By Lyndsey Rashman and Jean Hartley.This paper examines the Beacon Council Scheme as a distinct policy element within the UK government’s wide-ranging local government modernization agenda. The aim of the Beacon scheme is to reward high performing councils and promote change by sharing ‘best practice’ from identified centres of excellence. The paper analyses the presumed and possible conditions which facilitate or impede interorganizational learning and service improvement through the scheme. It examines empirical data from 59 local authority elected members and officers about their attitudes towards and motivation to take part in the Beacon scheme. The data indicate that there are differing motivations for participation in the scheme and that the underlying theories of organizational learning and cultural change may be insufficiently developed to create and sustain the kind of transformational change that is intended by central government.

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Big regional cities under perform compared to their European counterparts and could play a bigger part in improving national economic growth potential, according to a report from a working group of Government Departments, Regional Development Agencies and English Core Cities.The regeneration Minister Jeff Rooker has welcomed the findings of the report and said the working group was an excellent example of government and key partners at regional and local level “joining up” to see how their policies could be more strongly aligned to help achieve greater economic prosperity.

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Six out of ten nurses are working in excess of their contracted hours and a quarter of that overtime is not being paid for according to evidence which the Royal College of Nursing is to submit to the profession’s independent  pay review body.The submission is based on a survey of nurses, published today. It reveals that nurses now believe increased pay is the single most important change that can be made to make them feel better valued.

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