I haven't posted in ages - been way too busy - but I was inspired to get back on top of it today by the BBC morning news. For some reason they gave a good lengthy feature on Hazel Blears announcement that 10 councils in England are to pilot exercises where communities will be provided with the opportunity to make decisions on budgets. What I thought was interesting, apart from the fact that itgot this kind of attention, was that it was NOT new money. This means that communities are being given control over mainstream budget spend. At least I think that's what it means, there was a lot of talk about communities using the money for cleaning up litter or dealing with anti-social behaviour, so it may be a little more restricted than that.

Still the sums involved are quite impressive, one council is apparently allocated £7 million!