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CLRGR NEWS

FORM AND FUNCTION - A COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF UNITARIES AND TWO TIER PATHFINDERS (added on: 21/06/10)

Dr Rhys Andrews and Professor George Boyne have produced a series of reports in collaboration with project partners Office for Public Management and PricewaterhouseCoopers for Communities and Local Government on the process of local government reorganisation.

The Literature Review outlining theories and evidence on restructuring and performance, the Theory of Change, the overall Evaluation Framework, and the Baseline Statistical Analysis of local authority performance prior to reorganisation are all available at
http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/restructuring/


Centre staff appointed to the Government’s Expert Panel on Local Governance(added on: 02/09/09)

Researchers from the Centre have been recognised as leading UK experts on local government policy.

Professor Steve Martin (Director of the Centre for Local & Regional Government Research) has been appointed as the leader of the Government’s Expert Panel on Local Governance.  Dr Rhys Andrews and Dr James Downe (Senior Research Fellows in the Centre for Local & Regional Government Research) have been recruited to as members of the panel.

These prestigious appointments reflect the Centre’s strength in local governance and public management research.  As members of the panel, the Cardiff team will provide expert advice to ministers and senior civil servants on a range of issues including the improvement of local public services, local partnership working, local democracy and public involvement. They will also offer peer review of and independent challenge to the Government’s annual £2.5 million research programme on local governance.

As the lead member of the panel, Steve is responsible for managing the panel’s work, advising on the design of assignments commissioned from panel members and for quality assurance of their work.  Rhys has been recruited to provide expert advice on statistical analysis and performance.  James brings to the panel expertise in local democracy and service improvement.

local governance modernisation (added on: 16/09/09)

In 2002, the Department for Communities and Local Government commissioned a consortium led by researchers in the Centre for Local & Regional Government Research to conduct a longitudinal meta-evaluation of the policies designed to modernise local government. This ambitious study took a holistic approach to assess the combined and cumulative impacts of these policies. It drew upon a large body of primary and secondary evidence.

A number of reports have been published during the course of the research around five themes:

All reports from the project can be accessed here:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/localregional/crosscuttingissues/longtermevaluation/
metaevaluation/

The final report from the evaluation written by Professor Tony Bovaird (University of Birmingham), Dr James Downe (Cardiff Business School and Steve Martin (Cardiff Business School) examined the impacts and interactions of central government policies and found that the government’s  policies were reasonably consistent and coherent and helped to secure many of their intended outcomes. The researchers concluded that in future it may be helpful if the Government is able to state more explicitly how their policies fit together so that local authorities are able to understand its view of the ‘bigger picture’. This will require a ‘whole system’ approach and co-ordination across government departments. The report can be accessed here:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/pdf/1318747.pdf


innovation in public engagement and co-production of services (added on: 4/12/08)

Dr James Downe and Professor Tony Bovaird (University of Birmingham) have written a policy paper
for Communities and Local Government on innovation in public engagement and co-production of
services. The paper

The paper has been well-recived by policy makers and was cited a number of times as evidence for
the Government's white paper 'Communities in control: real people, real power'. The authors are
now working on producing academic publications from this report.

To access this paper please click here.

learning to improve (added on: 19/11/08)

Centre members Steve Martin, James Downe, Tom Entwistle and Valeria Guarneros-Meza have been commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government to carry out an independent assessment of its policy for local government. The evaluation will consider the way in which the Assembly Government’s policies are developed and communicated; whether national policies are helping or hindering local authorities in addressing the key challenges facing them and what impacts and outcomes they are having ‘on the ground’.

The project is being carried in partnership with Shared Intelligence starting from July 2008 and running until summer 2012. For more information visit:
http://www.cf.ac.uk/carbs/research/groups/clrgr/research/public/learning.html

australia and new zealand school of government annual conference (added on: 19/11/08)


steve martinProfessor Steve Martin was recently invited to teach at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government’s Annual Conference alongside business people, academics, government ministers and senior civil servants including Sir Rod Eddington (Chairman of JPMorgan and former CEO of British Airways); Hon. Wayne Swan (the Australian Federal Treasurer); Terry Moran (Cabinet Secretary), John Brumby MP (Premier of Victoria) and Mike Rann (Premier of South Australia).

Steve shared the findings of the Centre’s latest research on public service improvement and reform of central-local relations.

Whilst in Australia, he was also invited to address senior officials in the Victoria State Government, and visited leading researchers in the universities of Melbourne and Sydney.

environment & planning, A study (added on: 15/7/08)

Along with co-researchers in the School of City and Regional Planning, Richard Cowell has been
engaged in longitudinal research examining the influence of novel evaluation tools on local
government decision-making, focused on a study of 'ecological footprinting' in Cardiff Council.
Using ideas from the sociology of science, Richard's research shows how the technical merits of
footprinting as an evaluation tool are connected with the social and political commitments that it
helps to hold together. Results from the study have been accepted for publication in 'Environment
and Planning A' (click here for an abstract).

new centre staff (added on: 15/07/08)

Welcome to Valeria Guarneros and Karen Morgan.

new research project commissioned (added on: 15/07/08)

Centre Professor George Boyne and Dr Rhys Andrews have been commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government to conduct a major research project assessing the effectiveness, efficiency and impact of the new unitary local authorities in England. The project is being carried out in partnership with OPM and Price Waterhouse Coopers, starting in July 2008 and running until 2013. It will provide an unprecedented opportunity to assess the longitudinal effects of local government reorganisation on the performance of local service providers.

The project builds on previous work undertaken by the Centre and funded by Communities and Local
Government which evaluated the relationship between population size and local authority performance, http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/populationsize. A paper emerging from this research assessing the relationship between size, local government structure and back office costs, ‘Size, structure and administrative overheads: An empirical analysis of English local authorities’, written by Dr Andrews and Professor Boyne was recently accepted for publication in Urban Studies.

For further information on the project, please contact Rhys: andrewsr4@cardiff.ac.uk

NEW PUBLICATIONS ON THE TURNOVER OF SENIOR MANAGEMENT IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT (added on: 15/7/08)

Centre members George Boyne and Nicolai Petrovsky, together with Oliver James (Exeter) and Peter
John (Manchester) have two forthcoming publications in peer-reviewed journals. 'Executive
Succession in English Local Government' will appear in the October 2008 issue of Public Money &
Management. 'Does Political Change Affect Senior Management Turnover? An Empirical Analysis of
Top-Tier Local Authorities in England' will be published in 2009 by Public Administration. These
publications stem from their ESRC-funded project 'Leadership Change and Public Services:
Reinvigorating Performance or Reinforcing Decline?' For further information about the project, see
their webpage: http://www.cf.ac.uk/carbs/research/groups/clrgr/research/public/leadership.html

LEADERSHIP TURNOVER PROJECT ROADSHOW (added on: 15/7/08)

Centre members George Boyne and Nicolai Petrovsky, together with Oliver James (Exeter) and Peter
John (Manchester) have been invited to present findings from their ESRC-funded project 'Leadership
Change and Public Services: Reinvigorating Performance or Reinforcing Decline?' at a number of
national and international academic conferences: the Public Administration Committee Annual
Conference at the University of York, the European Group of Public Administration Conference in
Rotterdam, the British Academy of Management Annual Conference in Harrogate, the 'Administration,
Democracy and Performance' Symposium at the University of Manchester, all in September 2008; and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Thirtieth Annual Research Conference in Los Angeles in November 2008. For further information about the project, see their webpage:
http://www.cf.ac.uk/carbs/research/groups/clrgr/research/public/leadership.html Public Services Inspection in the UK