This report sets out the progress Local Strategic Partnerships have made in Neighbourhood Renewal Fund areas. The Partnerships have a strategic role to integrate the requirements and targets of national agencies and Government departments in taking forward renewal, regeneration, social exclusion, and productivity.Partnerships have made particular progress in developing as strategic agencies and they have established visions reflecting the critical elements of the National Strategy for neighbourhood renewal. They have also been successful in attracting a broad range of representation and in developing and delivering a wide variety of joint projects embracing the importance of learning and development.

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A new Business Benefits Unit is to be set up by Chief Police Officers in Scotland and the Scottish Executive to help forces improve their efficiency and to ensure that finances are concentrated on frontline policing by doing away with red tape.The new unit will look for savings in back-office functions such as IT and payroll, and advise forces on how to minimise bureaucracy to squeeze best value out of their procedures. A pilot scheme to improve the way police vehicles are bought and maintained has already begun and is expected to lead to savings of 200,000 pounds a year.

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The government’s comprehensive plan to improve mental health services needs major acceleration if its aspirations are to be met. That is the conclusion of a review by Mind, the leading mental health charity, of the progress of the National Service Framework for Mental Health as it marks its fifth anniversary.The NSF programme was set out in 1999 and laid down models of treatment and care that people would be entitled to expect in every part of the country. Five years on, Mind believes the framework has led to some improvements but says other equally important areas are still not being met. Overall, in a report published today, Mind finds unsatisfactory progress in six of seven standards.

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Key workers like firemen, nurses and teachers are an easy target for thieves according to new research today that shows theft in the workplace has cost Britain’s public service workers an estimated 96 million pounds over the last three years.The research from the insurance group Zurich shows that personal theft while at work is a problem for key workers because of the public nature of their jobs. The study shows that one in twenty of those surveyed had had a personal item stolen.

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Voluntary organisations and charities will today call on Labour party policy makers and parliamentary candidates to recognise the value that volunteers bring to society. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations is to use the Labour Conference in Brighton to showcase its own election manifesto, which will then go out to its members for consultation.NCVO is urging the next government to lend stronger support to the role of charities in building community cohesion and encouraging civil engagement. It also wants politicians to build on existing support for the voluntary sector’s role in the delivery of public services.

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This report from the Public Accounts Committee examines the progress of the pilot programme launched in 1999 to give local communities a much greater influence in the way in which funds are used to achieve neighbourhood renewal. Unlike previous regeneration programmes where monies were paid to central and local government bodies to deliver regeneration, in this programme the monies have been given directly to neighbourhoods for them to manage through a Board made up of local representatives. This allows the communities to purchase services to meet their regeneration needs in accordance with their priorities. The approach is being tested in 39 neighbourhoods across the country and is expected to cost some £2 billion over 10 years.The committee found that the programme was one of more than fifty different initiatives with separate funding streams and they called for a streamlining. Although the programme is still at a relatively early stage there are examples of effective neighbourhood renewal arising from this new approach. But equally, some tensions have developed between some New Deal for Community partnerships, their communities and local authorities that need to be addressed if further progress is to be ensured.

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This report sets out the people and organisational issues that local authorities must get to grips with if they are to deliver e-government successfully. It also explores the roles of e-champion and heads of ICT in delivering e-government for a local authority, the skills they require, and how these roles relate to the authority’s senior management team. The crucial competencies for e-champions and ICT heads are seen as the softer skills of organisational awareness, relationship building, communicating, customer service, leadership and influencing rather than technical skills.Drawing on research and best practice in local authorities and other sectors, and information from specialist organisations like Gartner, the report provides local authorities with answers to fundamental questions such as: how can councils ensure that e-government delivers the promised transformation of services? Is the structure in place to manage e-government?

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Teaching unions and the teachers’ employers’ body have joined the Secretary of State for Education to put forward joint proposals to reform pay structures in order to reward the best teachers. The Rewards and Incentives Group – made up of five teachers’ and head teachers’ bodies as well as the employers’ organisation – has published jointly agreed evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body.The agreement sets out proposals for a new Excellent Teachers Scheme that would see extra rewards to high achieving staff for their work in the classroom and in supporting colleagues within their schools. In addition it proposes that Management Allowances make way for a new framework of Teaching and Learning Responsibility Payments that would reward teachers who have a significant specified responsibility focussed on teaching and learning.

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Voluntary bodies and charities are being urged to form benchmarking clubs so they can compare their experiences and share best practice. The recommendation comes in ‘Measuring Up’, the National Umbrella Forum’s study of benchmarking in the voluntary sector, which is published today by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.The report suggests that voluntary organisations working in similar areas, such as young people, health or social care, establish the benchmarking clubs. The Forum came to this conclusion following the success of a pilot benchmarking club of 22 organisations that carried out a detailed study of how they could learn from one another and set common performance measurements for areas such as communicating with their members and providing representation to government.

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An alliance, just two months old, will present its case for representing public service users at the Labour and Conservative Party’s conferences. Under the label of ‘Future Services’ the new alliance which is made up of The National Consumer Council, the Confederation of British Industry and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, aims to take the voice of users to the heart of the public service reform debate.At a recent event organised by Future Services, business leaders, local government representatives, senior civil servants, charity chief executives and think tanks, expressed concern that public sector reform has so far followed a top-down approach. Delegates called for a shift to a bottom-up approach which would ensure that the choices currently being developed by the Government are those that communities and individuals actually want.

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