Total Place is about mapping public expenditure in a locality and identifying efficiencies through partnership working. Birmingham is a city of a million people and a financial mapping exercise led by Be Birmingham, Birmingham’s local strategic partnership, identified over £7.5 billion of public investment coming into the city each year.
The paper illustrates the need for more innovation in public service and for a greater focus on decentralization. The authors, from the National School for Government, have drawn their conclusions from the Total Place initiatives. Policy development on public service reform has shifted towards a more decentralised, less command-and-control based approach, but a whole generation of Whitehall staff has grown up in that world, having little direct knowledge of the front line and no capacity to see things from a local perspective.
The difficult economic climate has created a need for community enterprises to raise their own finance and shares and bonds are seen as the way forward.
The newly announced community enterprise strategic framework will help more local groups set up successful local social enterprises and it sets out proposals for community shares that would allow local people to raise funds to maintain or buy a stake in important community services like the village shop or local pub to ensure its survival. A football supporters club could form a co-operative to take over their team, giving the supporters a chance to purchase community shares and so have a say in its future.
Read more on PROMOTING COMMUNITY ENTERPRISE THROUGH SHARES AND BONDS…
Police in Knowsley, on Merseyside, have introduced a new form of crime management by reducing beats to just three streets. This rigorous policing method was successfully used in inner city Liverpool and is now being employed to improve the lives of residents on a once troubled estate.
Read more on NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICING GETS DOWN TO MICRO-BEATS…
Conservative leader David Cameron has pledged to give public sector workers the chance to form co-operatives to run services. The plan would give staff of taxpayer-funded services, such as primary school teachers and nurses, the opportunity to decide how the services were run.
More electrification of the rail network and steps to increase capacity across the North of England should be the priorities for Government investment in the railways over the next ten years, according to a group of MPs. In a report today the Commons Transport Committee is also warning that investment in new infrastructure must not detract from necessary medium-term investments.
Read more on REPORT CALLS FOR PRIORITY FOR NORTH IN RAIL INVESTMENT…
The first steps are being taken to set up a twinning arrangement between Members of the Scottish Parliament and parliamentarians in Malawi. Two MSPs, Karen Gillon and Michael Matheson are in Malawi in the latest stage of cooperation between the two bodies to share ideas and ways of working.
Read more on SCOTTISH PARLIAMENTARIANS SEEK TWINNING LINK WITH MALAWIAN MPs…
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