A belief that there shouldn’t be profit in public service has led one former council chief executive to pledge a £100,000 redundancy payout back to the public, but it’s also a break with the past, he says. Jim McKenna is not, he insists, a saint. He is, in his own words, an “ordinary” guy...
Read more →New research shows councils could save billions on procurement. The hard part is turning those potential savings into reality. Local councils could save themselves £2.2bn a year by driving a better deal on the goods and services they buy from private companies, according to new research. The data, compiled by procurement company Spikes Cavell...
Read more →A pioneering project in north London shows the value of getting public agencies to work together. But having one person ‘go into bat’ for vulnerable families is just as important. Angela, a cute one-year-old with tight pigtails, plays placidly amongst the scattered toys in the Packington Estate’s children’s centre in north London. A year...
Read more →While citizen involvement has become an election buzzword, local groups are left railing against the reality. A warm, sunny Sunday in April brings the season’s first sunbathers on to the shingled beaches of Hastings, in East Sussex. A perfect day, too, for promenading on the pier – or it would be if it hadn’t been...
Read more →Could money be saved by turning empty office blocks, and even old Woolworths shops, into schools? Bristol Cathedral choir school’s principal, Neil Blundell, is striding along the corridor of the school’s newest building, the Parsonage, when he spots a pupil leaning against the wall, shirt-tails peeping out from beneath his sweater. “Would you like...
Read more →John Carleton is the head of Local Partnerships, the newest body trying to help councils drive a better bargain with private companies. He brings a wealth of experience from public service, banking, consultancy … and international rugby Perhaps one of the lowest points in John Carleton’s international rugby career, in which he garnered 32...
Read more →