Chris Leslie, Director, NLGN
Whitehall and Westminster World
There were two shooting stars across the Government’s public service fermament in July; the Darzi Review on health and Hazel Blears’ White Paper ‘Communities In Control – Real People, Real Power’. Both were complementary in some respects, emphasising the importance of user empowerment, choice and the positive benefits of […]

Chris Leslie, Director, NLGN
LGA First
There were some positive steps forward in the Government’s ‘Communities In Control’ White Paper which arguably make Whitehall more responsive to local needs, principally the extension of the yet-to-be-defined ‘duty to involve’ to a smattering of centralised quangoes, including the Arts Council, Environment Agency and JobCentre Plus. Whether anyone will ever […]

James Hulme, NLGN
www.telegraph.co.uk

Last Friday I was invited to spend the morning with a group of Labour councillors discussing what ideas they should include in their party’s next manifesto. Whilst they weren’t exactly reaching for the party poppers to celebrate Gordon Brown’s anniversary in office, they were surprisingly less depressed than many Labour Party members I […]

Chris Leslie, NLGN
www.citymayors.com
29 June 2008: Wrenching power from central control is proving difficult. Despite a massive improvement in the quality and performance of English local government over the past decade, cross-party political goodwill for devolution, and managerial consensus that centralism cannot cope with the detailed challenges of frontline service delivery, there remains a disinclination to […]