A new project could make Wales the first part of the United Kingdom where the public sector will buy all its goods and services on line. A ground-breaking scheme that it is estimated could bring savings of up to 200 million pounds over the next five years has been approved by the Welsh Assembly Minister for Finance and Public Service Delivery, Andrew Davies.

The project – xchangewales – will see the creation of a system that will enable every Welsh public sector organisation to find suppliers and order and pay for goods electronically. It is expected that it will bring benefits through lower prices, increased use of corporate contracts and paperless ordering resulting in reduced administration. In addition to the advantages for the public sector it is hoped the project will see improved support for small to medium businesses.

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By Freada and Kapor Klein

The authors make the hurdles that women and minorities face in the workplace as personal to the reader as they are to those who face them. Giving Notice is filled with sensible approaches for solving the current imbalance and challenges us to rethink unconscious ideas about stereotypes and commonly accepted practices.

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Plans have been unveiled that will give local people the chance to make their views known on the priorities they want local councils and other agencies to tackle. The plans, published by Local Government Minister John Healey, will see residents asked for their views on a range of issues in a new Place Survey.

Under the scheme councils will have to seek views on policies ranging from people’s use of local services to their general health and well-being as well as levels of support for older people and steps to tackle crime. The Place Survey will also measure levels of participation in any given local community. Those who take part in the survey will be able to say how concerned they are about the problems affecting their communities and whether they feel the police and local authorities are tackling anti-social behaviour effectively.

The results will then be used to guage how local areas are performing against 20 Citizen Perception Indicators, which are included in the new National Indicator Set, following the reduction of indicators and targets imposed on local authorities from more than 1,000 to 98. The Place Survey system will replace the Best Value User Satisfaction Survey, which English councils have been conducting every three years since 2000.

John Healey said, “In handing greater powers to councils, we in central government have made clear to those in local government that local people should be actively encouraged to have their say on the key concerns in their communities, both at the ballot box and between elections.”

Mr. Healey said the Survey would be a significant tool for councils and local agencies to measure their performance in important policy areas and to gauge people’s views on issues that should be given top priority. It has been designed to take into account local
variations and gives councils and their partners the chance to pose their own questions.

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Local Government has a new brand. Called ‘My Council’ it has been launched by the Local Government Association and has been designed to show people the range of services that councils provide and how they offer value for money.

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This agreement between Communities and Local Government and the Local Government Association is set to radically transform the relationship between councils and the government. It gives unprecedented new freedoms for local areas and communities, but the document is pitched at a high level and has nothing to say about the implications of what has been agreed. It is, however, being interpreted as giving the power to councils to secure the dismissal of under performing chief constables, local area police commanders and chief executives of failing NHS trusts.

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A London council is being criticised for a 14-month delay in making housing benefit payments to a woman after she won an appeal against its refusal of her claim. In a report today the Local Government Ombudsman says Ealing Council’s failure to monitor what was happening suggests a level of carelessness beyond its original error.

The Ombudsman, Tony Redmond, found the council had failed to take action for 10 months, and that an administrative error led to a further four-month wait. The woman, identified under the assumed name of ‘‘Mrs Nawal’ for legal reasons, complained that the council failed to pay her benefits in spite of the fact that it had not challenged her entitlement after an Appeals Tribunal decided in her favour.

Mr. Redmond finds Ealing Council was at fault for taking no action to put her claim into payment for 10 months after losing the appeal and that it did so only after she had complained to him. There was then a four-month delay in carrying out a full assessment after she provided additional information in support of her claim that was not linked to the correct case reference number.

The woman’s complaint, he says, revealed the fact that the authority failed to monitor its performance against targets that were agreed after previous complaints to the Ombudsman from other local residents in similar circumstances. “The failure to monitor what was going on, despite the fact that Mrs Nawal’s complaint was subject to an investigation by my office, suggests a level of carelessness which goes beyond the initial error,” Mr. Redmond says in today’s report.

He is now recommending the council to send Mrs Nawal a letter of apology and to pay her 500 pounds as well as ensuring it regularly monitors its performance against the agreed targets. He is also calling on the authority to identify any other cases that are still outstanding from before October 2006 and to ensure appropriate action is taken with them. He also wants a review of Ealing’s procedures for cases where two reference numbers are used so these can be simplified.

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The public sector is being urged to lead the way in energy efficiency with the launch of a consultation document asking respondents to choose which measures linked to energy efficiency procurement should be implemented across the country. The Government will decide which of the measures contained in the EU Energy Services Directive will be introduced next spring.

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By Craig Hart, Chris Shane, Karen Spencer and Angela Still.

Getting the right balance between care and control in supporting people with learning difficulties leads to hard decisions. Because academic research can produce misleading findings the authors asked people with theses difficulties to do their own research. The findings highlight the importance of less control, more choices and greater independence to secure higher levels of inclusion.

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A report published today sets out the views of children and young people on the minimum standards of care they should receive. In it they call for respect between children and everyone living and working with them and say carers should do everything to keep children safe from harm.

The report, ‘Children on Care Standards’ has been produced by the Children’s Rights Director for England, Dr Roger Morgan. Its findings are based on the views of children and young people who were consulted at his annual conference.

Asked what action should be taken in cases where a child was not being looked after properly, the youngsters suggested the child should be moved elsewhere. They believe, too, that such problems should be resolved by the social services department responsible for placing the child in the first place and they stress that a child or young person should not be moved without their consent.

The more than 400 children who were consulted also said the new rules should recognise the importance of staff and carers in children’s lives but they said the people working with children had to be the right people, properly qualified and properly recruited and checked. Stability, they said, was essential for young people to achieve their potential so they wanted staff changes to be kept to a minimum.

Dr Morgan said, “The children and young people have told me that they want to be made aware of the National Minimum standards and how it applies to their settings and want to be treated fairly and with respect.”

When asked their views about what staff and carers looking after children should never do, the children listed swearing and shouting at children or belittling them. They also felt it was wrong to punish children by stopping them from seeing their families.

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A local government think-tank is calling for councils to do more to balance their economic policies with the need to do more to protect the environment. In a new pamphlet the Local Government Information Unit urges authorities to work to integrate policies on economic growth and development with those that promote environmental sustainability.

The new document looks towards councils having a greater role in economic development, in line with the proposals in the Lyons Review and set out in more detail by the Sub-National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration. At the same time, it says, they are also to have more responsibility for environmental sustainability because of the increasing focus on tackling climate change, highlighted by the Stern Report and the Climate Change Bill.

‘Greening Growth’ looks at this apparent conflict by defining the ‘elastic’ concept of sustainable development. Through a series of theories and examples it goes on to show that economic growth and environmental sustainability need not cancel each other out.

Its author, Andrew Jones, who is a policy analyst at the LGIU’s Centre for Local Sustainability, said, “It has become obvious that the economic development people are not talking to the sustainability people because of this idea that the two aims are opposed to one another and contradictory. But we know that they can be reconciled and are not mutually contradictory things. When we measure economic wealth we are not able to see how the environment supports growth and how the economy supports the environment. We cannot detract the economy from the environment because the two go hand in hand.”

He added that the Centre was concerned that councils might become driven by an entirely economic growth target but he argued that the cost of economic growth needed to be taken into account and there was a need for a good method of environmental accounting.

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