Restoration and resilience | creating capacity and capability to deliver local services in the South East
Work in progress
In our ‘Resetting the South East’ research programme from 2022, Localis argued that as a net regional contributor to the Exchequer, the South East region was pivotal to national renewal. The study examined what was necessary for the South East’s constituent local authorities to deliver individually and collectively to ambitious economic, environmental and social transformations.
As we enter a new political cycle, Localis is returning to this place-based policy context to deliver a fresh study on the region that will be pivotal to the success of the next government’s industrial strategy and a crucible for its growth agenda.
Our new research programme, ‘Restoration and resilience| creating capacity and capability to deliver local services in the South East’ will among, other things, seek to:
- ask questions about where the local government workforce of the future will come from, how they will be trained and how they will be retained – the context of severe capacity and capability gaps which are currently exacerbated by additional pressures from central government;
- stress the importance of local recruitment, retention and innovative management of public service employees to the new wave of incoming members of parliament across the South East as key constituency issue
- identify the primary obstacles to local authorities fulfilling their core obligations to communities and points to best practice in overcoming them and enabling high quality delivery for empowered communities
- highlight the need for ensuring financial resilience and capacity resourcing across the South East for public service reform as well as national government growth and prosperity ambitions;
- disrupt and challenge existing assumptions about the relative affluence and strength of the South East’s political economy and focuses on the real challenges of outsize public service demand and labour market pressures which are constraining people and placemaking services;
- build a coherent case for the South East as a key national and regional strategic asset, collecting insights to help South East Councils and South East Employers with their advocacy for the region, its local authorities and employers.
Research kindly sponsored by:
