About John Perry
John Perry was director of policy at the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) for 12 years until early 2003. He led on a range of issues including housing investment, housing strategies and welfare reform. Since March 2003 he has been based in Nicaragua, where he helps co-ordinate projects with low-income farming families, including the installation of solar panels in homes without electricity. He is also a part-time policy adviser to the CIH
The prime minister might have toned down the references to competition in launching the Open public services white paper but the direction of travel is clear Read more
Creating a new form of arm’s length management organisation could benefit tenants while also allowing borrowing at levels beyond the cap now facing councils Read more
Reading Ian Mulheirn’s PF blog about the government’s hesitancy in privatising public services, I began to wonder who is being unrealistic here and whether the government really understands what it is now suggesting when it proposes a bigger role for the voluntary sector. Read more
Eric Pickles’ announcement on 1 March that councils will be in trouble if their cuts target the voluntary sector started a debate about whether councils are guilty or not. This is presumably what the communities secretary wanted when he accused local authorities of being ‘high-minded’, not listening to the sector and failing to give voluntary bodies proper notice of any cuts affecting them. Read more...
Ian Mulheirn says in his blog that those who are cautious about the use of market forces in public services are ‘flat-earthers’. Can I return the friendly insult by asking him to take off his rose-tinted spectacles? Read more...
Ian Mulheirn, director of the Social Market Foundation,wrote on the PF Blog this week welcoming the prime minister’s article in the Daily Telegraph . This called for competition to be the norm in public services. The PM argued that what has prevented decentralisation is that Whitehall wants to hold the purse strings. It should now relinquish them and allow the market to determine value for money. Read more...
One issue that doesn’t yet seem to have cropped up in policy discussion about the Big Society is – how will we know if it works or not? Read more...
As Tony Travers pointed out on the PF Blog yesterday, the government’s proposed self-financing for council housing represents a rather restricted view of local autonomy, despite the minister’s claims. Read more...
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