Rochdale

Visted Julie Pickering, Head of FM at Rochdale, Julie is someone who I have known for a couple of years and has a good insight into local government generally. We discuss over lunch the impact of Government proposals on Catering on local authority budgets and how the Government, corporate centre of authorities and the public need to understand that things have a cost.

It never ceases to amaze me the hatred of Jamie Oliver amongst education catering staff. I liked the Jamie Oliver programme in the fact that it raised awareness of an undervalued local government service, it brought some extra funding and new facilities, I also liked the idea of fresh food being cooked and enhanced nutirent standards. I didn't like the damage done to existing high performing local authority caterers, the drop in take up amongst children and the lack of knowledge all round that implementing change takes time.

Ron meets Robin

Our National Chair Cllr Ron Manley had a meeting this morning with Sir Robin Wales the Elected Mayor of London Borough of Newham to discuss the authority supporting us with our annual seminar which is being held in the borough in September. Ron feels the meeting went well and Robin has pledged his support to the conference.

At home at this point with the technician sent out to sort out my wireless network and virtual private network connection to the office. Breath a huge sigh of relief when I realise for once it wasn't down to me and technology, but actually a system fault. Anyway back in business and online.

It's the Environment Stupid!

Spend morning working on a draft policy paper on the Environment with John Marsh our Principal Advisor in this area. As we discuss it we can't help but come to the conclusion that we are so far behind the rest of Europe in this area and Government policy is taking us completely down the wrong road. We are geared up to collect as much waste as possible because of Governments fixation with marketisation and competition when really we should be pursuing a strategy to minimise waste. This requires education and enforcement in order to reduce level of waste not building bigger and bigger disposal plants. Which leads us to the thorny question of variable charging and our view is firmly that this must be done on an equitable basis and not turn into a form of regressive taxation on families.

Media Strategy

Nicola visited today along with graphic and web designers. Kicked ideas about and think we know where we are going with this, impressed with the quality and knowledge of the designers.

Health and Physical Activity

Dr. Matt Lowther, Physical Activity Co-ordinator for the Scottish Executive came to the office today to discuss the development of a suite of performance indicators on health and physical activity. Made good progress and I think Matt went away armed with some new ideas on where he wants to go with this.

Media Strategy

Met with our media consultant Nicola Carroll to explore the commissioning of our upcoming media campaign. Agreed the PR agency to use and mapped out a plan up to launch.

Did scenesetting and chaired part of our conference on 'Clean Neighbourhoods the Emerging Picture' at Old Trafford stadium today. 160 people present so reasonably good turnout for one of our events. The idea was one year on what progress has been made as a result of the enactment of the Clean Neighbourhoods Act in England. The answer was probably 'its variable'. Event went very well and quality of speakers was good and showed detailed knowledge of the topic.

Tim Pope Head of Liveability at D CLoG opened proceedings followed by Deborah Fox from CABE. The next session included Ginette Unsworth from ENCAMS and 3 local authority speakers Denice Prestidge from Southampton, John Coates from North Lincolnshire and Graeme Small from Stockton-on-Tees. ENCAMS are such a well regarded organisation and do some great work but the star of the show had to be Graeme despite him over running. His role is Head of Enforcement and he came along dressed in his community wardens uniform, he spoke with great passion for his role and really epitomises the best of the public service ethos. Although his enthusiasm for his role did go a little to far for some people when he described the powers in the Act as being like given his very own Apache Attack Helicopter.

The event finished of with 4 workshops and the feedback from the day was superb.

In London at a chatam house rules event with Sir Michael Lyons on his inquiry with a particular slant on what people want from their local environments. Not allowed to say to much about it although Sir Michaels appears to be homing in on some key issues around about environment and liveability and how the success or failure of local government in these areas will be closely linked to public perception of public services and whether they are delivering value for money or not. He confirmed that he will definetly produce his report in December and that the areas of waste collection and disposal will form a key part of his thinking on local services and funding.

