This Guide from the Improvement and Development Agency focuses on raising service planning to a higher level. It looks at addressing customer needs and describes the importance of a route map to the positive outcomes prioritised by the council and the community. It also helps to identify and mitigate risks to planned service levels and improvements. The Guide is designed to be used with existing service planning arrangements, such as meetings with groups of officers and Members who work with different services.The Guide is available at: http://www.idea-knowledge.gov.uk/idk/aio/973256

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Britain’s largest health union is calling for ambulance cleanliness standards to be properly applied and monitored, after an investigations which, it says, showed many ambulance workers were worried about the infection risk posed by their vehicles. UNISON, says targets and time and money pressures are creating e a lethal cocktail that could allow superbugs – like MRSA- to thrive in ambulances.The union said ambulance cleanliness was a key factor in the battle against MRSA and claimed the failure of the government to tackle the issue was a major flaw in infection control policy. Ambulances, UNISON said, transport patients throughout the NHS and it feared there was a danger that vehicles designed to save lives were spreading lethal diseases.

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The Benefits Fraud Inspectorate is to focus on local authorities that take too long to process claims and that it believes are doing too little to tackle fraudsters. The BFI’s latest programme will concentrate on councils that take more than seven weeks to process new claims for Housing Benefit and those that did not successfully prosecute many fraudsters during 2004-5.Seven authorities – Braintree District, Fenland District, Isle of Anglesey County, Manchester City, Thurrock Borough and the London boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets – will face inspections because they take longer to process claims. St. Edmundsbury Borough Council, which failed to send performance data to the Department for Work and Pensions will also be inspected to determine its performance in processing claims and its customer service.

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