Fancy a flutter?

I've been at the Policy Network Annual conference today - which has been quite good - I'll try to summarise the broad range of fantastic learning I picked up today.

Mark Gaynor, a Group Director from the London Borough of Havering (his portfolio was much bigger than I could remember, but included regeneration and adult education. He suggested we all need to be a bit more risk seeking in our local government leadership role - to take a bit of a gamble in setting out our vision. Good thing they have that attitude as Havering has one of the short listed locations for the Super Casino within its boundaries -in Rainham, if I remember correctly, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Tom McGuire, is Executive Director of Community 7 - a community based housing association in Liverpool. He works in an area that - until now- has been largely left behind in the urban transformation in the area. He has a fantastic - photo filled presentation - delivered in a broad Liverpool accent - and begins with a set of classic Scouse jokes - including "Did you hear that Bernie Eccleston is moving Silverstone to Liverpool? - We have the labour skills to remove the wheels from a car in under three seconds*". Jokes aside, their work on neighbourhood renewal was inspirational - and demonstrated the complexity of working in partnership and the rewards of looking for best practice from afar and engaging with the community at hand.

We also had a presentation from the Disability Rights Commission on the new Disability Equality Duty. I have to admit I don't know much about this area, but it looks very complicated! The DRC has a website with tips and good practice examples at www.dotheduty.org.uk (I think - I'll check the link when I'm back in the office).

And the day finished with Rob Roberts from Peterborough City Council - who gave a presentation on their performance management approach - without using the words performance management. Before working in local government, he was with Yell - the folks who bring us the yellow pages and www.yell.co.uk - and he's brought some of his customer service experience to the council. They are now doing follow up phone calls with users of council services to evaluate what their experience was like - which is bring rewards in enhanced delivery.

There were also workshops. I delivered a workshop based on the outputs of our PMMI project (www.idea.gov.uk/performance) this morning. Participants seemed very engaged and there was a lively discussion. It's certainly very rewarding to know that people are interested in our work.

Regular readers will know I've not been well recently - and I actually felt I might faint at one point during my introductory spiel - but you know the PM show must go on - and I don't think anyone noticed. It did mean that I skipped the afternoon workshop to have a lie-down, which was a shame - as they all looked good.