Learning to Modernise: creating the capacity to improve local public services

The public sector reforms being pursued by 'New Labour' attempt to develop a new style of policy making and to shift the centre of gravity of public services away from the state and market and towards the citizen. The improvement of local public services will however depend in large measure on the capacity of local agencies to implement these reforms. The experiences of the local authorities that are piloting the Best Value framework suggest that there are significant cultural and structural barriers to change, and that councils will need to develop a range of new skills in order to implement the new regime. Existing development programmes, which rely on the dissemination of good practice between local authorities, pay insufficient attention to the need for fundamental restructuring of both local and central government and for more effective joint working between the public, private and voluntary sectors.