Welfare to work policy in Great Britain has traditionally been planned centrally to ensure even application across areas. More recently questions have been raised about the ability of such a system to address the requirements of those workless people with the most complex and severe needs. Accordingly attempts have been made to enhance local decision making and agenda setting within welfare to work. This article considers one such initiative in Great Britain – City Strategy – and examines the extent to which the initiative transferred powers to local partnerships and how and where the partnerships were able to exercise autonomy, and where there were constraints.
Department for Work and Pensions (2008) Transforming Britain’s Labour Market: Ten Years of the New Deal. Available at: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/pmnewdeal2-01-08.pdf (accessed 30 October 2011).
Hills J, Brewer M, Jenkins SP, et al. (2010) An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK: Report of the National Equality Panel. CASE Report 60. London: Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics and Political Science. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28344/1/CASEreport60.pdf (accessed 30 October 2011).
Mosley (2008) Decentralisation and co-ordination: The twin challenges of labour market policy. In: Decentralisation and co-ordination: The twin challenges of labour market policy. High-level conference. Venice, Italy, 17–19 April, 2008, pp. 1–18. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/55/40917889.pdf (accessed 26 January 2012).
14.
NorthDSyrettSEtheringtonD (2009) Tackling concentrated worklessness: Integrating governance and policy across and within spatial scales. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy27(6): 1022–1039.
