This programme is now available to view on egovtv.tv, the online television channel for public service modernisation. It features an interview with the Chief Executive of Woking Borough Council who explains how councils can start to meet their environmental obligations and also make handsome savings in the process.
He describes the Borough’s pioneering Climate Change Strategy which is based on incremental developments and has produced no losers. 

The benefits of electronic document management are readily recognized,but the ongoing costs of scanning documents into electronic format are often overlooked. This white paper from Cave Tab Ltd compares the set-up and operating costs of an outsourced scanning service versus an in-house service ina local government benefit claims department, a planning and building control department and an organisation which has a large number of staff required to complete hand-written time sheets. 

The annual pay reward survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development includes responses from the private, public and voluntary sectors covering 2 million employees.
The survey found that one third of respondents have a reward strategy and a further one quarter plan to create one in 2008. Last year 40 per cent of respondents intended to bring in a reward strategy; most have not succeeded so far, indicating that implementing a reward strategy is far from easy. 

The new national programme to develop middle managers in local government, through building leadership and management capacity, will be funded by Communities and Local Government and the Local Government Association. 

Voluntary and community organisations are set to play a major role inthe government’s “Strategy for Protecting the Public and Reducing Reoffending” as the third sector delivery of public services gathers momentum. 

Public expectations about how taxpayers’ money is spent are increasing and there is a growing concern about whether value for money in all areas of government is achieved consistently. The recent Whitehall Capability Reviews and the external assessments made of local government, health and the police have all shown significant opportunities for organisational improvement. 

This report from Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development summarises an event organized by the Institute and the Trades Union Congress on the changing landscape of age and retirement. The key message from the event is that demand for working beyond 65 looks set to increase markedly in the next 15 years.
Currently, only 11 percent of the workforce work beyond State Pension age, but some two fifths of individuals plan to carry on working beyond 65. 

Community cohesion has become an important policy issue in recent years following the race-related disturbances in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in 2001. This report from Communities and Local Government sets out finding of research into predictors of community cohesion.The report examines the issue at both the individual and the community level.
The principal findings were that ethnic diversity drives cohesion. 

Almost half of organisations in the UK no longer award employees an across the board annual pay rise or cost of living adjustment, according to this year’s Annual Reward Management survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Manufacturing, production and private sector service firms are the least likely to provide such a pay rise. But the decline in the yearly traditional pay rise seems to be spreading throughout employment sectors. 

This programme is now available to view on egovtv.tv, the online television channel for public service modernisation. It reviews the innovative interactive web site Redbridge i which is designed to allow the London Borough of Redbridge Council to engage more fully with its local citizens to enhance services and to increase democratic participation.