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. Ben Jupp, from the Cabinet Office, [...]
Posts under ‘Council services’
Democratic, decentralised and difficult
E-spending
Liz Azyan picks up on some questions about e-petitions that were asked here by Paul a couple of months back. She doesn’t mention the fascinating word cloud that accompanies her article, called “E-petition verbs”.
The biggest words are, on a quick skim, “prevent, save, reimburse, make, oppose, charge and introduce”. With my local government head [...]
As opposed to taxidermists?
“Councils triumph at MJ awards” blares the headline in this weeks Municipal Journal, which is hardly surprising since only councils are allowed to enter.
Hammersmith & Fulham’s Conservative administration came out top as political team of the year (Waltham Forest were runners-up) and Ealing won best achieving council. It’s notable that there aren’t any awards for [...]
Getting the politics right for reform
Matthew Taylor, former No 10 policy wonk, has an interesting article on his blog about public service reform. He rightly says that finances over the next few years are both a huge challenge to public services, but also an opportunity to make real change happen. That won’t come about, he says, without a change in [...]
Caroline Spelman fails a localism test
Given all the talk of localism in recent months, it is pretty disappointing to see Caroline Spelman, the Conservative shadow Local Government minister, making the following statement (via the BBC) on Council Tax rises:
At a time when millions of workers are facing pay freezes or unemployment this year, it adds insult to injury to drive [...]
Councils v local newspapers?
A few weeks ago, Roy Greenslade picked up on a growing opposition to Council-run free newspapers.
As he notes, the opposition comes both from smaller political parties locally, and from commercial rivals that are being edged out – as they see it.
Elsewhere, we are seeing growing demands for a journalistic ‘bail-out’ – and not just from [...]
Escape End
Time for one last look at the Conservative party’s local government green paper Shift Control. A quick canter through chapters four and five, and then some conclusions.
Chapter Four is about spending. It says a Conservative Government will:
give local people greater control over how central government funds are spent in their area;
phase out ring fencing, so [...]
Home PgDn
Time for a look at Chapter three of the Conservative local government green paper, Shift Control.
This chapter is the section of the green paper that focuses on democracy, so there’s a lot to talk about. The chapter says that a Conservative Government would:
provide citizens in all our large cities with the opportunity to choose whether [...]
Shift Delete
Local decision-making should be less constrained by central government, and also more accountable to local people. We will encourage democratic innovations in local government, including pilots of the idea of elected mayors with executive powers in cities.
David Cameron’s green paper Shift Control, published yesterday? No, the 1997 Labour manifesto, and if you want a good [...]
Died in a church and was buried along with her name … nobody came
Councils are burying more lonely people.
(Via Ingrid)
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
