A civil servant from the Office of Government Commerce comes to visit the office today to talk about construction procurement and reverse e:auctions. He wants us to promote the concept amongst DLOs by getting them to combine their supplies procurement. This is a concept that interests us and we agree to help promote it by inviting the civil servant to participate in our building maintenance workshop at the Performance Networks seminar in Blackpool.
Mark Bramah and myself meet representatives of the Audit Commission who are about to embark on a major study into trading and charging in local government.
Mark Bramah and me participate in the GOVNET conference on the future of local government today. We have been asked to do a workshop on performance management, which is repeated in the afternoon.
The White Paper Strong and Prosperous Communities has been issued by DCLG and like any such publication there is a lot to be welcomed within it and a few items that cause concern.
Helped facilitate a focus group on how local authorities can implement strategies to improve childrens health in Scotland at our Healthy Living conference at Peebles. Some key civil servants from the Scottish Executive were involved along with about 20 handpicked delegates from the event. Think it was a useful event although some delegates moved straight from the blue sky thinking to how things would impact operationally.
Spoke at an APSE Northern Region seminar on shared services today at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. The session I was involved in was with two good friends Steve Cirell from Eversheds and Cllr Ron Scrimgour from Angus.