The Big Society plan to help volunteers and charities run public services threatens to pull local government in the opposite direction to the Total Place agenda, a think-tank has claimed.Jonathan Carr-West, head of the centre for local democracy at the Local Government information Unit (LGiU), told The MJ the two agendas were 'competing logics', which would pose the biggest challenge for councils over coming years.An LGiU report - entitled People, places, power - said: 'The logic that drives Total Place and any similar efficiency programme is about unifying. It is interested in joining up, pooling, aligning within a given place. It is centralism at a local level. The logic of the Big Societyis essentially fragmentary. It is concerned with citizens and community organisations mobilising independently to find local solutions to service delivery issues.'
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