The Local Government Association and the Government are to continue monitoring the impact of the failure of Icelandic banks on councils who had invested more than three-quarters of a billion pounds with them. The LGA is to analyse the effects on individual councils.

Read more on GOVERNMENT AGREES COUNCILS’ ICELANDIC INVESTMENTS NOT RECKLESS…

Local authorities are being told they should be more involved with schools over their admission policies. The Children’s Services Network says councils must work more closely with schools to assess the impact of admission arrangements on fair access and to achieve better balanced school intakes across their areas.

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By Dan Finn, Danielle Mason, Nilufer Rahim and Jo Casebourne

Prompt delivery of benefits can often become a crucial issue. When things go wrong recipients can experience acute difficulties which in the extreme extend to eviction because of rent arrears. The authors looked at what is going wrong, the causes of the problems and solutions. They conclude that in the areas of benefit delivery there is little evidence of the experiments in new forms of user participation evident in other social policy domains. They argue that there is a strong case for increasing the voice of users in this policy area.

Read more on DELIVERING BENEFITS, TAX CREDITS AND EMPLOYMENT SERVICES…