Local Government

Place Survey, we hardly knew ye

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 10 August 2010 - 11:32am

De mortuis nil nisi bonum, so as the Place Survey gets consigned to the dustbin of policy, it's worth thinking about what we're losing now it's gone.

The Place Survey was designed to provide councils and residents with comparable information on their performance. Even if councils continue doing some sort of opinion polling (and I suspect most won't) any results won't now be able to be compared between different authorities.

Mayor, cabinet or hornpipe?

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 23 July 2010 - 2:10pm

Iain Dale has an interview with Communities Secretary Eric Pickles today. As you might expect, it's not exactly hard-hitting, but Pickles is given a bit of space to set out his ideas, and the changes he wants to bring about in local government. In answer to a question about council leadership models (mayors, cabinets or committees) he responds:

Let's have localism, not local governmentism

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 2 July 2010 - 7:30am

A National School for Government/PMPA seminar I attended yesterday afternoon showed up a big gap between what local government and central government are expecting from localism.

Your Freedom: Government asks well, but can it answer well?

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 1 July 2010 - 10:29am

The Government today launched Your Freedom, a discussion site where people can make suggestions on civil liberties issues and legislation they want to see repealed. good site, but can Government live up to its rhetoric and answer as well as it asks?

Radical thoughts on planning from Cameron

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 22 February 2010 - 1:27pm

David Cameron's ideas for reform of the planning system are the most radical piece of localism I've seen proposed in this election campaign so far.

Cameron envisages a switch from a local-authority-led system of plans against which new developments are judged, to a more permissive community-based system. Communities would come together in a participatory process to define a new community plan. Local authorities would then stitch those together into Local Plans, but would lose the right to make individual judgements on any planning application within the scope of the Local Plan.

Mutualism and the public service lottery

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 16 February 2010 - 8:41pm

Sam McLean at the RSA Participation Project has a thoughtful post on the back of the Conservatives' "small platoons" announcement and a critical article by the Guardian's Alison Benjamin.

UKGovCamp as the future

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 25 January 2010 - 10:58pm

I spent Saturday at UKGovCamp. I'm not going to recite the content or the sessions here, as all that can be found on the Wikispaces wiki that organiser Dave Briggs and others have put together to capture the content.

A few words on governance

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 1 December 2009 - 8:28am
Local government governance guru Peter Keith-Lucas has an article in this week's Local Government Lawyer assessing the current state of governance in local councils. It's a good read - expert but not too technical.

Inflated expectations

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 26 November 2009 - 4:57pm
It's the first birthday of the Other Taxpayers' Alliance today, and they have an amusing "Which"-style comparison guide if you aren't sure which one you ought to support. The original TaxPayers' Alliance were quoted in a blog post I was reading earlier, from Thomas Byrne, who said, by way of an argument for cutting top public sector salaries:
While there is no systematic data on ex

Democratic, decentralised and difficult

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 19 November 2009 - 9:00am
I attended an interesting seminar yesterday afternoon, hosted by the 2020 Public Services Trust. The topic was the future of citizen-centred public services. The two principal speakers both brought innovative ideas and a real vision, which is more than can be said for a lot of these public policy seminars.
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