[Ed Hammond]

Good luck Michael - let me know if you actually manage to come up with a satisfactory definition of it!

I think that it's the right time to carry out these kinds of review - assessing how local decision-makers are going to devolve power and responsibility to others. Things like community asset transfer are going to loom large over the next few months and the "Big Society" umbrella seems to hide rather a lot of things - best to start early to begin to investigate exactly what those might be.

We are unlikely to hear a lot more from the Government about what the Big Society is - their message at the moment is, "just do it".

[Gareth Wall]

One of our Scrutiny Commissions (Living in Hackney) has just completed a short review of local food growing initiatives and allotments (inner city borough, no room for allotments, what else is going on, etc). It's not about the idea 'Big Society' but is an example of how scrutiny might look at a relevant issue.

The findings and recommendations include things like encouraging the Council not to present any obstacles to people tilling patches of unused land (on the understanding that they might lose tenure at any point, etc). And getting the Council and LSP to provide a single point of contact with lots of information about the range of initiatives that are going on in the borough - there are quite a lot, as listed in the report.

[Steve Sienkiewicz]

The LGIU have formed a Big Society learning network. More details here:

https://member.lgiu.org.uk/whatwedo/Page...etyln.aspx