ILP Infobank News

oneplace - one day early!

oneplace - one day early!

The Audit Commission (AC) and its partner inspectorates will be launching the oneplace website a day early, on 9 December 2009, following the government’s recent announcement to publish the Pre-Budget Report (PBR) on 9 December. The oneplace website will show the results of the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA).

The PBR will set out the government’s spending plans for next year and is likely to attract significant coverage across the domestic news media on 10 December - the day originally set to launch the oneplace website.

The decision to change the date has been agreed by all the partner inspectorates. By changing the date the AC avoids competing for limited space against the PBR but, even more importantly, reduces the risk that oneplace may be perceived as a government initiative.

• Visit the oneplace webpage
• View the oneplace prototype website
• Find out more about CAA

For more information on oneplace, please contact Martin Bollers at the Audit Commission on 0844 798 2145 or email him.

FREE Total Place seminars

From January to March next year, I&DeA is running a series of FREE themed seminars around Total Place:

• The voluntary and community sector (VCS) role in Total Place
• Total Place: doing the high-level count
• Total Place: innovation - new perspectives on service design
• Total Place: offender management and community safety
• Total Place: targeted early intervention and prevention - an integrated approach
• Total Place: and your workforce
• Total Place: doing the ‘deep dive’ count

• Find out more about Total Place

Local democracy videos

The Improvement and Development Agency (I&DeA) has posted a number of short videos about local democratic engagement on its Better Community Engagement and Empowerment community of practice website. They cover

• Being a councillor - by Improvement and Efficiency South East with Oxfordshire County Council. It covers the main aspects of a councillor’s role, how to become a councillor and the reflections of councillors on what they like about their role.
• What can your councillor do for you? - by Improvement and Efficiency South East with Oxfordshire County Council. It covers how you can use your councillor, as a signpost, a campaigner, to help raise or resolve issues and how to contact your councillor.
• How to vote - by Improvement and Efficiency South East with Oxfordshire County Council. Explains the ways you can vote, who is eligible and signposts people onto the About my vote website.
• Speaking at a council meeting - by Improvement and Efficiency South East with Oxfordshire County Council. Covers how to raise an issue at a council meeting, the time you are likely to have, sending written submissions and the benefits to people of making suggestions to improve services.
• Participatory Budgeting (PB) in Walsall NDC (New Deal for Communities) - by the West Midlands Regional Empowerment Partnership. Looks at the experience of two community workers who have used PB methods to engage with young children (6-11 years) to make budget decisions for activities for young people.
• How to complain to your council - by Improvement and Efficiency South East and Oxfordshire County Council. Covers how to make a complaint in writing, by phone or email, to help improve services.
• How to make a freedom of information request - by Improvement and Efficiency South East and Oxfordshire County Council. Covers how to acess information in the public domain and the way that Freedom of Information Requests are responded to.

Watch the videos (FREE registration required)

Faith communities and cohesion - Doreen Finneron

At an Interfaith Week seminar organised by the British Humanist Association, the Director of the Faith-based Regeneration Network (FbRN), Dr Doreen Finneron, offered an explanation of how faith communities’ work fits ‘within the wider strategy of Empowerment and other community policy, such as involving local people in the decisions that affect them and supporting voluntary activity.’

She identified three main aspects of the faith role:

• ‘addressing need at local level, often by the delivery of services, particularly to marginalised and isolated groups,
• ‘working together to build cohesion, and
• ‘speaking out on current issues; this often leads them to a critique and challenge of government.’

Read Dr Finneron’s lecture

Compact Voice - latest news

Following the controversy surrounding the government’s decision to cancel grants awarded under the Campaigning Research Fund, Compact Voice is conducting a poll to discover members’ views on whether giving the Compact Commission statutory powers would go against the spirit of the Compact itself.

They will be sending out pdf files of the refreshed Compact to registered members, as soon as it is launched.

They are also publishing case studies of how the Compact has made a difference around England.

• Vote in the online poll
• Sign up for a pdf copy of the refreshed Compact
• Read the Compact case studies
• Follow the Campaigning Fund story

LGA challenges CAA

Comprehensive area assessment (CAA) has not only failed to reduce the cost of inspection borne by councils but has even increased it in some local areas, according to a lobbying document published by the Local Government Association (LGA).

In Delivering more for less: maximising value in the public sector, the LGA identifies £650 million of savings that could be made by radically reducing the burden of public inspection.

They argue further that up to £4.5 billion in total could be saved by cuts to departmental budgets and quangos, and councils being given more control over public spending in their areas.

• Download Delivering more for less

EHRC publishes plans

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has published an account of their work in What our plans mean for you.

The document highlights EHRC’s work around seven equality and human rights strands and a range of cross-cutting themes, and outlines the commission’s plans for the future.

• Download What our plans mean for you

Equality Bill - latest news

The Equality Bill was carried over from the last session of parliament and re-announced in the Queen’s speech on 18 November.

The Bill sets out new laws intended to

• help narrow the gap between rich and poor
• require business to report on gender pay
• outlaw age discrimination
• strengthen anti-discrimination legislation

If passed, the Bill will replace many of the existing laws around equality and discrimination.

It will also impose on local authorities a new socio-economic duty to ensure that their decisions contribute towards closing the poverty gap in their local areas.

• Find out more

Signposting sustainability through CAA

The Improvement Network has published a comprehensive briefing on Sustainability, one of the four aims underlying comprehensive area assessment (CAA).

The briefing, which will be of interest to all local strategic partners, aims

1. to show how local authorities and their local strategic partners can take sustainability into account in their current and future work, and
2. to demonstrate the value of doing so through improving performance in relation to sustainability and the eleven sub-themes in the CAA.

• Access the briefing

Conservatives 'will trust charities' - Hurd

In a speech to NCVO’s autumn conference, Nick Hurd, Shadow Charities Minister, acknowledged the wide diversity of the third sector and stated that a future Conservative government would place more trust in voluntary and community organisations.

He said that, while the present government’s intentions towards the sector are good, the relationship is too bureaucratic and there is too much micro-management of process.

Read more on the ncvo website