The Department for Education announced earlier this week that it will ‘name and shame’ poorly performing adoption services by ranking local authorities on the basis of 15 performance indicators. The Children in Care and Adoption league tables combine process indicators – such as the speed in which adoptions take place – with outcome indicators...
On our tour of these 11 cities we were told by chief executives, officials, councillors, business and voluntary sector leaders alike that elected mayors could offer greater accountability and clear leadership at a local level, but that the mayoral offer to local authorities needs to be more clearly defined. Yesterday we got more clarity...
If the Government’s listening exercise can encourage ministers to clarify the lines of accountability, the decentralisation introduced in the Health and Social Care Bill may be more widely accepted. The Institute’s recent report, Nothing to do with me? put forward guiding principles on ministerial accountability within decentralised services.
The Big Society has always been synonymous with David Cameron. He sees the Big Society as his raison d’etre for being Prime Minister and, as we argued in One Year On, he is alone in the cabinet in being comfortable talking about it. Today’s speech reaffirms his commitment and emphasises that it is still...
The Coalition’s plans for reforming our public services have been breathtakingly bold. From hospitals to schools, criminal justice to welfare, the pace and scale of the proposed reforms have taken many by surprise. But the government seems far more coy when it comes to publishing the long-delayed Public Services White Paper. What’s the problem?
Local government waste management is emerging as a test case of the government’s genuine commitment to localism. Over the weekend, plans by the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, to rein in local authorities who charge for waste, suggest a low level of tolerance for local action and little belief in the power of local people to...
