Senior Policy Officer at Localis, Steven Howell, took part in a Guardian online debate on Monday 3rd September about how housing can boost the economy and how investment in house building might best be unlocked.
Welfare minister Lord Freud has announced a final list of 12 local authorities, which will run pilot schemes for the new universal credit scheme.
The government has opened bidding for grants to help pay for the cost of putting together community planning documents.
Alex Thomson, chief executive at Localis, argues that councils should be given a real incentive to pursue economic growth in light of recent figures showing regional disparities in business rates yields.
Council chiefs and business leaders have teamed up to lobby the Government and the European Union (EU) to reform European procurement rules, The MJ can reveal.
The proportion of homes in the sector which are empty has fallen, according to a survey published by the Homes and Communities Agency today.
Ministers have halved local governments spending transparency threshold from all items worth more than £500 to all transactions above £250 and warned that authorities which needlessly redact information face future scrutiny.
The government is set to announce plans to boost the house building market next month after an anticipated stimulus failed to materialise in July.
Business acumen and entrepreneurship are ‘flourishing’ in local government, according to new research from the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE).
Plans to assess the cost to councils of the government’s transparency agenda are not yet underway, although the LGA has pledged they soon will be.