Taking back control means more than just transferring power from Brussels to Whitehall, it means placing empowered communities at the country’s constitutional core. Localism has the potential to deliver real democratic accountability that can eradicate the appeal of empty populist promises, but only if done in a way that delivers real power to people. Decentralise, […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
In this essay collection Localis sets, in addition to its own analysis, twenty separate views from a wide range of individual experts and sector leading organisations asking how we might use the primacy of place to direct a return to housing growth, and with it, renewal as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. In our […]
Physical assets act as centres in community life – be they local businesses, commons or high streets serving as economic or social anchors. Individually or collectively, these assets are hubs providing vital social infrastructure to support their local communities. Local Delivery looks at how communities have adapted and protected their social infrastructure in the face […]
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 […]