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Think-tank, Demos, has called for councils to give staff time off to get involved with Muslim community groups. A new report, Bring it home: Community-based approaches to counter terrorism, calls for officers and councillors to volunteer on management committees of Muslim associations, ‘to improve their understanding of the work these groups do'. It also calls for councils to give staff time off so they can volunteer. One of the authors of the report, Rachel Briggs, said: ‘What we are saying is the community needs to be at the heart of any approach to tackle security and terrorism. ‘If you are going to have a community-based approach, it has to be at a local level. Local councils and councillors should be active in brokering different relationships on the ground.' The report was also sharply critical of central government for only involving the ‘usual suspects' in the policy-making process. The report states: ‘The Government has also been highly reluctant to engage with the many reasonable grievances of the community, in the fear that any kind of acknowledgement could suggest that the terrorists have just cause, or that the Government is somehow complicit.' Local government minister, Phil Woolas, said the report was based on evidence gathered before the Department for Communities and Local Government was established in May. ‘The new department is already working with councils to develop more local plans to promote cohesion, and has deepened its strategy of engagement speaking to a whole set of different groups, as the report suggests,' he said.

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WHITEHALL

Staff 'need time off to link up with Muslims'

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