Last night saw an elite few Local Authorities in the UK recognised at the Beacon awards ceremony celebrating innovation, excellence and quality local services. Each year, Ministers set around ten themes relevant to issues faced by authorities every day.

Interestingly, this year one such theme was 'Transforming services: citizen engagement and empowerment' and the winner of this category are Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, Chorley Borough Council and Staffordshire Moorlands District Council.

Congratulations to them, and their case studies as well as other engagement resources relevant to local government are available on the Beacons website.

Just to remind you, we have our User Survey up and running for feedback from yourselves on what you think of peopleandparticipation.net. We would really appreciate it if you could spend a couple of minutes to let us know your thoughts.