This is topical as we have a whole raft of new policy approaches and reforms from the present Government that cover everything from Big Society to the environment to planning to education to health to pensions and the police, to name but a few.

Whilst I am not an expert in all these matters there are some interesting patterns emerging in the way the current Coalition make policy which merit closer scrutiny.

1. There is a focus on importing ideas from elsewhere and fitting them within our existing governance structures. For example free schools, elected police commissioners and open source planning.
2. New policy is presented with the expectation that the public and affected professions will support it. The chance for public involvement is after the initial development of the policy idea itself.
3. There appears to be a policy approach that seeks to champion the new and the radical in preference to building on existing platforms and learning lessons. Here, the good and the bad of the New Labour era have been thrown out with the bathwater in pursuit of a new brand of conservatism.
4. Each policy area has a key driver of saving money as justification for the reform agenda.
5. Each policy area has a fix on making the service more accountable to the public.

So are these cunning plans?

Significantly, in each policy area there have been widespread protests by the professions themselves; e.g. planners, teachers, doctors and police and through their professional bodies.

Most recently the National Trust and the Daily Telegraph have mobilised huge levels of support against the proposed National Planning Policy Framework.

Last year a huge public outcry led the Secretary of State Caroline Spelman to make a U turn on the proposed sell off of the forestry estate (despite securing parliamentary approval), whilst the Health Secretary had to have a 'pause' in light of concerns raised by the medical profession over health reforms.

The common ingredient here is the way policy development supersedes proper and informed debate between all affected parties.

This goes against the whole central idea of the government's rhetoric of localism where the government hands over power to local people who, in effect, should be driving the reform agenda.

A good example of this is provided within the neighbourhood plan concept, widely publicised as a chance for local people to decide the kind of places they want free from central government interference.

However, if you read the small print neighbourhood plans must be in conformity with the local plan and can only allow more development that that proposed in the local plan.

So we have 'conditional' localism with the government still pulling the strings behind the 'community puppets' with all the future anger and raised expectations this will eventually secure.

In my view there are some good ideas for policy reform within the government agenda but the process by which these ideas are turned into policy is bypassing wider debate as demanded by the localism agenda.

Instead we have the government driving the reforms through under the guise that only then can localism flourish.

This is the wrong way round and if the government are truly serious about giving people a greater say they surely must allow the public to influence or even drive the policy changes that the government are now pushing through.

In this way policy is co-developed in a partnership between the government and affected parties.

At present this is not happening and there is a real risk that the Big Society that David Cameron tries to champion will bite off the government hand that is trying to feed it.