Manchester Blues!

The Conservative Party conference has been in Manchester the past few days and I managed to attend a few fringe meetings on APSEs behalf.

Shadow Treasury Minister Greg Hands and leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Stephen Greenhalgh spoke at the first event on regeneration. Stephen linked successful regeneration to the return of business rates to local government and improving local housing and infrastructure.

At a separate event on localism and economic resilience Leader of Westminster City Council, Colin Barrow spoke along with Mike Whitby, Leader of Birmingham City Council. Mike makes a very impressive case for Birmingham as a global city and understands the need to ensure community benefits from both public and inward investment. He suggested that the ingredients for local economic success were around keeping council tax rises small, streets clean, a decent housing stock in place, communities safe and educational attainment high.

George Osborne's pay freeze on public servants on salaries above £18,000 in 2011 was a bold move. With inflation likely to be on the rise again by this point it could prove a significant cut in real terms for those who are just above this benchmark.

Economy, efficiency and effectiveness

A busy few days for me on planet APSE with a seminar at City of Manchester Stadium on how local authorities can best respond to the challenges that the recession is throwing at them. We call it "Economy, efficiency and effectiveness", obvious I know but it's still the overarching best value duty placed on local authorities by the Local Government Act 1999.

The seminar goes well with some excellent contributions in the plenary sessions from Mike Chambers of the Government Office of the North West and Lee Heley, Head of Regeneration at the Audit Commission. They really set the scene for the day by outlining the key role local authorities have to play in helping local communities cope with and survive the current recession.

Ian Stephenson, from Derbyshire County Council, talked about some of the inhouse partnerships they have been running with other authorities and about how he has campaigned for people to 'stop doing stupid things'. Clare Hutley from Milton Keynes spoke about improvements the council has made by taking a value driven approach to service delivery, this has resulted in them taking the decision to insource their building cleaning service. Steve White gave an overview of improvements delivered as a result of an organisational development programme at Edinburgh City Council. Craig Willows, gave a presentation on how Stockton became one of the best authorities in the country for delivering on the care for your area agenda.

In the afternoon Neil McInroy from CLES and myself run a workshop on how local authorities can use community benefit clauses in procurement in order to maximize the benefit from their investments.

All in all a massive amount of food for thought on the steps local authorities can take to improve their performance and approach the 3 E's. The best practice demonstrated sent delegates away with a host of ideas.