Eric Pickles regards it as ‘the future for public services.' The DCLG secretary thinks local areas should ‘think big', and it's ‘time to let local areas grow up and do things their way.'
Mr Pickles was referring this week to the community budgets pilots which officially launch on Friday. For those of us who believe that innovation in local government did exist before last year's general election, the community budgets concept has a familiar ring. It used to be called Total Place, which also had pilots, and, indeed, after the pilots reported their findings, a whole programme of action was outlined in detail in the March 2010 Budget, and then disappeared into Whitehall's filing system.
