By Ian Cole and Brendan Nevin The cause of neighbourhood decline is a complicated mix of factors including labour market change, lack of access to transport, failing schools and fear of crime. Housing market failure is a knock-on effect which accelerates decline. The authors explain how a Pathfinder programme is promoting housing market renewal and finding ways to connect to nearby areas of growth and economic vitality.

Pilot schemes have been set up to enable schools to give parents access to attendance information, assessment scores, homework diaries and student timetables on a secure web site. The schemes, which are operated by North Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire County Councils, put into action the DfEE’s commitment to make greater use of online media to improve communications between home and school.Using Parents Gateway, produced by Capita Education Services, parents can log on to a secure area of the school’s site to view their child’s latest test results or find out if they made it in to school safely. The data they view is extracted from the school’s management information system and the process does not require any human intervention from the school.

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With opposition growing to the proposed changes in pensions for public sector workers a survey has shown that one outcome could be a stream of resignations and difficulty in recruiting replacements. The survey by Hays, the recruitment consultants, found that one third of finance professionals working in public services would consider moving to the private sector if the Government makes its proposed changes. Seventy per cent of the people surveyed believe they would be worse off under these plans, with 66 per cent viewing the changes as a direct attack on what are currently ‘gold standard’ pension schemes. Nearly half of those asked thought that changes to pensions would negatively affect their organisation’s ability to recruit and retain staff.The findings are directly in line with an earlier survey by the top civil servants union, the fda, which showed that 94% of members were against the introduction of a ‘whole career pension arrangement’ to replace the current ‘final salary’ schemes.

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