A number of Local Government figures were recognised in the recent New Year Honours Listincluding chairman of the Local Government Association Margaret Eaton who has been made a Dame of the British Empire (DBE) for services to local government.
Other notable awards included: CBE for services to local government Cllr Peter Box, leader of Wakefield MDC Pamela Challis, leader, Castle Point BC. John Sinnott, chief executive of Leicestershire CC, Dr John Beer, former executive director of social services, Southampton City Council. Mavis Champagnie, councillor, Harrow LBC. Amanda Deeks, CEO, South Gloucestershire Council Maurice Heaster, deputy leader, Wandsworth LBC Jane Scott, leader of Wiltshire Council, Dr Linda Ebbatson, leader of Chester-le-Street DC
MBE for services to local government. Elizabeth Ducker, leader of South Oxfordshire DC, Derek Law, corporate director, adult and community services, North Yorkshire CC Shahda Khan, principal community cohesion officer, Middlesbrough Council Thomas Evans, councillor, Ceredigion CC.
On behalf of everyone at Civica we wish you a very Happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year.
As part of our ongoing commitment to give back to the community and reduce our carbon footprint we will make a donation to our chosen charity, 'Water for Kids' instead of sending Christmas cards.
For further information about the great work Water for Kids undertakes visit www.waterforkids.org.uk
The DWP has launched the consultation documents for their Supporting People into Work: The next stage of Housing Benefit reform.
The consultation process seeks views from local authorities, housing associations, advice workers and landlords regarding the department's reforms of housing benefit. The proposals aim to ensure that housing benefit is better able to help people into work, is fairer, more efficiently delivered and represents good value for money for the taxpayer.
The pre-budget report may be the most important event of the week, but it stands amid other announcements that reflect the way public services are changing. We've also seen the first release of results from a new way of monitoring local councils' performance, plus the Treasury report on public sector reform, Smarter Government, Oneplace Launch The new framework for inspecting local services, known as Oneplace and accessible via the government's Directgov website, is a bid to get over the well-known problem of previous inspections: councils were capable of meeting the targets, but missing the point. Their internal workings could be four-star, but the services they were actually delivering might fall well short of excellence.
Oneplace assesses not just councils, but also police authorities, primary care trusts and fire and rescue services. The output is not a league table or star system, but a "narrative in plain English" of the priorities that areas have themselves set. The initial launch appeared to be a success with reports that on the first day the site was visited by more than 54,000 people a volume which led to the collapse of the site for a period.
The new monitoring system, which covers 152 areas of England, uses a flag system to signal examples of particularly good or bad practice.
A Solution to better Services? It's new for local areas and it's new for the six inspectorates involved, led by the local authority watchdog, the Audit Commission. However, there has already been criticism of the amount of time and resource local authorities must now allocate to various inspection and reporting processes. And the key question remains will it get closer to what the public perceive as good-value local public services?
The Institute of Fiscal Studies has claimed that the Chancellor has still to announce a further £15bn of cuts to Public Sector spending. This is on top of those included in the Pre Budget Report on Wednesday.
If true it would appear that, along with a few bankers, Public Sector budgets are amongst hardest hit by the final PBR before the Election. But the figures are being denied by Jack Straw who said the IFS had not taken into account savings the government has already made "We've already spent £4bn less on unemployment benefits and income support for the unemployed than was anticipated." He added that the government hoped to make further savings by "moderating the rate of increase of unemployment".
Strong Provider/Authority Partnerships Key Whatever the truth of the real depth of the cuts, it will be those managers within the sector who produce the most innovative solutions across their service provision who'll benefit the most. Following the recent announcements by the Prime Minister, there can be no doubt that investment in technology has a role to play in this process. However, with tightening of budgets, greater emphasis will be placed on providers and Local Authorities to work together to identify the most suitable initiatives that will achieve long term efficiency savings and improvements to services.
Alistair Darling will deliver his Pre-Budget report Wednesday 9 December. The main focus of the headlines will inevitably centre around the on-going war between the Government and the City, Inheritance Tax thresholds and Captial Gains Tax, but there will also be implications for the public sector.
Possible areas of interest include: - Further details on the plans to reduce public spending - Announcement of £2.5bn for training schemes & benefits to help reduce youth long term unemployment - Reduction on upper limits of means tested benefits - Possible taxation plan for child benefit but only for high income earners
The FT has summarised a number of expert predictions for the report content. Click here to read more
You can follow the latest announcements and possible implications live on the sites below:-
The prime minister has confirmed the government's ambitions to make many services available only online and to open access to data
In a speech to mark the publication of the Putting the Frontline First: smarter government paper, Gordon Brown said that moving services and data online was part of "the third generation of changes" to public services.
"Our aim is - within the next five years - to shift the great majority of our large transactional services to become online only”
Over the next year, the government will say how it plans to move transactions online as soon as it can, starting with student loans, jobseekers' allowance, working tax credits and child benefit. In 2011, VAT and employer tax returns will move exclusively online. Mr Brown said this could save £400m as a first step and billions further on.
On online information, the prime minister said: "Every citizen will from next year have access to all information on the performance of our public services showing how, and in great detail, hospitals schools and all our public services perform in your own neighbourhood.
"We will give our frontline services greater freedoms and flexibilities to respond innovatively to this data, reducing the number of ring fenced budgets, rationalising different central funding projects and joining up capital funding within a local area," he added.
More resources will also be switched from back office functions to the front line of public sector workers, as outlined in the Frontline First paper, and emphasised the role of technology in making services more responsive to users' needs.
"Information is the key. An informed citizen is a powerful citizen," he said, adding that more public sector datasets could be opened for general access, including those within local authorities, the NHS, police and education.
"And these must all have the opportunity for feedback and interaction, for that is where power lies for the citizen," added Brown, mentioning NHS Choices as an example of allowing patients to review and rate services.
To help citizens get online, the government will put another £30m into the UK Online programme, to get another 1m people online by 2012.
A number of Local Government figures were recognised in the recent New Year Honours List including chairman of the Local Government Association Margaret Eaton who has been made a Dame of the British Empire (DBE) for services to local government.
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