The rhetoric of digitisation pervades the contemporary political conversation. Smart devices, connected in smart homes, connected in smart cities give policymakers ever better information on which to base decisions. At the same time, the UK’s Road to Zero and its equivalents abroad present a future of carbon-neutral countries producing zero emissions. Smart Cities: Fair investment […]
In recent times attempts have been made to recast central/local relations, seeking a concordat between Whitehall and town hall or a rewiring of central government. The goal of ensuring fiscal freedoms, widely seen as necessary to full local autonomy, has long floundered on the shoals of a diffident approach to business rates retention and a […]
The relationship between major employers and employees is too often one of estrangement. This is epitomised by a number of local economic anchors: Investment in major strategic infrastructure schemes has created a generation of local economic anchors, but their impact on the local economy today is not as positive as it could be. Communities living […]
The state of the public service market is much more precarious now than in the past, with a number of major government contracts being either cancelled or bailed out at taxpayer expense. With concerns over profitability mounting and contracting bodies seeking to meet stringent savings’ targets, margins for failure have become perilously narrow. As profitability […]
The increased pressure placed on local authorities under the period of austerity since 2010 has been well rehearsed, but how well have local authorities as a whole managed under the strain? This short report examines some of the evidence available on one crucial line of service: social care. The analysis shows most users of adult […]
The question of how adult social care funding is put on a sustainable footing helped to define the 2017 General Election. Along with the NHS, it has become an issue totemic of wider choices around public spending and their impact on local services. Yet the long shadow of social care funding in the public and […]
Automation is a major point of debate in politics and policy. How it will happen, when it will happen and who will be affected are all contentious questions with multiple, often conflicting, answers. Cutting through the various arguments around automation is the certainty that it is going to happen, and that it hasn’t really started […]
To date, the industrial strategy has largely been led by Whitehall. Announcements of green papers, white papers and sector deals have punctuated a shift in tone and approach towards the economy by central government. The state is no longer an automatic impediment to growth but a partner and enabler. Yet a national approach can only […]
Skills reform is a political priority, a point acknowledged in the emphasis placed on it in the Government’s Industrial Strategy, which vowed to “put technical education on the same footing as our academic system, with apprenticeships and qualifications such as T-levels”. A critical component of skills reform is developing a robust further education (FE) sector. […]
Universities contribute to one in every hundred new business births in the UK . Across the country, there are pockets of excellence in supporting enterprise and entrepreneurship and there is an escalator of business support. But too many universities are doing too little. According to national research , 35% of universities did not contribute to […]