Community Budgets are demonstrating their potential to deliver cheaper, more integrated and more effective public services. They are at risk, however, of being replaced after a few years if key issues are not resolved. If this opportunity is missed, the Committee warns that local services could come under unsustainable pressure in the face of increased demand and reduced budgets. This in turn may result in more spending later on judicial and emergency health and welfare interventions. The Government should send a clear message that it will assist every local authority wishing to introduce Community Budgets and to set out the specific assistance it will provide them with. Furthermore, the programme of pilots must not be allowed to slow progress towards wider implementation. If they are to succeed, public service providers and local authorities must realise investment in Community Budgets will bring them benefits. Local authorities, their partners, and central government should, therefore, develop a framework for agreements on how the benefits of investment are to be shared. On the Troubled Families Programme, the Committee is supportive of the work being done but highlights the need for greater focus on how work with these families will continue after the programme ends in 2016. Noting that the resources available have not increased in proportion to the number of families added to the programme in June, DCLG needs to monitor carefully progress and provide more resources to local authorities if necessary

The Communities and Local Government Committee note that the quality of domestic electrical work has improved since some of it was brought within building control eight years ago. But much more needs to be done to protect people in their homes. The main mechanism for checking electrical work covered by Part P of the building regulations is satisfactory is certification by a qualified supervisor operating under a Government-approved competent persons scheme. As long as the qualified supervisor meets competence standards, the person carrying out the work does not necessarily have to be a qualified electrician. The report calls for competence requirements to be rolled out within five years for all those actually doing electrical work to which Part P applies. In the interim, it is recommended that there be a limit on the number of notifications that a single qualified supervisor can authorise in a year in order to ensure that they devote enough time to checking each job. The Government should aim to double public awareness of Part P within two years and aim for an awareness level similar to that of Gas Safe within five years (45%). Additionally, the report calls for more proactive enforcement against those who breach Part P.

Provides wide-ranging anaylses and reviews of the UK's experiences of health inequalities research and policy to date, and reflects on the lessons that have been learnt from these experiences, both within the UK and internationally.

The purpose of the report is to distil experience from this parliament and to assist the new committee in the next parliament. It considers how the Committee approached its work, the way it has used research and how this might be strengthened, and its own assessment of performance against the core tasks set by the Liaison Committee. It then suggests some matters the new committee might consider examining in the next Parliament. These include both 'unfinished business', topics the Committee looked at over the Parliament to which the successors might wish to return, and new developments, which the Committee considers will emerge as major issues over the next five years.

An in-depth analysis of the NHS reforms ushered in by UK Coalition Government under the 2012 Health and Social Care Act. Essential reading for those studying the NHS, those who work in it, and those who seek to gain a better understanding of this key public service.

The essential verdict on Britain's first coalition government since the Second World War delivered by an unrivalled team of experts.

As the system of social welfare governance and delivery in the United Kingdom faces continued, radical change, this important book argues that this change is so extensive that we should consider it a fundamental transformation or revolution. Assessing twenty years of changes across the whole of the United Kingdom, Derek Birrell and Ann Marie Gray show how a new public governance perspective has replaced the dominance of public management, reflecting the increasingly plural and fragmented nature of public policy implementation. Drawing on examples across a range of policy areas, this comprehensive book unravels the complex ways in which changes in social policy and governance interact in the delivery of social welfare, making it essential reading for welfare researchers, students, and policy makers.

This report follows up one issue left from the Committee's 2013 report on the Private Rented Sector (HCP 50, session 2013-14, ISBN 9780215060730): whether or not England should follow Scotland and introduce a ban on letting agents charging fees to tenants other than rents and refundable deposits. The change in Scotland had only been made in November 2012 and when the Committee reported in July 2013 views on its impact were speculative and varied widely. The Committee therefore decided to wait two years from its introduction and seek hard evidence on the impact of the change in Scotland. The Committee sought evidence from a number of organisations representing tenants, agents and landlords in Scotland and have examined relevant published reports. The Committee concludes that the evidence available is not strong enough to reach a view on the impact of the ban on fees in Scotland. In addition, the issues around fees that were raised in the original inquiry are more broadly based than simply fees to tenants, as they affect the overall role of agents in the market and the transparency of that market. The Committee therefore call on the Department for Communities and Local Government to commission a comprehensive impact assessment of the effects of the introduction of a ban on agents' fees in England.

The Government's policy of empowering people through Community Rights to save local assets from closure, build community housing, take over local authority services and bring public land back into use has in its first two years had mixed results. The Rights - to Bid, to Build, to Challenge and to Reclaim Land - have generated some successes, with a small number of community groups being able, for example, to use the Community Right to Bid to stop valued local assets such as the local pub being sold for redevelopment. But limitations have also been exposed. The Community Right to Build is too complicated; the Community Right to Challenge, which triggers a tendering exercise to run a local service, risks damaging relations between communities and local government and is a gamble for groups wanting to run a local service as they may be outbid; and the Community Right to Reclaim Land has hardly been used. The Committee wants to see the Rights improved so that local people have more say over what happens to the land, buildings and services in their area. The Government should: enhance the Community Right to Bid by increasing from six to nine months the time people have to bid to buy a local asset; make it easier to remove or restrict the "permitted development" exemption from planning control when an asset has been listed as having Community Value; and make an asset's status as an Asset of Community Value a material consideration in all but minor planning applications.

The Committee invited submissions on how the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has worked in practice since it came into operation in April 2012. The evidence to this inquiry has highlighted a number of emerging concerns: that the NPPF is not preventing unsustainable development in some places; that inappropriate housing is being imposed upon some communities as a result of speculative planning applications; and that town centres are being given insufficient protection against the threat of out of town development. These issues do not, however, point to the need to tear up or withdrawn the NPPF; rather they suggest a need to reinforce its provisions and ensure it does the job it was intended to do.