People who have used care services or tried to get local authority finance for care are being offered the chance to have their say about the present funding system and the decision on who does and does not get help. The invitation has come from the Commission for Social Care Inspection, which is conducting a review at the request of the Care Services Minister, Ivan Lewis. 

A Government planned carbon trading scheme will be undermined unless local councils are given clarity soon about what they will be expected to do. The warning has come from the Local Government Information Unit following the publication of DEFRA’s latest report on the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), due to be launched in 2010. 

Top tier local authorities are set to be given new duties as part of a package of measures to revive some of England’s most deprived areas. Government ministers have begun a consultation on proposals which they say will lay the foundations for sweeping reform.
The plans follow the Sub-National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration, which was published last summer and which envisaged streamlined regional government with the phasing out of Regional Assemblies from 2010. 

Local authorities have new powers from today to get tough with utility companies that cause traffic congestion and disruption for local people and businesses through over running road works. According to the Local Government Association council transport staff will use the powers to manager where and when works take place. 

Local authorities are being urged to take a leading role in dealing with the threat of flooding. 

Relying on technology and the free market will not deliver higher rates of recycling, according to a study which shows that in a democratic society it is almost always necessary to control the market to ensure good environmental outcomes. The study, presented by Tim Cooper to the Economic History Society, argues that historical experience shows government and wider society have a role to play. 

The rapid way in which cities in Victorian Britain grew have many lessons for how the economy should be managed now, according to a report today. The authors claim the need for some cities to grow means more care needs to be taken over the constraints placed on their development.
Professor Nick Crafts and Dr Tim Leunig will present their findings as part of the Economic History Society’s annual conference, which begins in Nottingham today. 

Local government leaders want all developers to be forced to make land available for allotments in all big urban schemes as a way to tackle mounting waiting lists and the shortage of plots in some parts of the country. The Local Government Association has estimated that 200,000 allotments have disappeared in the last thirty years. 

Local Government leaders are urging the Government to put councils at the heart of constitutional reform. Reacting to the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, the Local Government Association called on ministers to use it to devolve decision making.
The LGA wants the Bill to include a statutory duty for decision making to be shifted from the centre to the lowest possible level. 

Public sector leaders are to be offered the chance to take a strategic view of property so they can get maximum value from what is seen as an expensive, but often ignored, asset. The National School of Government and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors are to run a series of seminars to back up the ‘Public Sector Property Asset Management Guidance’, which was published recently.