Care & Repair - Knowsley

This seems like an excellent service

http://twitter.com/KnowsleyCouncil - If you live in Knowsley, it's worth keeping a note of this service in case your heating ever breaks down - it's free! http://bit.ly/cmFcng

The role of Care & Repair Knowsley is to promote independence by providing advice and help to Knowsley residents who require assistance. We do this by providing a wide range of cost effective, efficient, client centred services, which are flexible and can be adapted to meet changing needs.

Devon County car sharing

http://www.carsharedevon.com/Default.asp?uxi=&cr=check

What a neat idea - why aren't all councils doing this?

CAR SHARING continues to grow in popularity in Devon and more people have signed up to Carsharedevon.com already this year. Almost 120 people registered last month with the free car share service commissioned by Devon County Council, in partnership with Plymouth and Torbay Councils. The free prize draw for newly registered members joining between 1 and 31 January helped boost figures again. Elle Scragg, from Crediton, was the lucky winner of £100 vouchers. Elle travels daily into Exeter. She said “So far I've been really impressed with Carsharedevon. I found out about it by seeing the boards up on the lamp posts on my trip to work....

More information here 

Innovation, alcohol & violence

It is now a fairly common practice for the police to hand out lollipops to late night clubbers as they spill out onto the streets in the early hours of the morning. Here is one story for example from a local newspaper: http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/1058566.lollies_prevent_booze_violence/

West Oxfordshire Local Area Commander, Chief Insp Dennis Evernden said: "Research shows the sugar content helps to stabilise the behaviour of those who have consumed alcohol."

This is great innovation for several reasons:

• It works
• It is evidence based
• It is cheap
• It has several positive outcomes (including reducing noise levels and helping to create a better relationship between police and clubbers) as well as the main one
• It is fun!

Thanks to my associate Gary Purser for reminding me of this innovative strategy

Greater Manchester Police & innovation

Greater Manchester Police has won an award for innovation in its fight against crime. The force’s Design for Security consultancy has scooped the Association of Chief Police Officer’s Secured by Design Innovation prize of £10,000. The award recognises GMP’s pioneering work in providing crime prevention design advice to architects, planners and developers.

http://www.gmp.police.uk/mainsite/pages/F015A10222C2FB74802576C100568BB5

Good to see how GMP have developed a process for designing out crime from the earliest stage of a new building or shopping centre development:

A major part of the service is the Crime Impact Statement. This is a collaborative process in which the Design for Security consultant works closely with the architectural design team during the very early stages of development. This work embeds well-established crime prevention principles within the design to protect the proposed buildings from crime

Innovation in Justice

I have a long time association with the Centre for Court Innovation based in New York. They do some excellent work around reforming how justice is administered not only in New York but also the rest of the USA. Indeed their reach has extended to these shores and they have been involved the establishment of new kinds of courts in this country. I worked with them on setting up, facilitating and reporting on a round table discussion about Justice reform in this country. There is a report of it here if you are interested. (I also got to meet Shami Chakrabarti on that day and she is just as impressive in real life as she is on BBC Question Time - more so in fact!)

Meanwhile - they carry on their excellent work and they have recently put together a list of podcasts about new thinking in justice. You can access it here. There are some excellent examples of how relatively small changes to the justice system can be made more effective, efficient and fair.