The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has launched a three-year programme to improve recruitment and retention of staff in the voluntary sector. It is aimed at voluntary and community sector human resource professionals and is supported by the Community Fund.The Workforce Project includes a targeted programme of activities. The Project will work in partnership with infrastructure organisations including the National Association of Councils for Voluntary Service, the conciliation service, Acas, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Black Training and Enterprise Group and the Cranfield Trust, to ensure that employment practice in the voluntary and community sector continues to improve.

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Setting targets for the recruitment of volunteers to work with public services could help to tackle crime, health and social problems and reverse the pressure on services, according to CSV – Community Service Volunteers. In a new document – ‘Reports on Active Citizens and Civil Renewal’ – it looks at ways volunteers can contribute to services.It demonstrates how citizens can play an active part in renewal through schools, doctors’ surgeries, prisons, social services, libraries and the media. The Executive Director of CSV, Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, believes what she calls ‘citizen engagement’ can help rebuild communities and reverse the kinds of pressure on public services that led to tragedies such as the death of Victoria Climbie. “Many people sit in front of their televisions too afraid to make the links in their communities that might protect a child or prevent isolation for the elderly,” she said.

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By Peter Newman and Tassilo Herrschel. Reproduced by permission of the Public Management and Policy Association. Much of the debate about Assemblies for the English regions is focused onthe structure and role of the new institutions. The author draws on examples of regional government from Germany and France to show that there are other key issues to consider such as how the institutions get adapted on the ground and the relationships with other tiers of government.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development is calling for employers and family doctors to work together to help the sick-note system run more efficiently. It follows research from insurance company Norwich Union showing that up to nine million of the 22 million annual requests to GPs for sickness certificates are suspicious.Ben Willmott, Employee Relations Adviser at the CIPD, said the institute’s own research showed that dealing with absence management was now one of the biggest priorities for employers. To be effective they had to ensure they had progressive people management policies in place. These would prevent staff feeling like they did not want to go to work.

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Directgov, the Government’s new online information service is to be extended and is also to be made available to homes with access to digital television. Customer research has shown widespread support for the system, which is designed to improve the way that government information can be accessed electronically. Users are now able to visit Directgov by going to www.direct.gov.uk.As part of the next stage in the system’s roll out, the Office of the e-Envoy has announced that Directgov will be extended to digital television users through Sky, and Telewest and shortly through NTL. That will make it available to nearly 10 million households.

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Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an integral part of the government’s modernising agenda and a crucial component for delivering better customer service standards and joined-up services. The CRM Academy website is the main portal for disseminating the outputs of the National CRM Programme. It contains support, advice, guidelines and toolkits to help local authorities and other public sector organisations with the CRM implementation. It has information for business and customer service managers and for IT specialist and e-government champions. The Academy has 41 products and tools developed by the National CRM Programme, to help plan and manage a CRM project. They provide everything from guidance on choosing what technical and integration systems to consider, to advice on persuading elected Members and senior officers to invest in CRM. In addition, the site is becoming the primary place where other government departments and organisations come to clarify the role of CRM.The CRM Academy site is at: http://www.crmnp.org/7D2F7R3SuAtq4vIb7m4ezHk86xb2AX8q/login.html

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By S Markwell, J Watson, V Speller, S Platt, and T Younger.This resource was initially designed as a response to the World Health Organization, Investment for Health initiative. As a benchmarking and assessment tool, it enables partnerships to assess their progress against evidence-based criteria and share good practice. The Working Partnership has been devised with and for people whose role it is to support partnership development and improve the quality of partnership working in both established or newly evolving partnerships. It is relevant to all types of partnerships and can be used to demonstrate achievement and build on good practice, identify areas for improvement and capacity building, track progress in delivering shared objectives and improving services. The resource takes a self-assessment approach and offers partnership members the opportunity to develop self-awareness and an honest, open approach to the assessment of strengths and weaknesses.

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The Centre for Public Scrutiny has this week launched the first dedicated interactive resource for non-executive scrutineers and their support officers. Their re-launched site www.cfps.org.uk now provides detailed information and improved services for scrutineers from across government and other areas of the public sector.The website has been redesigned so the home page offers quick access to areas of the site, including a library of scrutiny reviews from across the UK, to assist those who are tackling a new topic. Scrutineers can search by subject, region or type of authority type and upload their own reviews to share them with others. The Forums area carries discussions, offering more opportunities for scrutineers to share their experiences and advice.

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A report out today says pressure for more police officers on the beat has led to more private patrolling of housing estates using security guards, community support officers, neighbourhood wardens, ‘active citizen’ volunteers and officers provided under contract by police forces. This has left the public confused about what the various services can do to deal with crime.The research, for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, says the roles of these additional policing services are often unclear, and that people are left confused about their responsibilities and what can be expected of them in tackling crime. The study highlights uneven co-ordination and weak accountability and it calls for new regional regulation arrangements to be introduced to ensure fairer competition between the different providers, as well as more effective policing.

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Local councils are being asked for their views on the new Planning Advisory Service, due to be in operation from the autumn after being launched by English Partnerships and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The aim of the service, to be run by the IdeA, is to provide support and advice for English local authorities. It will work in partnership with other agencies and support the government’s sustainable communities plan.As a pilot of the main advisory service, English Partnerships, the national regeneration agency, has been asked to set up an advisory panel on large applications. That panel will give direct support to authorities to deliver important objectives, such as large-scale housing developments or regeneration projects.

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