In the developed world’s most centralised nation, calls for devolution and decentralisation have long gone without a meaningful answer from the heart of government. Yet in the aftermath of a pandemic which brought people closer to their local communities than many had been in generations and in the face of an economy which is increasingly unable to provide prosperity across the country, advocation of bringing money and power closer to communities is set to grow louder still.
This workstream aims to bring out the policy requirements for a better dispersed and more genuinely democratic England, aiming to chart the course to true community empowerment, bringing the levers of meaningful power within reach of neighbourhood-level organisations across the country.
Context Solving the puzzle of worklessness and its connection to productivity is an increasingly challenging task in cities and towns across the country, at a time where the state’s ability to intervene to raise skill levels and improve labour market access is severely limited. The impending 2025 Comprehensive Spending Review will have little option but […]
As climate shifts worldwide, councils across England are being hit by increasingly extreme weather patterns including violent storm surges, unbearable temperatures, and widespread flooding. Even under the most minimal of warming scenarios, infrastructure, public health, and GDP will all worsen due to the weighty pressure of extreme weather events. If action is not taken, the […]
The South East of England, often perceived as a beacon of affluence and economic success, presents a paradoxical challenge to policymakers. Beneath its reputation as a prosperous and “overheated” economic hub lie stark inequalities and financial pressures that are increasingly testing the resilience of local governance. A decade of austerity has eroded the capacity of […]
The financial problems facing local government in England are well rehearsed. The deteriorating impact of shrinking budgets on public services and the state of the public realm formed an important part of the Labour Party’s platform of ‘change’ in the 2024 general election campaign. Delivery of the promise to ‘fix the foundations’ and begin national […]
In the context of an evolving public procurement landscape, local authorities in England are grappling with multiple challenges and opportunities. An increasing strategic turn in procurement is being reflected by legislative reforms, notably the pending Procurement Bill, which aims to simplify and modernise the system. However, the responsibilities of the new reforms for local authorities […]
Driven by the dynamics of a new political cycle, we are on the edge of a major shift in the way we go about delivering local public services. The circumstances call for a reform agenda encompassing the positive hopes of devolution and community empowerment without shying away from the sombre realities of limited fiscal headroom […]
While not programmes for government in their own right, manifestos act as an indicator of how government will be used as a vehicle and what direction it will be travelling in. For local government, the party manifestos present an insight into the position the sector will occupy in the policy agenda of the next Parliament, […]
Council finances are in a precarious position. Wound tightly from the time of the astringencies of the 2010 spending review, to the limited protections that saw the sector through the Covid years, the principal cogs of local government finance – property taxes, commercial revenue, fees and charges, capital expenditure and grant funding, are clearly out […]
As one of only three regions of the country to be net contributors to the Exchequer, the role of the South East region in advancing the levelling up agenda for national renewal remains pivotal. Resetting the South East investigates the role of the South East region in Levelling Up, and what is necessary for its […]
The Levelling Up White Paper, released in February 2022, represents the most significant, comprehensive and wide-reaching UK government statement on devolution, geographic inequality and regional political economy in at least a decade. The paper filled the intellectual void at the heart of the ubiquitous Levelling Up Agenda with a theory of disparities between places and […]