Social and Economic Research Consultancy - Step Ahead Research
Implementation & Delivery Plans

Implementation & Delivery Plans

Step Ahead offers a service that goes beyond research and consultancy by providing you with stakeholder/partner engagement and brokerage skills that will produce action and delivery plans that are endorsed and implemented.  Our plans are built on partners’ and stakeholders’ needs and resources, and focus on issues on which they can have most impact. With our experience of negotiating and prioritising diverse needs and producing deliverable plans, we can work with you to turn your vision, outcomes and targets into a reality. 

Our support includes:

  • partnership brokering, especially between the public and voluntary sector;
  • staff training and development planning;
  • management support;
  • development of quality standards;
  • business and financial planning;
  • marketing and communication strategy and action planning;
  • staff training and development planning.

Examples of our work include:


  • working with the London Borough of Waltham Forest to develop a Business Plan that enabled the council to become a City Strategy Pathfinder and secure significant funding to tackle worklessness in East London. We worked with the council on an ongoing basis, providing interim project management, guiding the procurement of external services, and developing quality standards and referral protocols.

  • developing a regional economic strategy for voluntary and community sector engagement in the economic agenda for the North West Regional Development Agency. As part of this work, we negotiated an action plan for joint working between the public sector and the voluntary sector, designed to address existing barriers to engagement and poor relations between the two sectors.  The implementation of this plan has led to improved joint working between the public and voluntary sectors in the North West in relation to economic development.

  • as part of a study into rough sleeping in North Devon, we brokered deals between voluntary sector and public sector providers to improve services for rough sleepers.  In some cases, this led to voluntary sector providers receiving additional public funding or support, for example the presence of medical staff on an agreed day and time of the week.
Our Expertise