Introduction

There have been national and regional public policy think tanks, but this is the first think tank for a borough.

Sutton is an "excellent" rated borough and I devoted much of the last 4 years into continuing to push for this (especially in social services) despite quite a bit of pessimism along the way.

An "Excellent" borough deserves to be the first to have its own public policy "think tank".

Unlike my other website: "The Sutton Council Observer" this website is not aimed to be represent a single political view.

I hope others with a range of views will contribute to "Policy4Sutton". Unlike organisations like the Sutton Partnership or the Council this website will seek out a wide range of political views and encourage those that disagree with the "received wisdom".

My hope is this is where the local manifesto policies of the future are debated and put to the test.

One of the first points that should be made is that those organisations that seek to sanitise debate will struggle with legitimacy in the long-run. If I were running public sector websites I would be allowing those that disagree with policy to post on them. I will probably do a much longer post on that issue in the future.

I am confident that within the next 5 years this point itself will become the "received wisdom"!