Quite simply the national lockdown occasioned by the COVID-19 influence pandemic has brought economic life in this country to a standstill with a speed, spread and in all-encompassing manner that has outstripped even the great depression, both world wars, the 1974 three-day week or in more recent memory the 2008 financial crisis. But local areas, […]
From the crises in elderly care and youth crime to the desperate challenge of building enough homes across the country, the need to properly fund, so as to properly deliver valued local services and infrastructure has never been clearer to the public. In this environment, the case for giving our local authorities greater powers to […]
A range of national bodies are working together to enhance councils’ understanding of how they can diagnose and reduce the risk of failure in corporate governance, and what success factors can point the way to greater strength in this area. Research is being led by the Centre for Public Scrutiny and Localis, and funded by […]
We are fast approaching the twentieth anniversary of the formal establishment of the Greater London Authority. Offering strategic administration through a single mayoral figurehead, the GLA structure of governance has been woven, seemingly irrevocably, into the patchwork of the United Kingdom’s assymetric devolution agreements. As we ender the third deacde of the GLA’s existence, there […]
Taking back control means more than just transferring power from Brussels to Whitehall, it means placing empowered communities at the country’s constitutional core. Democratise, Decentralise, Deliver is a research programme of three separate but inter-related policy reports on community empowerment, national representation of local government and the incentivisation of goodwill through locally funded and controlled public services […]
The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 was first presented to Parliament a decade ago, enshrining in law the duty of public sector commissioning to pay regard to economic, social and environmental wellbeing when making procurement decisions. In this time, the incorporation of a social value element into the assessment of public sector contracts has […]
A group of ten Conservative MPs from the 2019 intake has today set out an ambitious blueprint for the future of housing to rethink the social and economic role of housing over the next decade. The proposals are contained in a post-Budget essay collection entitled “Valuing Housing, Improving Lives’ and encompass how housing policy and […]
As the winter election of 2019 approaches approaches amidst a blizzard of promises and debate, Localis have produced Manifest Destiny as a shorthand guide to the localist elements of the three main party manifestos. Focusing on those pledges which directly concern the powers, funding and control of local government, we take the manifestos at face value and […]
Local areas have seized the initiative on climate change. Two hundred and thirty local and combined authorities in England had declared climate emergencies by July 2019. The challenge now is for local policy makers to translate this momentum into co-ordinated action across all areas of their local economies, including energy, transport, buildings, land use and […]
Although its principles are now well-established and practiced, the full promise of a total place approach to area budgeting and comprehensive public service reformation in localities remains unrealised. At a time when ministers and officials are straining all means necessary to funnel billions of pounds from the health service’s 70th anniversary budget boost into shovel-ready […]