Communities secretary Hazel Blears has confirmed last week's exclusive story in The MJ that there will be a new local government White Paper. Ms Blears announced this week that the new ‘empowerment' White Paper will be published ‘in the summer'. It will be based on four themes, regenerating deprived areas, encouraging active citizenship, improving local public services and strengthening local accountability. She said services will be ‘subject to greater local scrutiny' and the paper will look at how the ‘power of consumers can be better used to improve local services.' The paper will also look at ways of involving the public more in civic life as well as include Government responses to the recent report from the Councillors Commission.
