A lot of alarmist stuff on Radio 4 this morning about how the cuts will disproportionately affect parts of the north east, north west and west midlands. Special reference made to the poor old Tees Valley (yet again!).
I don't know how anyone has the cheek to present this as news. This is a 30 year old story, but hey!
In common with the figureheads of a host of agencies, I was invited to write to the Secretary of State at the CLG to suggest ways of making savings.
It was a complicated letter to write (as close followers of my activities this week will understand) but I needed to write - even whilst in transition - to meet their deadline a few days ago. And I was anxious not to miss the boat.
Of course, I had written before with our action plan for regeneration and with the conclusions of our post-election summit.
But it was important, at this stage, to assert that I do not intend to lose a scrap of the BURA institutional memory of 20 years of what works and what doesn't (in regeneration spending terms). We do intend to develop those principles in the light of the policy and spending announcements made in the last two months.
