There is no doubt that many in the voluntary and community sector are struggling to survive, to secure funding, and to honour their missions.

My strategic advice to the sector, is to seek to find common cause with local government to make the case to central government to stop or at least mitigate the impact of further cuts; to expose the human and financial implications of the Government's welfare 'reforms'; and to argue for greater localism with more devolved responsibility and resources to localities.

All of this is simply to highlight the power of the public and its cruelty. If the government is to create engagement between the police and the polis, it will need to engage in the first place - as failure to do so can lead to revolting results.

The Government reshuffle has led to an almost complete new ministerial team at Communities and Local Government though Eric Pickles remains Secretary of State. The Department has a major role to play in terms of the Government's re-launched policy agenda - not least in terms of planning reform.

The Big Society is, he says, 'designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable'. The vulnerable - a group that the great and the good ill-define the better to hide behind them. You get the Big Society you deserve I suppose.

You may assume that the Daily Mail would welcome George Osborne's announcement that Council Tax would be frozen for the second year in a row. In an in...

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles' pledge to set up a £250 million fund to incentivise weekly rubbish collections has provoked strong reaction from ...

The author of Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, once said that 'organising is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up'. This coalition government has demonstrated a boldly pragmatic and non-ideological mindset since taking office. Nevertheless, there is a danger that on planning, the Government is ideologically dismissing an integrated approach in favour of extending responsibility to communities. Localism is great for running a local park, but it cannot provide integrated national solutions to the big environmental challenges facing the UK.

Seven months is a long time in legislation. It was only last December that the Localism Bill was published amid a fanfare of radical decentralisation, communities "in control" and a "power shift" to those who know their areas best. New radical rights to draw up neighbourhood plans were unveiled and communities pricked up their ears and wondered.