Public private partnering used to be an industry hidden in plain sight. Not anymore. Billions of pounds of public money spent, a variable record of delivery, questionable corporate governance and unpopular executive pay all increasingly make the public service market a common concern. So when companies and contracts fail not only is there a crisis […]
The question of what happens if a council goes bust is increasingly coming across the lips of senior leaders in local government. Privately central government is now lending serious consideration to how it might respond to the prospect of more frequent local government equivalents of the ‘3am phone call’. The collapse of a council due […]
As government takes a more regionalised approach to infrastructure planning, this research is considering: How infrastructure planning can enable places to lead on improving air quality in their area How government can enable places to lead on the finance and delivery of infrastructure A wider definition of infrastructure to encompass digital and environmental concerns, beyond […]
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 […]
This report shows the disparity in robustness of England’s local labour markets. Looking at the vulnerabilities of local labour markets to the impact of changes to migration policy after Brexit, the automation of manual jobs, and the challenges of deficient skills bases and demographics, we see a country which is moving beyond the ‘north-south divide’ as […]
The number of homes bought by people aged twenty-five to forty-four with a mortgage has dropped by over 1.6 million in just over a decade. Over the same period the number of homes owned outright by people aged over sixty-five increased by over 1.4 million. What we are witnessing is the accelerated decline of the […]
Neo-localism isn’t a neologism. It has been in use for some time in human geography circles. A quick google search tells you it was coined by Wes Flack and refers to the idea of promoting and preserving community identities and cultures. Wanting to place it into a UK political context, we have what you might […]