The Department for Culture Media and Sport has set out a vision for the 4000 UK libraries which puts them at the heart of online developments. The strategy document ‘Framework for the Future’ describes how ‘Resource’ the Council for Museums Achieves and Libraries, will co-ordinate national programmes to create online content and raise the profile of the public library service.The People’s Network of 30,000 terminals, which was funded with Lottery money by the New Opportunities Fund, is now in place and it offers 60 million hours of free Internet access a year. Plans for using the Network include public libraries creating, hosting and managing websites for local community groups. Library staff will increasingly offer digital skills training. To date they have provided 27,000 Get Started sessions and 32,000 Internet Taster sessions . For the future they will provide skills training for accessing e-government services and develop facilities to tackle social exclusion.

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Public service trade unions have accepted a compromise on the protection of workers who join companies or voluntary sector bodies undertaking public sector work. The CBI wanted freedom for companies taking on work from the public sector to set reward packages for newly recruited staff. The trade unions wanted staff to be protected by law. The compromise is that a Code of Practice will specify the level of protection and local councils will have to include the Code in future contracts. The agreement will also apply to police authorities and fire and civil defence authorities.The Code will ensure that new joiners will be offered terms and conditions which are no less favourable than those of transferred employees, but this does not mean the terms have to be the same. The agreement does not apply to pensions but under the Code new joiners will also be offered a reasonable pension provision, which may be either membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme, membership of a good quality employer pension scheme or membership of a stakeholder pension scheme with an employer contribution.

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Deborah Benady interviews Steve Bundred, the new head of the Improvement and Development Agency. Reproduced by permission of the IDeA Steve Bundred gives his views on the strengths and weaknesses of local government today and the challenges it faces tomorrow. He also sets out his vision of where he sees the Agency going in the future.