On February 3rd a seminar was held with Francis Maude, the Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office and Nick Hurd, the Shadow Minster for Charities, Social Enterprise and Volunteering and the CCHQ Implementation Team. It was part of the prepartion for Government and on this occasion looked at what lessons their could be from Conservative Councils for the next Conservative Government.
Cllr David Shakespeare, leader of the Conservative Group in the LGA, also thought the presentations offered opportunities for us to learn from each other and so sent copies to Conservative Group leaders. He reports:
"Last week I was very pleased to be able to take part in an event organised jointly by Francis Maude MP, Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office and by the Central Office Implementation Team.
"There were three outstanding presentations by Conservative Authority leaders that I thought you would be interested in looking at.The first was by Stephen Greenhalgh, Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham, who described how the Borough succeeded in dramatically reducing Council Tax at the same time as raising the quality of services and public satisfaction. Stephen called it “Progressive Conservatism”, but I would describe it as energetically delivering all of those barnstormingly Conservative principles that we all believe in and wish we could do more of.
"Lord Hanningfield’s presentation was the continuing story of how Essex County Council is saving local Post Offices from closure and how some of them are now also becoming points where the public can also make payments to Local Government.
"The third presentation was from Paul Carter, Leader of Kent County Council, on how Kent has driven up educational standards and skills. One fact that particularly intrigued me was that the setting up of Skills Centres actually sited on industrial estates to deliver the very local skills needed there. All Paul needs to do now is to share with us where the funding came from!"
The full presentations are not avalable online but I will try and get PDFs put up here later.
