Local Government Chronicle
12 July 2012
View all stories from this issue.
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‘Think governance not ownership’
One of the histories of municipalism is the history of investment in public assets. -
Allocating public health funding
With more emphasis than ever on prevention and early intervention, it is crucial that the funding formula is right. -
City power packages mark ‘historic moment’
City leaders have hailed the city deals announcement, pointing to the ability to consolidate investment streams and control funding for skills programmes as genuinely devolutionary steps. -
Collective action on council diversity
If members of the public were to describe the typical councillor they would probably imagine a white male of retirement age who spent their days in meetings in the Town, City or County Hall. -
Finance chiefs grapple with CTB timetable
Consultations on council tax benefit changes need to be published within a matter of weeks or councils will “struggle to meet the deadline”, a senior treasurer has said. -
Housing outcomes intended by no one
Director, Greater London Group, London School of Economics -
Inside Out - Clashing with school governors
Even Mr Pickles could take lessons from Michael Gove when it comes to winning friends and influencing people. Mr Gove’s pronouncements on GCSEs seem to have won him some tweed-wearing friends from Tunbridge Wells but annoyed just about everybody else. -
Integrating local government and the health service
There was considerable reaction to my suggestion that the clinical commissioning group (CCG) authorisation process should have some mechanism for considering options around shared services across local government and health. This is good because an open debate on such an important issue is essential if we are to understand how the NHS is going to manage the complex commissioning of services that span across both sectors. -
LGC View - City Deals
All those involved in getting the eight city deals announced last week signed off deserve to be congratulated: some genuinely significant proposals have been agreed. -
Mediawatch: A graph of doom or a diagram of choice?
Dad’s Army has been on my mind this week. First I remembered Private Frazer (“We’re doomed. We’re all doomed”). -
Ofsted announces tougher inspections as senior figures resign
Ofsted has announced more rigorous inspection of services for looked-after children, as details emerge of the resignations of two children’s services heads because of “inadequate” ratings in its most recent round of safeguarding checks. -
Pace change to maintain momentum
That doyenne of management theory Rosabeth Moss Kanter wrote that “every success feels like a failure in the middle”. -
Pension cost cap plans 'not good enough'
Treasury proposals for capping the cost of public sector pensions may not keep employer contributions to the target 19.5% of pensionable pay, senior negotiators have warned. -
Perspectives on the city deal negotiations
I used to go to MIPIM, but haven’t been for a while. -
Public health funding formula to leave poor areas hit hardest
Councils in the north-west of England are preparing to meet senior officials from the Department of Health to lobby for changes to the funding of public health services after research revealed a major transfer of resources from poor to rich areas was likely. -
Self-regulation on housing mulled
A voluntary code of conduct for local authority self-financing of housing could be established in a bid to prevent regulation by central government. -
Social care white paper published
Care services minister Paul Burstow has suggested that the government will fund councils for their new duty to provide loans for individuals’ social care costs, introduced in the long-awaited social care white paper. -
Strategy for success: decide your destination, choose your route
Local authorities have never had it easy, but a combination of the global economic crisis, some of the biggest funding cuts in memory and high expectations of service delivery means that now is proving a particularly difficult time. -
Take the lead on open policy making
Local government is used to finger-wagging lectures that tell it to do what it’s already doing. -
Two decades lost waiting for Dilnot
Much has been said in recent weeks of the ‘graph of doom’.
