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Tag Archives: tony travers

Caroline Pidgeon writes: Setting our cities free from the stranglehold of the Treasury

By Caroline Pidgeon | Tue 23rd July 2013 - 3:00 pm

Reforming local government finance – a phrase that is enough to send many of us to sleep. But put a different way, devolving financial powers to our great cities, allowing local innovation and genuine localism, may keep your interest for longer!

May saw the launch of an excellent policy report called Raising the capital. The report was produced by the London Finance Commission, an authoritative wide ranging group of experts from both inside and outside politics, but crucially including experts from Birmingham and Manchester. The commission was chaired by respected Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged local government finance and london | 15 Comments

Thursday’s extra bonus: the local elections

By Mark Pack | Wed 5th May 2010 - 9:20 am

Put a backbench MP and a ruling group councillor together and they’ll often tease each other about who really has the more power – with the councillor often coming off the better. “I’ll see your ministerial questions and raise you a £500m budget” and so on.

So we certainly shouldn’t forget the other elections on Thursday:

All the seats in the 32 London boroughs
One third of the seats in the 36 Mets
One third of the seats in 20 unitary authorities
Half the seats in 7 district councils
One third of the seats in 70 district councils
Four Mayors

A happy side-effect of the strong general …

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Posted in Local government | 6 Comments

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