Had a good chat with Tim Pope Head of Liveability at D CLoG who is speaking at our conference on Thursday and Anna Randle part of the Lyons team who is speaking at our annual conference.

Also had lengthy debate with one of the speakers about variable charging on waste collection and whether it was a regressive form of taxation. His view was that it is the only way to change peoples behaviour towards waste minimisation and he had some compelling evidence from Germany and Holland regarding this.

Spend the day in the office writing an article on Shared Services for Government Opportunities, some press on the 'lifting the burdens taskforce', finalisng the Annual Report with Mark Bramah and generally catching up with left over's from being out the office last week.

Leave Bournemouth fairly sharp and get back to the office to drop off equipment before heading home for a rest. Pretty satisfied with the LGA conference its a great networking opportunity and we have over 100 visits to the stand a significant number of them of high quality.

Conservative leader David Cameron MP addresses the conference and is impressive in terms of his knowledge of local government, normally senior ministers mention local government once or twice in their speech then spend 20 minutes discussing defence or health. He makes four commitments in terms of cutting back on the role of regional assemblies, abolishing the standards council, providing freedom to set own spending limits by culling audit,capping and ringfencing; and finally no local government reorgansiation. He also answered six separate questions on various issues from the audience.

Turn the tables on Heather Jameson, Depute Editor at the MJ by interviewing on what she thought of David Camerons speech and whether he would be a future Prime Minister. Her answers are recorded on the CD from the APSE camcorder, we will wait and see if she was prophetic.

Local Government Minister, Angela Smith MP visits the stand and spends 15 minutes talking about her opening address at the APSE annual seminar in September, proportional representation and the Northern Ireland Assembly. First time I have met her and was impressed by her genuine attempt to engage with us rather than merely shake hands smile for a photo and move on. In that aspect she reminds me of Nick Raynsford who once spent over 2 hours at an APSE fringe meeting debating Housing and only left because his assistant basically dragged him away.

Go to the D CLoG reception in the evening and impress everyone by walking in talking with Local Government Minister Phil Woolas MP, all the main organisations in local government are there, they don't need to know that I met him in the lift and I was thanking him for getting Angela Smith to speak at our annual seminar.

Have dinner with Shaun Field the Chief Executive of Bedford and we debate the Barnett formula late into the night. Shaun knows exactly where he is going in local government and I look forward to hearing him speak when he closes the main plenary sessions at the APSE annual conference.

Department of Communities and Local Government (D CLoG) Minister Ruth Kelly MP speaks at the conference and announces the creation of the 'lifting the burdens' taskforce. This is aimed at cutting the amount of red tape and targets placed upon local government, some analysts suggest from 1,000 to possibly as low as 30.

Meet Sue Reid head of efficiencies at D CLoG and have a chat, I had been to a meeting with her on skills shortages a few weeks previously and it was good to catch up again.

Ben Page pays a quick visit to the stand and begs me not to invite him back to the Performance Networks seminar in Blackpool in December as he has done it for the past 4 years.

Meet with Cllr Milan Radulovic leader at Broxtowe and Chair of ARCH to discuss developments in Housing policy and how we can push to reform the housing benefit system to create new options for social housing.

John Marsh and myself meet up with colleagues from the WLGA at the ALG reception late on and discuss how we can get involved in the Excellence Wales Awards.

Arrive at LGA conference in Bournemouth in time to catch DEFRA Minister David Miliband session on the environment. Think he is taking a gamble by using powerpoint, politicians usually stick to speeches, however he gets away with it and shows an impressive knowledge of the subject. Basically if we don't make some sweeping changes now then we will sink as a country by 2080.

Have a chat with Pascoe Sawyers the Head of the IDeAs Leadership Academy, he is pretty switched on and understands a lot of the regional complexities that exist in local government.

Go for dinner with Northamptonshire County Council delegates, Cllr Roy Mayhew an old friend and depute leader Cllr Ben Smith and Cllr John McGhee new ones.