Structuring local neighbourhoods

Met with colleagues today from INLOGOV who are working on a research study for APSE into 'Governance, Neighbourhoods and Service Delivery'. This research is part of our ongoing tripartite partnership between both organisations and the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES). The first publication 'Towards a Future for Public Employment' has already been issued and the other part in the research partnerships trilogy of reports 'The Economic Footprint of the Public Sector' is also underway running in parallel.

We sword fenced around the project a bit before we got down to the facts of what we want to examine, basically this boils down to examining the links between local governance, local neighbourhoods and local employment. The bit that got really interesting was when we started to get into identifying what potential structures could be created to bring these key policy issues together. Having described some ideas of what I was looking for in terms of neighbourhood based budgeting, my academic colleagues explained to me that some key intellectual thinking existed around this area by Mintzberg. So looks like we could be on a winner.

Watch this space!