Housing minister Grant Shapps has announced £17 million of funding to help local groups with the cost of drawing up new orders which allow communities to grant permission for new building projects.
Communities secretary Eric Pickles has suggested councils could use new tax powers over empty and second homes to fund a £20 cut in council tax bills.
It’s not an easy time for anyone right now, but spare a thought for council leaders. Faced with the biggest share of cuts in the 2010 spending review, local governments can see the writing on the wall.
A group of 12 towns in England have been selected to run pilot schemes based on a government-commissioned report on improving high street vitality, the local government minister announced on Saturday.
The Local Government Association (LGA) has partnered with the think-tank Localis to launch a report arguing for a locally driven regeneration scheme. The report uses several case studies of successful regeneration schemes around the UK.
Accountancy giant Ernst & Young has been hired by the Local Government Association (LGA) to hammer home the business case for Community Budgets to the Treasury, council chiefs will reveal today.
Councils need some grow-your-own tools to help promote local regeneration. Extending the community budget pilots nationwide would be a good start. If regeneration was easy, life would be much simpler. Unfortunately thats not the case, as several decades of centrally-led programmes have shown.
A report launched today by local government think-tank, Localis, and umbrella body the Local Government Association (LGA) calls for councils to be given more powers over raising finance to achieve a locally-driven approach to regeneration.
Local government think-tank, Localis, in partnership with the Local Government Association (LGA), will tomorrow launch a report that argues that a new locally-driven approach to regeneration is needed.
In a second post on regeneration, the Alex Thomson of Localis calls on local government to look to the US for new ideas on local growth. Grow your own way, a new report from think-tank Localis looks at local approaches to regeneration and includes a case study on Pittsburgh.