www.poverty.org.uk

This sharp, colourful and easy-to-use new
site, run by the New Policy Institute, “monitors what is happening
to poverty and social exclusion in the UK”. It huddles masses of
information and statistics (key facts, trends, indicators and
graphs) that can shock and humble in equal measure. For example,
about half of adults and children living below the low-income
threshold are in working households, showing that work itself is no
guarantee of escaping poverty. For a site devoted to poverty, it
proves to be a very rich resource.

www.crb.org.uk  

Launched in March this year, the Criminal
Records Bureau aims to help a wider range of employers make “better
informed employment decisions”. How informed its decision was to
employ private company Capita to run its disclosure service given
its well-publicised “early teething problems” is open to question.
The site admits that the turnaround is still five to six weeks, as
against its service standard of one week (for basic and standard
disclosures). The “About the CRB” section makes its own candid
disclosure, confessing it was “conceived under Part V of the Police
Act of 1997”.

www.nhsestates.gov.uk/patient_experience/
 

This “better hospital food” website is run by
NHS Estates, which “provides support and advice on the procurement,
design, operation and maintenance of healthcare buildings and
facilities”. The NHS spends £500m a year on food, providing a
million meals a day. With large helpings from Loyd Grossman,
hospital food is “undergoing a revolution”. But the dishes in the
NHS recipe book (which you can download, I kid you not) are far
from revolting: I enjoyed the “serves 100” captions, but
photographs of Grossman might put some off their food.

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