Radical leader

This article was first published in The MJ on 24 September 2026.

Anna Randle talks to Ann McGauran about her long commitment to local government reform working with communities and her excitement about the Burnham agenda.

New Local’s chief executive Anna Randle has come full circle. She began her career at the same organisation, known then as the New Local Government Network (NLGN).

Her passionate commitment to local government reform connects her foray into the local government modernisation agenda with NLGN at the turn of the century in the wake of the Local Government Act directly to her present job.

Speaking to The MJ, she says: ‘My first five or six years was spent working on all of that agenda and campaigning for elected mayors was a big part of my role. And it’s so interesting now to watch the way that model has changed, evolved and matured to the point where an elected mayor is our Prime Minister. And I know that was also the case for Boris Johnson, but this does feel quite different.’

She worked on the Lyons Inquiry in the mid-2000s, when Sir Michael Lyons ‘kind of came up with that idea of place-making as the core role of local government’.

Randle’s choice of subsequent jobs, including as director of strategy at Lambeth LBC working with former local government secretary Steve Reed, underlines her commitment to local places.

‘So basically, the thread throughout my career is local government reform.’

Randle describes her time after Lambeth with think-tank Collaborate, working with and reforming public services and becoming chief executive in 2018, as ‘an amazing experience.

She defines reform as ‘local government working differently with communities and partners in places. And being focused on community, place and devolution’.

Randle emphasises the importance of her four years in Lambeth. ‘It was very formative, that whole notion of how do you turn an organisation inside out and work hand-in- hand alongside communities and community groups?’

Randle describes her time after Lambeth with think-tank Collaborate, working with and reforming public services and becoming chief executive in 2018, as ‘an amazing experience’.

She says there are ‘some things about New Local that are really unique and special, and which really attracted me to this role’. She describes the organisation as ‘an interesting hybrid because it has the practice side’.

‘It’s working hand-in-hand with local authorities and other organisations that are trying to bring about community power, relational public service reform, place-based working and all of these things on the ground, which is what Collaborate did’, she adds. ‘But it also has its membership network of 50 pioneering local authorities who are committed to community power and working differently. I think that membership network is so big for New Local.’

Randle sees that network as ‘the engine of the organisation, and it means we understand what is happening in places, and means we’re in dialogue with local authorities all over the country on a weekly and daily basis’.

The network has a ‘very evolved membership offer’, including regular seminars, workshops and a programme for leadership and future leaders. ‘I just felt like having that set of relationships and that level of commitment from a group of local authorities puts the organisation in a very different place to others that I’ve worked for.’

New Local takes the learning from its membership network and practice work and shares that. ‘We try to influence the debate around local government and public service reform with that insight. But we’re doing that with an authenticity because of the work we are doing on the ground and because of the relationships that we have with our members.’

Randle joined forces with New Local last year as joint author alongside Shaheen Warren and former chief executive of New Local Jess Studdert of Radical Leadership: Power, Possibility and Public Service.

In it, they propose a way of leading that places more emphasis on relationships, collaboration, communities and mobilising people beyond organisational boundaries. Studdert moved to the No10 Policy Unit as special adviser to the Prime Minister last December, bringing her own commitment to this agenda to the heart of government.

With Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who defines himself as a localist, now at the helm, Randle says she is ‘very excited about the vision he set out – it feels it is what many of us have been campaigning for and working towards for some time’.

She adds: ‘I think the Rewiring the State document was incredibly bold and dense. I think it’s an agenda that is exciting for local government in all its forms, both local authorities and mayoral strategic authorities. I think they’re part of the same local government landscape.’

One of the things she likes about the Burnham devolution agenda is that it is ‘built on doing this work in a place, in Greater Manchester’.

Greater Manchester has ‘always understood that growth and public service reform are two sides of the same coin,’ she adds. ‘That [it’s about] changing public services so that they meet people where they are, wrap support around them, meet their needs, and connect them into communities and social networks because those are a big part of what keep people well and create opportunity in people’s lives’.

She concludes: ‘The fact that good growth in every postcode is part of how we’re going to achieve that, and how that mission has been set out by Burnham through devolution, place-based working and place-based public service reform, is important.’

She sees a ‘huge opportunity’ ahead for the work she has been part of for so long, since those early days at NLGN. ‘There’s a lot of good stuff already going on in this space. I think the difference now is that we’ve got a national government that understands it and that is behind it.’

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