The Conservatives are preparing to unleash a new era of council house-building, in a radical shift that would undo 30 years of right-wing thinking. The shadow housing minister, Grant Shapps, said the Conservatives want to increase council involvement in low-cost housing, overturning one of Margaret Thatcher’s trademark policies.
The quango running the government’s £55bn programme to rebuild schools has been accused of “bullying” local authorities with threats to withdraw their funding in a damning new report released ahead of an official announcement on the scheme this week.
Moves towards unitary local government in three county areas could be delayed after a judicial review came down in favour of three Suffolk district councils. The review concluded that the BCE should have consulted on further alternatives.
Regional improvement and efficiency partnerships (RIEPs) could be forced to review their plans after being told to focus more on capital expenditure programmes.
The London Borough of Barnet has dropped proposals for a wholesale outsourcing that would have reduced it to a tiny strategic core. The proposals discussed by the council in December included setting up a joint venture company to commission services as well as a series of service delivery vehicles.
Quiet communities have become angered by a Government which won’t even listen, still less give them a say. Local services have been withdrawn, rural communities have been denied a voice, and power has been taken away from local people.
Under the Conservative plans, the viability of post offices would be judged against new guidelines including determining whether they offer a social service to the elderly and young families.
The new policy is part of a range of measures they will unveil as part of a strategy to deal with what they say is Labour’s “decade of disrespect” towards the countryside.
Former local government minister David Miliband, giving the John Smith Memorial Lecture said that the government has not done enough to transfer powers to local government.
A Conservative Government would make quangos more democratically accountable, David Cameron announced today as he unveiled a review of publicly-funded independent bodies to determine which should be scrapped or slimmed down.
There is a huge demand for increased support and growth of the social and environmental market, and given its mutual aims, local government is the best-placed industry to reconnect markets and morals.