Supporting independent shops

Last Friday Leicester's elected city mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, announced a new initiative to support independent shops, particularly those on major routes outside the city centre. Partnership funding is available for:

• making shop fronts more attactive
• better street signage
• making the general environment more welcoming to shoppers.

For more details, click on the post title.

What are the chances of our Tory councils in Harborough and Glenfield doing anything similar (or, indeed, anything at all) to help our struggling independents in Lutterworth and Broughton?

Residential care - lessons to be learnt

Southern Cross Healthcare, the largest private sector provider of care homes in the UK, is being put out of business by the people it sold its 700+ properties to in an equity release deal.

There are no Southern Cross homes in our immediate area - the nearest are in Rugby, Wigston and Hinckley - but of course people who live here have relatives who live in Southern Cross properties. Whilst the operating company is finished, it doesn't necessarily follow that all the homes will close and that all residents will have to go elsewhere. Some homes will be transferred to other operators and some may be sold, although it is hard to see how they can be marketed as going concerns.

Leicestershire County Council pays for the care of about 140 people currently resident in Southern Cross homes and should be able to minimise any adverse impact for such a comparatively small number. What they won't find so easy to deal with are people who are considering going into care and who will now panic, and the residents of any home that does close, who will all have to be rehomed in one go.

On the day on which David Cameron, with the toe-curling timing for which he has recently become notorious, vowed to end the state's monopoly on services (http://www.guardian.co.uk), it was instructive to note the Southern Cross chairman's comment on his company's failure.

Did he apologise to residents who may lose their homes or staff, many of whom will certainly lose their jobs? Not a bit of it. Chairman Fisher's sole regret was for "the loss of value which shareholders have experienced." (http://www.bbc.co.uk)

That, in my view, pretty much demonstrates why the state needs a monopoly in personal care services.