Revisiting the 'Missing Middle' in English Sub-National Governance

In the light of the new Coalition Government’s proposed ‘rescaling’ of sub-national governance away from the regional level, it is an opportune time to re-consider the strength and weaknesses of the city or sub-regional approach to economic development and to search, once more, for the ‘missing middle’ in English Governance. In this context, the article initially assesses the case for city or sub regions as tiers of economic governance, before examining the lessons to be learnt from the experiences of the existing city regions in the North East of England. It argues that while contemporary plans to develop Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) can be usefully considered within the context of the emerging city regional developments under the previous Labour Governments, a number of important challenges remain, particularly in relation to ensuring accountable structures of governance, a range of appropriate functions, adequate funding, and comprehensive coverage across a variety of sub-regional contexts. While the proposals of the new Government create the necessary ‘space’ to develop sub-regional bodies and offer genuine opportunities for both city and county LEPs, the scale of the sub-regional challenge should not be underestimated, particularly given the context of economic recession and major reductions in the public sector

The Development of an Evaluation Framework for eGovernment Systems

This paper is a positioning paper which outlines a proposal for engaging in the evaluation of eGovernment systems. The primary purpose of our proposed research is to develop, apply, test, and disseminate an evaluation framework which can support continuous, adaptable, and reflective evaluation of eGovernment systems. The theoretical bases for the methodology will be the Information Systems (IS), Soft Systems Methodology, SSM (Checkland and Scholes, 1990) which provides the platform for the analyses of the ‘soft’ aspects (e.g. human, political, cultural and organisational factors) and the Hard Systems Methodology (HSM) which provides methods and tools for quantitative measures and analyses of the system. A further three interrelated bases are: Reflective Practice, Organisational Learning (OL), and Information and Knowledge Management (IKM). Some of the key underlying principles to a successful evaluation framework are good data collection and analyses methods, an evaluative reflective practice approach whichentails the complete process of identification and analysis of strengths and problems, followed by rigorous testing, implementation, and revision of solutions. Such a cycle encourages organisational learning and promotes continuous improvement to both the evaluation framework and system. Additionally, it aims to cultivate an organisational culture that supports evaluation through reflection, continuous learning, and knowledge management which facilitates knowledge creation, capture, sharing, application and dissemination

Beyond City Living: Remaking the Inner Suburbs

This paper explores the emerging regeneration strategies for inner suburban areas. Drawing on evidence from Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, the authors argue that regeneration of these inner areas can do more than upgrade housing and environments for existing residents; they can become more attractive to a wider range of households as convenient, accessible locations for larger, more affordable housing than is available in the city centre or the more recent suburbs. But care will be needed to create appealing, safe, walkable places; to define and deliver an attractive ‘offer’ for new residents, and to avoid displacement and tensions with existing residents. Here is a potential site for one version of ‘sustainable communities’ in the early twenty-first century, if it is approached sensitively and intelligently.cities; housing; economic development; regeneration; city centre living

Affordable housing definitions and Section 106 contributions in England

This paper examines whether Local Planning Authority definitions of affordable housing provide adequate clarity with which to negotiate affordable housing contributions with private sector house builders. The paper updates Government research, Delivering Affordable Housing through Planning Policy (ODPM, 2002), by systematically interrogating the affordable housing definitions of 51 Local Planning Authorities in England. LPA housing and planning documents were scrutinised in respect of the local definition of affordable housing, whether it conformed to the Governments ‘new’ PPS3 definition, the thresholds set at which the requirement for affordable housing is triggered and the target level at which Section 106 contributions are set. The findings indicate that although Local Planning Authority definitions of affordable housing have improved in terms of their quality, precision and clarity, one in five LPAs still did not provide a concise definition of affordable housing

CARE: An integrated framework to support continuous, adaptable, reflective evaluation of egovernment systems: A research note

CARE: an Integrated Framework to Support Continuous, Adaptable, Reflective Evaluation of Egovernment SystemsThis is an eGISE network paper. It is motivated by a concern to develop a better approach to learning from the experience of an eGovernment project and applying that knowledge in future projects. The proposed project is based on previous work in the construction industry that developed COLA, a Cross Organisational Learning Approach. Developing a similar strategy for Knowledge Management is likely to be effective because the ‘silo’ culture of local government organisations has parallels with the segmented organisational structures within the construction industry.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK (grant GR/T27020/01