Policy Statements and Initiatives
DWP: Budding disabled entrepreneurs will get extra support to start up their own business in 2013, Minister for Disabled People Esther McVey has announced. Across the country, they will get support through Access to Work to pay for specialised equipment, support workers & travel costs when setting up their business, if they are enrolled on the New Enterprise Allowance (NEA). The NEA provides expert coaching & financial support for jobseekers with a business idea.
DECC: ‘Energy saving has never been so attractive’ – that was the message from Edward Davey last week as he announced the Green Deal Cashback Scheme is open, with hundreds of pounds of cash available to householders in England & Wales who make energy saving home improvements.
HO: A panel of experts have come together at the Home Office to discuss ways to tackle female genital mutilation. The roundtable event comes after the Home Office announced a new £50,000 fund to support frontline agencies tackling female genital mutilation.
WAG: A new system to assess the quality of service within the NHS and share findings with the public will be introduced in Wales this year. NHS organisations have been asked to produce Annual Quality statements as part of the Welsh Government’s commitment to high quality & safe services underpinned by transparency on performance. The statements will give patients easy access to a range of information about the services available to them and how well those services perform in a range of areas.
ScotGov: Following the announcement that Home Secretary, Theresa May, has agreed to cut starting salaries for police constables in England & Wales by £4,000 to £19,000, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said:
"The Scottish Government did not commission the Winsor Review which relates to policing in England and Wales. We will not impose changes to the terms & conditions of our hard working, dedicated officers. Starting salaries for our police constables in Scotland will stay the same”.
DECC: 132 projects have been awarded a share of £46m from the Government to help reduce fuel poverty, boost energy efficiency, and encourage collective switching & purchasing in regions across Great Britain. This funding will be used by local authorities & third sector organisations to help keep people’s energy bills down & ensure homes are warm this winter, and in the future.
ScotGov: The people, and not the politicians or parliament, will hold the ultimate power in an independent Scotland. In a speech to the Foreign Press Association, First Minister Alex Salmond last week announced one of the first tasks of a newly independent Scottish Parliament will be to establish the process leading to a written constitution for Scotland.
CLG: The Communities Secretary has announced a new competition to enable those individuals with low levels of spoken English to fulfil their potential. In the past there has been the tendency to pay for interpreters, or translate documents into foreign languages, for those with no or extremely poor language skills. This undermines community integration and encourages segregation. Today, in 5% of households no one speaks English as their main language.
The government is therefore launching a new competition to back innovative & creative ways of delivering community-based English language programmes that will help to integrate participants into their local communities and also offer financial benefits.
CO: The Government has for the first time released details of the cost per transaction for some of the biggest services it provides to citizens. Every year there are more than 1bn transactions between British citizens & the state and now cost-per-transaction data for 44 of the biggest public services are being released. Taken together, these 44 services account for over 88% of the total transactions and cost just over £2bn a year to run.
Ofsted: Teams of Ofsted inspectors have begun the first in a wave of focused school inspections across local authority areas, ‘where thousands of children are being denied the standard of education they deserve’. The exercise now underway in Derby marks the start of a concerted programme of action by the inspectorate to establish why children in some parts of the country have a much lower chance of attending a good or better school than their peers in other similar areas.
HM Chief Inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, has said that ‘Ofsted was determined to find out what lies behind these variations and to work with others to raise standards and close the gap between the worst and best performing authorities’.
Press release & links ~ LGA: Councils respond to new Ofsted plans to tackle local area underperformance
WAG: With the cold weather set to continue and snow forecast for parts of Wales, the Welsh Government is reminding farmers of their legal responsibilities during periods of severe weather.
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