2025: Learning our way forward – our member year in review
As we close off our formal member sessions for 2025, our Head of Network, Laura Payne, reflects on a year of learning through change and complexity.
2025 has asked a lot of local government. And yet, in response to very challenging times, what we have seen is not retreat or retrenchment, but bold learning in action.
Conversations with our members this year have covered the gamut – from the nuts and bolts of LGR, to finding ways to build prevention into everyday practice – and all of them have taken place against the sadly familiar backdrop of high demand and limited financial resource.
Despite this, our member councils have shown that real innovation isn’t in the “shiny things” or the one-off pilots. Instead, it can be found in how leaders and organisations are adapting their thinking, their behaviours and their relationships with communities, partners and each other. Little surprise then, that much of the learning we have observed within our network this year has centred around four core themes: leadership, power, prevention and place.
Learning to lead differently
Throughout our Reorganising for Outcomes series, I was struck by how regularly chief executives and senior leaders who are navigating LGR consistently moved away from structures and boundary lines and towards purpose.
Conversations centred on how to build strong, community-anchored and preventative models of local service delivery, and on the kind of leadership this truly requires.
They often reflected on the tension between scaling up activities and maintaining local rootedness.
“What stood out was a shared recognition that transformation is not something you ‘deliver’ to communities, but something you must learn with them.”
These themes were reinforced during our Radical Leaders sessions. Again, I was struck by the openness with which chief executives interrogated their own leadership; talking candidly about bringing their whole selves to the role, creating space to think, and being the calmest presence in the room when pressure is high.
There was a refreshing emphasis on curiosity and joy, and recognition that sustaining change requires leaders to remain human, hopeful and open.
Learning to let go of power
Across the country, councils are learning that lasting change requires a redistribution of power. In our wider membership sessions, which featured more than 50 speakers this year, we heard powerful examples of councils learning how to share control and trust local leadership.
In work on building cohesive communities, councils explored how supporting community-led initiatives and nurturing local leadership can strengthen belonging and resilience, while building sustainable partnerships.
They also learned with their communities, by co-designing training, breaking down silos and creating shared spaces for new ways of thinking.
Others experimented with digital democracy, testing new ways for residents to participate in decision-making and influence priorities, and learning what inclusion really means in a digital age — and how to bring everyone in.
In disadvantaged neighbourhoods, locality working showed how devolving decisions to neighbourhood teams and trusting local insight can rebuild confidence, capability and community influence.
Learning to collaborate early on prevention
With demand continuing to rise, councils understand that prevention is not an optional extra, it is fundamental to sustainability. This year, many have been grappling with how to shift from reactive systems to ones that address root causes.
Outcomes-based partnerships have helped councils learn how to align public, private and voluntary sector efforts around long-term goals, moving the conversation away from short-term outputs and towards shared impact.
The digital inclusion work of one member council highlighted how preventing isolation and exclusion requires investment in access, skills and confidence, not just technology, to keep communities connected.
In health, place-based systems leadership has shown how working with communities and partners can transform services around wellbeing and local strengths, rather than waiting for crisis.
In response to climate risk, we heard from a council that has been learning how to embed resilience into everyday decision-making, using new tools and governance approaches to act earlier and reduce long-term harm.
Learning to respond to place
Throughout the year, place has remained a powerful lens for learning. Our latest Pioneer Working Group sprint has given a rich insight into how councils are striving to make services accessible, joined-up and easy to access across neighbourhood footprints.
Also, councils have been rethinking how they respond to housing pressures, regeneration and public space by working with the grain of local context.
Some have unlocked the potential of empty properties, learning how creative partnerships and local intelligence can bring homes back into use while strengthening neighbourhoods.
Others have reimagined public spaces alongside residents, learning how regeneration can reflect local identity and everyday life, not just physical renewal.
Across all this work, a consistent and familiar lesson has recurred: investing in relationships and local assets strengthens places socially as well as physically.
Learning Forward
Taken together, these stories do not offer a single model or blueprint. Instead, they show a sector learning its way through complexity: rethinking who holds power, how problems are prevented and how places are shaped. These approaches are beginning to influence how resources are used and how success is defined.
The next phase is about turning this shared learning into everyday practice, embedding it in how councils plan, partner and make difficult decisions under pressure.
I am tremendously grateful to our members, our partners and everyone who took part in the network (over 2,000 people this year) for sharing their insight and expertise so generously.
It’s inspirational to see the reforms taking place in public services right now.
By working alongside communities, staying focused on outcomes, and grounding change in local context, councils are not just responding to this year’s challenges. They are building the confidence, capability and relationships needed for the years ahead.
Image Credit: Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
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