The target to reduce car crime by 30% in 5 years looks more achievable following proposals from the Home Office Car Crime Reduction Team. Task groups from all sections of the vehicle industry, as well as from police, consumers and insurers have contributed to the Team’s proposals.The options for reducing car crime are being fed into the 400 partnerships set up between police and local councils. 

Development work has started on a smartcard that will give discounts on a wide range of goods and services to16-18 year olds in learning,. The smartcard is one element of the strategy to encourage young people to stay in education post 16 and to acquire a worthwhile qualification by 19. It will effectively become a learning reward scheme.The use of smartcard technology for this purpose resulted from a recommendation by the Social Exclusion Unit. 

Vischer J Harvard Business Review, (USA), May-Jun 1999 Vol 77 No 3Start page: 28. No of pages: 9
Presents the scenario of a large organization seeking to move to an open plan office system because the CEO thinks it will improve productivity and communication plus reduce costs. 

Discussions have reached the closing stages on a contract for BT to provide police with a national digital radio service. The cost will be between 1.5 to 2.0 billion pounds and it will be funded through the Public Finance Initiative. The planned facilities will be available for use by the other emergency services and this will open up the way for a greater joined up approach to accidents and other types of emergencies. 

School governors are being given a crucial role in the most fundamental reform of the teaching profession since state education began. The new performance management system to back performance pay, will rely largely on governors assessing the performance of head teachers and playing a significant role in staff assessment. Governor training in performance management will be funded by a 5 million pound budget and a training package will be available next year. 

Massey C, Walker R
The Learning Organization, (UK), 1999 Vol 6 No 1
Start page: 38. No of pages: 7
Assesses the role of consultants in organizational learning, focusing on
how they can promote it. Identifies links between organizational learning
and organizational development and training, suggesting that this indicates
the potential of organizational development and training consultants to
contribute to organizational learning. 

SECTOR Linden, R. M.Shows how to make government more responsive to the public’s will so that it can regain the public’s confidence. Offers public institutions what they desperately need - a practical, proven model to transform themselves for the future. Defines re-engineering as based on three principles: challenge the fundamental assumptions on which the organization is built; focus on processes; and organize around outcomes (not inputs and outputs). 

A programme to give multi agency support to parents of children with behaviour that could lead to crime will be launched next year with a 30 million pound budget. . Factors such as low parental supervision, siblings in trouble with the police, truancy, exclusions, poor school performance, behavioural problems - and in particular multiples of these factors - are associated with future offending. 

The Audit Commission has given a strong message to Health Authorities and Trust to join up delivery of young people’s mental health services. In the first ever analysis of data about the services, the Commission found that design and delivery is not keeping pace with a rapidly changing agenda.The specialist care and mental health services spend just one per cent of their time supporting other agencies such as other healthbodies, councils, social workers, GPs and schools. 

Partnerships between state and independent schools have been so successful they’ve won praise, and funding from the Government.In an example of how far New Labour is prepared to put ‘what matters is what works’ before old Labour ideology, School Standards Minister Estelle Morris has announced that such partnership will be bolstered with grants of up to four hundred thousand pounds during 2000- 2001.