Enquiry Form

Derry City Council, Ireland

Can you find me examples of plans for Local Authority Land Use. We are putting together a plan in Derry to make more productive use of some of our land supply. We are looking for some best practice examples of how to produce these sorts of plans.

London Action Trust

Dear CLES I work for a charity called London Action Trust and we have secured some funding from the European Programme EQUAL to set a practice firm for young offenders with several Youth Offending Teams across London. The idea is to set up a Radio Station within a simulated work environment with possibilities for promotion and so on. We are trying to discover if there are any other practice firms in existence or any report or papers on past firms to point us in the direction of best practice. A colleague on mine suggested that I contact the Centre for Local Economic Strategies as you may be able to help. If you know of any practice firms or any other information, I would be very grateful for your help. With many thanks

Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council

Dear CLES, I think there has recently been a pilot of Economic Performance Indicators, can you tell me where this is up to, what the outputs of the pilot have been and what impact it is likely to have on our departments working procedures.

Larry Houstoun, USA

Dear CLES, I am preparing an article on recent BID developments in Europe (I wrote the two books published by the Urban Land Institute on BIDs) May I impose on you? In the next decade, do you expect many or a few town center management systems to adopt a compulsory levy through the new UK legislation? Mainly the large ones with high revenue potential or will there be a good mix of smaller centers? Of those who do not move to adopt the BID system, what do you expect will be the most common reasons? Will Manchester adopt a BID--for the densest commercial core or the entire commercial center? Or none at this time? What about Birmingham? In partial recognition of my imposition, I will send you some published bits about American BIDs, Many thanks

Stevenage Borough Council

Dear CLES, How have local authorities responded to the Gershon & Lyons Reviews so far? What sort of actions have been taken?

Sunderland Community Enterprise Network (SCEN)

Dear CLES We are trying to build up a set of Vfm measures in relation to business start-up rates and survival rates via project intervention such as SRB, NDC, SBS, etc. Such intervention could be in the form of training, advice and/or grants for business starts. Do you hold such data in terms of cost per business created, advised, etc., has CLES carried out any such evaluation and if so is it possible to have copies, is there any other documentation that could be of use to us. The reason for such request is that SCEN and many of its members or planning to put funding applications into government organisations and more often than not such funders want cost comparisons, etc. Also have you got on papers on how SBS Brokerage system works and/or how it should work, especially in the North east and how is it going to change in the near future, will there be SBS in the near future?