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Connected Care, Turning Point's model for involving the community in the design and delivery of integrated health and well‐being services, aims to involve the community in the commissioning process in a way which fundamentally shifts the balance of power in favour of local people. The model has been tested in a number of areas across the country, and previous articles in the Journal of Integrated Care have charted the progress of the original pilot in Hartlepool. Cost‐benefits of the approach are now becoming clearer. Implementation of a new community‐led social enterprise in Hartlepool began in 2007, and today its Connected Care service provides community outreach, information, access to a range of health and social care services, advocacy, co‐ordination and low‐level support to the people of Owton. Key lessons, from Hartlepool and elsewhere, have centred on the value of making the case for service redesign from the ‘bottom up’ and building the capacity of the community to play a role in service delivery, while also promoting strong leadership within commissioning organisations to build ‘top‐down’ support for the implementation of outcomes defined through intensive community engagement. The new Government's ‘localism’ agenda creates new opportunities for community‐led integration, and the Connected Care pilots provide a number of learning points about how this agenda might be successfully progressed.

This study examines changes to the night‐time economy of Hartlepool in the north east of England following the introduction of the Licensing Act 2003. It shows that later opening hours led to later drinking, which in turn led to later violence, criminal damage and antisocial behaviour. Over the period examined, violence against the person fell by 14% in the town centre between the hours of 8pm and 4.59am, while criminal damage fell by 15% and antisocial behaviour increased by 4%. Extending the licensing hours would appear to have contributed to a more moderate (4%) reduction in violence against the person, resulting from a reduction in violence between midnight and 1.59am (the previous closing time) and a smaller increase between 2am and 4.59am. Using the same approach, criminal damage and antisocial behaviour saw small net increases over the same period. Both licensees and partner agencies perceived that changes were detrimental to the town centre. Existing powers at the time of the research appeared to be insufficient to address these problems, which affected the whole of the night‐time economy area rather than individual premises. However, new proposals for extended early morning restriction orders would allow local authorities to revert to the opening hours in place prior to the Licensing Act 2003.

Hartlepool's connected care pilot is a partnership between residents, councillors, Turning Point, the NHS and the local council in one of the most deprived wards in England. A local audit was conducted by residents, demonstrating the relevance of information held by the community about its needs, ambitions and interactions with services. A new service model aims to provide integrated responses to complex need, commissioned through a local partnership agreement and delivered through a social enterprise. The implementation will demonstrate how far real power is shifting to local people.

This article is the second which the Journal of Integrated Care has published about the Hartlepool connected care pilot. It takes up the narrative from the launch of the community audit report in February 2006 to the project's successful bid to become one of the 26 DoH social enterprise pilots some 12 months later. It seeks to understand the barriers encountered as the pilot sought to implement a service model based on an audit of local needs and ambitions. It identifies the need for support outside the local policy systems if holistic, community‐based initiatives are to be initiated and implemented. In addition, it considers some of the implementation dilemmas that the pilot posed for local agencies and that it had itself to face and resolve during this second phase in its development.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the level of hearing loss in the population and describe the joint health and social care response in Hartlepool to the needs of this group of people.

The approach included a review of the literature, the application of national prevalence tables to local population estimates, and a review of the adequacy of current service provision available to people with a hearing loss.

More than 14,700 people out of a total population of 91,000 living in Hartlepool are estimated to have some degree of hearing loss. This compares with only 1,046 people registered with the adult social care team although 13,800 people were found to be registered with the local audiology department. The review found that a broad range of services was already in place across health and social care although some areas were identified for service improvement which are currently being addressed.

Drawing attention to the needs of a section of the community that is virtually invisible, this review served to highlight the scale of hearing loss prevalence in the population, to estimate the number of people with hearing loss in a local population using data that has been available for almost two decades (although not widely adopted), and demonstrates a unique cross‐sectoral approach to assessing and responding to the needs of people who have a loss of hearing.

The purpose of this paper is to contextualise and assess “controlled” evidence about emerging plural provision of social housing within an English region.

Two matching pairs of case study social housing provider type (stock transfer associations and arm's‐length management organisations), all established between four and seven years previously and all located within the same region, are compared and contrasted through rich qualitative interviews with stakeholders, backed by secondary and other documentary evidence.

The new models have led to considerable change for both staff and tenants across many dimensions, mainly positive, in service delivery terms. It is also apparent that regulation and inspection have a dominant impact on social providers. It can be inferred from the evidence that a key challenge for the future is the lack of a clear, long‐term vision for social housing at the national policy level.

The paper is a rare empirical examination of wide‐ranging change to social housing in the UK. It is also unusual in its attempt to construct a quasi‐experimental series of case studies.

It seems incredible that the microelectonics industry is obsessed by establishing itself in the overcrowded South East of England, where any journey by road is little short of a nightmare, when the North of the country is blessed with fine roads, connecting the uncrowded towns that are to be found on either side of the Pennines. One of these towns is Hartlepool, situated on the coast between Tyneside and Teesside. An airy town in both senses of the word—the air from the sea is fresh from the Pole, and the houses are well spaced out—Hartlepool has also suffered its share of declining industry, with unemployment now running at some 30%. Whilst the huge GEC telephone exchange works is a shadow of its former self, the port once into shipbuilding now handles all the Vauxhall car traffic from the GM European plants. To supplement the comprehensive road network the airports at Teesside and Newcastle are growing in significance, services from the latter being available to Scandinavia, Holland, France and other parts of Europe.

THIS IS AN ACCOUNT of two projects initiated by Anchor Trust and funded by the Department of Health Community Care Development Programme for a period of two years ‐ 1996 to 1998. The projects, in Brighton and Hartlepool, were supported by the local authorities, health agencies and the voluntary sector, and worked in close collaboration with them to establish local service networks with older people. The projects were evaluated by the Nuffield Institute for Health, and this article is based on a forthcoming evaluation report.