priorities indicates the complexities the Council's planning must face. Relocation to Manchester of some 500 jobs, coupled with internal reorganization to improve cost effectiveness, represents change and challenge that will place high demands on staff. At the same time we face external pressures: inflation continues to eat into the government grant and adds to the urgency to find efficiency gains. Despite efficiency achievements well in excess of the Whitehall minimum, the Council faces a recurrent budget deficit which it needs government help to close. Increases in the government grant totalling £8.6 million in 1990/91 have removed any immediate threat of budget cuts to meet risen costs, and enabled the principal programme plans outlined in CP2 to go forward. But, without further help, cuts must be made in overseas and UK budgets with unavoidable damage to key programmes.
The overseas network (chapters 5 to 7) describes the Council's response to the changes, some of them dramatic, that are shifting the boundaries of cultural relations. Eastern Europe has moved sharply into the front line of planning. The Council has increased resources for the region by over £2.5 million in the last two years, but the pace of change calls for more. In addition to developing its own programmes in key sectors, the Council will offer its accumulated experience, both of the region and of professional
project management, to handle as many as possible of the government's Know-How schemes. In Western Europe, Community partners carry a special importance, especially as EC programmes increasingly extend across the continent and call for multilateral as well as the more traditional bilateral approach. The Council's plans include the establishment of an EC Liaison Office to supply services and to identify opportunities for the British higher education sector. Individual bilateral programmes will continue to provide the foundations; the emphasis will lie particularly with France and Germany, but also with southern Europe where the demand for English language services is enormous. In the Asia Pacific region, political hardening in China has led to programme reviews both there and in Hong Kong. Plans for China remain in line with the Council's commitment to the rising generation; specific programmes to meet Hong Kong's special needs will be accelerated and enlarged. The Council will also give priority to programmes that can open up markets in South- East Asia and Japan, and to strengthening old Commonwealth ties with Australasia. In the Middle East and North Africa, the focus is on programmes that promote the British education resource in the Maghreb, Iraq and the Gulf. Cultural divisions between the West and some of the countries in this region are a principal concern for cultural work. In South Asia, the emphasis is on effective project management for ODA and on scholarship work for FCO. Their programmes are both supported and complemented by the Council's own. Programmes in Latin America will continue to be developed in constructive partnership with the anglophile 'culturas' and through jointly financed interchange work. Council work in Africa is dominated by the aid programme and priority lies with the services supplied to ODA. In Southern Africa there is, however, a special role for the Council. Information, books, English are all urgently required. The Council will develop the work of its new Representations in Namibia and Mozambique and its new offices in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
In all, if the Council is to achieve its global objectives, additional government funds of £10.53 million are needed from 1991/92.
The third section of the Plan deals with UK operations (chapters 8 to 13). Unlike previous plans, this section does not seek to give a global overview of individual activities but presents headquarters planning towards the achievement of corporate priorities in overseas operations. For all UK offices and departments, relocation will be a major concern and a shared target is to maintain the efficiency and quality of services. Crucial to the overall strategy is the need to
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