The special constabulary has grown by 3000 in the last four years and the Home Office has announced that a further 3000 special constables will be recruited in the next three years. The new recruits will bring the total up to 20,000.
Constables work alongside Police Community Support Officers and Police Officers on the streets of local communities and they help reduce crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour. 

By Marian Barnes, Chris Skelcher, Hanne Beirens, Robert Dalziel, Stephen Jeffares and Lynne Wilson
The challenge for governing communities is about creating organizations to deliver public services while promoting the values of local democracy. Citizen participation and partnership working have become key issues. The authors looked at the different approaches to citizen centred governance. 

The Local Government Association has responded to the House of Lords Science Committee report on waste management, by calling on businesses to match the efforts local people have made in recent years to reduce the country’s reliance on landfill. Reducing packaging is vital to avoid paying more landfill tax and EU fines. “The days of the cling film coconut must come to an end”.
The report focuses on waste reduction. 

Nearly three-quarters of people responsible for the professional development of staff in schools lack awareness of the range of continuing professional development options available. A culture heavy workloads and poor prioritising is preventing middle managers developing their skills in the children’s workforce. These are key findings from research by the Training and Development Agency for Schools and the Children’s Workforce Development Council. 

This report from Reform, an independent thinktank, suggests that government can be transformed for the better if it adopts some of the values of the IPOD generation, which is characterised as insecure, pressurised, over-taxed and debt-ridden. Developing a more open approach to government, providing principled leadership and professionalism as well as communicating in exciting and imaginative ways is seen as the way forward. 

A wide range of investors have backed a Cabinet Office proposal to set up a risk capital investment fund for the 55,000 social enterprise businesses in the UK. The proposal describes an equity-like investment scheme where Government funding will be matched by private investment.
Although there are various schemes for start-up businesses, there is a funding gap when social enterprises move to a growth stage. 

Alliance & Leicester has introduced a prepaid card payments solution for local councils in the wake of the government’s scheme to transfer payment of housing benefit to claimants, rather than their landlords.
A prepaid card scheme will allow councils to save up to 75 per cent of their processing costs for the payment of housing benefits, as well as remove the average 10 per cent charge to the recipients when converting cheques to cash. 

The Department of Health has published details of the Investment Programme for third sector organisations working in areas which are the responsibility of the Health Service and local councils.
The document helps third sector organisation decide if this funding stream is applicable to both their organisation and the proposed activity for which they are seeking funding. 

When the newly established Local Involvement Networks identify concerns about local health or social care services, they refer the issues to the scrutiny committee of the local council. Consultations on the management the new Networks has revealed worries about a potential conflict of interest that may result form this arrangement.
A Local Involvement Network is made up of individuals and community groups who work together to improve local health and social care services. 

OGCbuying.solutions, an Executive Agency of HM Treasury, has secured a deal with Hewlett Packard that allows public bodies to buy a range of commonly purchased print devices at discounts ranging up to 50%.
The deal is available exclusively through HP resellers on the OGCbuying.solutions’ IT Goods and Associated Services framework agreement. Each reseller will be offering varying prices which will stimulate competition.