This annual survey from the Centre for Public Scrutiny shows that the amount and quality of scrutiny work now undertaken by local authorities is a clear indication that the function is being fully utilised to hold decision-makers to account and that it influences service performance.The survey investigated the nature and impact of Overview & Scrutiny Committees across local authorities in England & Wales in 2005 and found that councillors are more engaged in a variety of different investigative approaches and a wide range of sources is used to build an evidence base. There have also been steady increases in resources and support for scrutiny.

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Doctors’ leaders are warning that flagship government policies to improve public health will be undermined unless cuts in the number of training posts are reversed and there is an end to the loss of key jobs. Public health doctors from The British Medical Association say the squeeze on training is recklessly short sighted.The BMA warning came after figures from the Faculty of Public Health showed there would be a 40 per cent reduction in training posts in the specialty this year. It says that the Public Health specialty needs to expand to tackle the health gap between the best and worst off people. Dr Justin Varney, a junior doctor member of the BMA’s Public Health Committee , said, “Public health doctors are strategically placed, co-ordinating across health, government and social services to tackle obesity, oversee local initiatives like reducing heart disease, and lead the UK’s immunisation and screening programmes.”

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The assumptions that mixed tenure housing developments reduce property prices or that they make homes harder to sell, are dismissed in a new report today from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. “More than tenure mix: Developer and purchaser attitudes to new housing estates” has analysed local property values compared with those on mixed estates and has also looked at the experiences of residents and developers.The study has found that ensuring the quality of other aspects of a development could eliminate the risk of an adverse affect on prices and ease the task of finding buyers. It concludes that the mixed communities in the study are successful and not characterised by the problems often linked with exclusively low-income areas.

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