Mobilising Urban Policies: The Policy Transfer of US Business Improvement Districts to England and Wales

This paper examines the ways in which policies are transferred between places: how they are disembedded from, and re-embedded into, new political, economic and social contexts. To do this, the paper will draw upon a case study of the transfer of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) from the US to England and Wales. Within this, the paper demonstrates how they were a response to fiscal problems facing city-centre management in England and Wales; how US BIDs were socially constructed as `successful' and `transferable'; and how the BID `model' was reshaped prior to and following its rolling-out in England and Wales. The paper concludes by stressing six wider conceptual points about the nature of urban policy transfer

Another Turn of the Screw: Fire and Rescue Under the Coalition Government of 2010–2015

Following the recession in 2008 and the general election in 2010, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrat parties led the first coalition government of modern times. Radical change for public services was back on the agenda and the Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs) was no exception. National economic policy resulted in ever-longer restrictions on public expenditure and an era of austerity, originally envisaged as being for 2 years, in reality dominated public service delivery throughout the 5-year administration (and beyond). The experience of the service under the 5 years of the coalition government is the focus of more detailed analysis and discussion in the following chapters. This chapter provides the overview of the years 2010–2015