A trip to Middlesbrough last week has left me confused. For years I have accepted the conventional wisdom that, unlike some of the former English regions, the North East made sense as sub-national construct.
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This week saw the publication of the final report from the Independent Riots Victims and Communities Panel, which was set up to examine the causes of last summer’s riots and to recommend action that the Government could take in order to prevent further disturbances. The recommendations include targeted intervention with 500,000 families identified by the panel’s research as “forgotten families” who “bump along the bottom of society”.
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As has often been observed, architecture is the only form of art that we all have to live with. If you don’t like a painting, you don’t have to look at it. Can’t stand Yeats or Keats? Don’t read them then.
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Without wishing to name names, there has been a fair bit of misreporting of the Government’s proposed changes to the Right-to-Buy discount cap.
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So the Welfare Reform Bill has completed its passage through Parliament and now awaits royal assent. It’s been tough going at times, but credit where credit is due: the Government has been pugnacious in its determination to prevent the bill from being watered down in either the Commons or the House of Lords.
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What a difference several years, no shortage of political will and hundreds of million pounds of investment can make to a run-down corner of east London. I’m just back from a media tour of the 2012 Olympic site and, having first visited it about three years ago as the ‘big build’ got underway, the transformation of the site is remarkable. That said, for all its ‘wow factor’ structures, this is still a huge construction site and there does still seem a long way to go before it’s ready for the big day in July.
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In the current issue of Planning, we analyse the cost to the public purse of each (direct) job the government expects to be created through the £1.4 billion Regional Growth Fund (RGF).
The key findings are interesting in themselves: according to government figures the cost per job in the second round is forecast to be almost twice as expensive as the jobs created through the first round of the fund, and almost four times as expensive in three regions – the North West, Yorkshire and the Humber and the East Midlands – prompting commentators to challenge the government’s claims that it intends the fund to be as cheap as possible for the taxpayer.
But while researching the story, I noticed a few other noteworthy points about the fund – some of which call for further clarity from ministers as to how they are allocating the money.
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The coalition’s flagship ‘Big Society’ agenda came under fierce attack from delegates at the Locality convention in Manchester this week.
Community sector representatives expressed such inflamed criticism of the Big Society that even I – with an abundance of reservations about how well the Prime Minister’s vision for a more fruitful civil society is being implemented – found myself wanting to drag a protective blanket around the DCLG official who was subjected to such niceties as, “I’m sure you’re normally a very able civil servant but your speech today was a profoundly weak, party-political broadcast on behalf of the Conservatives”. Read More »
So the long awaited report from the communities and local government select committee into the coalition government’s regeneration strategy is finally with us. The word “damning” just about covers it.
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The government’s consultation on allowing town halls to retain a portion of the business rates generated in their area ended on Monday. The big question is exactly how much of the rates they will be able to keep. In the consultation the government has set out a rather complicated system of tariffs and levies that will supposedly mean that worse-off councils do not lose out right from the start. But the details, including what the baseline figure will be, remain unclear. We will be collecting councils’ responses to the consultation but, in the meantime, two local government think tanks have set out what they would like to see from the reforms:
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