Strong and prosperous communities

In October the Government published a White Paper which describes its ideas for involving people more in how their communities are run. You can download a summary of the White paper - or the whole thing if you want - from this webpage.

To quote from that page:

'The white paper is on the side of individuals and families who want to make a difference, both to their own lives and to the communities in which they live.

Our vision is of revitalised local authorities, working with their partners, to reshape public services around the citizens and communities that use them.

This means changing the way we work to give citizens and communities a bigger say; to enable local partners to respond more flexibly to local needs; to reduce the amount of top-down control from central government - and to enable citizens and communities to play their part.'

All sounds like good stuff although the devil will, of course, be in the detail. A major theme in our emerging action plan is to do with involving people in 'reshaping public services' and enabing 'citizens and communities to play their part'. See the next post for a thought about that.