By Kelvin MacDonald There are some 1000 regeneration partnerships in England and they vary greatly in size and type. The author found that arrangements for training and development of everyone involved from the Board downwards leaves much to be desired. He argues that action needs to be taken by the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, Regional Development Agencies and Government Offices for the Regions.

Thirteen local councils in England could share 1.5 billion pounds of extra funding to help ensure their tenants will see major improvements to their homes and housing management over the next seven years. The money is being allocated under the government’s Arms Length Management Organisation programme – ALMO.The successful councils are Barnet, Camden, Easington, Gateshead, Harrow, High Peak, Islington, Newcastle, Poole, Sheffield, Solihull, South Lakeland and Warrington. The Housing Minister, Keith Hill, said the funding, which covers the period to 2010, was additional to the councils’ existing expenditure on their housing stock. He said the investment would contribute greatly to the government’s target of making all council homes decent by 2010. It would enable the authorities to improve the quality of more than 185,000 homes of which sixty per cent currently fall below the decent homes standard.

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The country’ s biggest local government union -UNISON – is claiming that forty per cent of councillors and council officers do not know what their responsibilities on workforce matters are under the ‘Best Value’ code of practice. It follows a survey which the union carried out at this year’ s Local Government Association conference.In the light of the findings UNISON is calling for senior local authority staff to undergo training so that they are aware of how to implement the code which was designed to avoid the creation of two-tier workforces within councils. It was introduced earlier this year, and applies when Best Value authorities, are contracting out services and transferring staff to a new employer. Under the code newly-employed workers have the right to pay and conditions which are “overall no less favourable” than those for staff who have been transferred.

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