New Policy Spaces: The Impact of Devolution on Third Sector Policy in the UK

The development of third sector policy in the UK since 1997 has seen changes which have been of significance both for analysts and practitioners. This period has seen government engagement with and support for the sector extend far beyond the levels found throughout much of the last century. This has led to a growth in the size and scale of the sector and a closer involvement of sector representatives in political debate and policy planning. These changes have taken place at the same time as third sector policy has been devolved to the new administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This article explores the impact of devolution on these policy developments and assesses the extent to which political devolution has led to policy divergence across the four countries in the UK. The conclusion is reached that policy devolution has created important new space for policy development for the third sector across the UK, but that the direction of travel in all four regimes has remained remarkably similar.     

Business patterns within telecommunications

The global telecommunications changed from a number of co-operating national monopolies offering a restricted range of services to a competitive, growing market with players of many types and sizes, offering a large range of services. How can vertically integrated incumbents align themselves and their systems to best compete in this environment? Business patterns and enterprise modelling offer a tool to model a large organization as a number of smaller enterprises that can compete with and co-operate with smaller specialist players in the market. In order to identify enterprises, this paper proposes that there are only a limited number of types of enterprise (manufacturer, service supplier, reseller, that these enterprise types can only interact in a limited number of ways (component supply, aggregation supply, resell supply, trading, end-supply and commission). With the use of examples, this paper illustrates these types of enterprise and enterprise relationships, and how they can be combined to build both internal and external supply chains, and discusses some of the conclusions that can be drawn from this analysis.     

The regeneration games: purity and security in the Olympic city

This paper examines the wider social impacts of hosting the London 2012 Olympic Games and its 'legacy' ambitions in East London, emphasizing securitization as an inbuilt feature of the urban regeneration project. Drawing on extensive original empirical research, the paper analyses the modalities of Olympic safety and security practices within the Olympic Park itself and their wider impact, while also connecting this research to theorization and debates in urban sociology and criminology. In this complex setting, a raft of formal and informal, often subtle, regulatory mechanisms have emerged, especially as visions of social ordering focused on 'cleansing' and 'purifying' have 'leaked out' from the hyper-securitized 'sterilized' environment of the Olympic Park and become embedded within the Olympic neighbourhood. In such complex circumstances, applying Douglas' (1966) work on purity and danger to the spatial realm provides a key conceptual framework to understand the form and impact of such processes. The imposition of order can be seen to not only perform 'cleansing' functions, but also articulate multiple symbolic, expressive and instrumental roles.     

Prevalence of Low Physical Activity and its Relation to Social Environment in Deprived Areas in the London Borough of Redbridge

Achieving adequate levels of physical activity (PA) is important to maintain health and prevent chronic disease. The costs of inadequate physical activity to the NHS have been estimated at over a billion pounds annually. While socio-demographic characteristics such as age, sex and ethnicity have been reported to be associated with different levels of PA, there is evidence that people??s social environments may also be important in encouraging a physically active lifestyle. The objective of this paper is to describe associations between the social environment and physical activity among the poorer communities in an outer London Borough, when other socio-demographic factors are controlled for. A household survey was carried out in six poorer neighbourhoods in Redbridge in 2008 as part of a wider health needs assessment. The questionnaire included questions allowing estimation of levels of physical activity as well as extent of social environment [social network score (SNS) and social support score (SSS)]. A random sample of households was taken and a total of 799 completed responses from over 16 year old were obtained. The association between physical activity and the social environment controlling for socio-demographic characteristics was estimated using a logistic nested model. Higher SNS was significantly associated with younger age, Black ethnicity, higher education level, higher household income and higher levels of PA in bivariate analyses. Higher SSS was positively associated with Indian ethnicity, higher household income and area of residence. In multivariate analyses higher levels of PA were significantly associated with wider social networks and stronger social support, educational level and marital status. Despite its limitations, our findings confirm that the relationship between low physical activity and weak social networks and low social support, observed in general population studies, also occurs in deprived communities in London. The relationship merits further exploration given the limited evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to promote physical activity.     

L1-Tightness and the law of large numbers in D(IR)

This article presents laws of large numbers for random elements of D(IR). The proofs bring forth the similarities between processes restricted to compact sets of D (IR) and processes with increasing trajectories. The results appear to generalize existing results and cover the independent identically distributed case studied by Ranga Rao.     

An empirical investigation of stalled residential sites in England

Drawing upon a national database of unimplemented planning permissions and 18 in-depth case studies, this paper provides both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the phenomenon of stalled sites in England. The practical and conceptual difficulties of classifying sites as stalled are critically reviewed. From the literature, it is suggested that planning permission may not be implemented due to lack of financial viability, strategic behaviour by landowners and house-builders, and other problems associated with the development process. Consistent with poor viability, the analysis of a national database indicates that a substantial proportion of stalled sites are high density apartment developments usually is located in low house value areas. The case studies suggest that a combination of interlinked issues may need to be resolved before a planning permission can be implemented. These include; the sale of the land to house-builders, renegotiation of the planning permission and, most importantly, improvement in housing market conditions.     

Chemical and biological agent incident response and decision process for civilian and public sector facilities.

In the event of a terrorist attack or catastrophic release involving potential chemical and/or biological warfare agents, decisionmakers will need to make timely and informed choices about whether, or how, to respond. The objective of this article is to provide a decision framework to specify initial and follow-up actions, including possible decontamination, and to address long-term health and environmental issues. This decision framework consists of four phases, beginning with the identification of an incident and ending with verification that cleanup and remediation criteria have been met. The flowchart takes into account both differences and similarities among potential agents or toxins at key points in the decision-making process. Risk evaluation and communication of information to the public must be done throughout the process to ensure a successful effort.