If you’ve forgotten your password please email lmatter@newlocal.org.uk

Member Resources

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Moving towards a neighbourhood strategy

Neighbourhood ways of working are being considered by many councils as a way to bring them closer to their communities.

10th December, 2024

Community engagement • Neighbourhood

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Using outcomes focused relational working to reduce demand on statutory services

Using outcomes-focused relational working to reduce demand on statutory services can be difficult, but it has the potential to help local authorities effectively deliver preventative interventions.

11th November, 2024

Childrens' Services • Health and social care • Prevention • Public Services

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Community Wealth Building – using council power for communities

Working towards a fairer share of wealth across a locality helps bind communities together and gives the impetus to help drive forward the local economy.

15th October, 2024

Community engagement • Community-led • wealth building

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Using your equalities strategy to address power imbalances between council and communities

Creating a strategy that is shaped by frontline services as well as those accessing them is vital for local authorities.

15th October, 2024

Community engagement • Equality • Public Services

Member Exclusive

Innovation Explored: Moving to more open dialogue with communities about council finances

This member-exclusive Innovation Explored explores community-powered methods to put residents at the heart of budgeting decisions and how to shift to more open dialogue about what stretched finances mean...

13th September, 2024

Budgeting • Community engagement • Local government • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Measuring the impact of your community-led approach

Real-time data is a powerful tool for councils. Throughout the life cycle of a project, data can show what works and what doesn’t, leading to better decision making and...

10th July, 2024

Community engagement • Community Power

Member Exclusive

Innovation Explored: Community involvement in the local social economy

This member-exclusive Innovation Explored takes a look what a successful social economy could look like and what would be needed to help it thrive.

4th April, 2024

Community business • Community Power • Economy and business • Finance • Local government

Member Exclusive

Innovation Explored: Putting people and communities at the heart of your operations

This member-exclusive Innovation Explored looks at how corporate teams can practically build a strong focus on communities into day-to-day operations.

4th April, 2024

Community Power • Culture • Local government • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Innovation Explored: How to lead under pressure

This member-exclusive Innovation Explored looks at the kind of leadership skills needed in councils today.

4th April, 2024

Culture • Leadership • Local government • Skills • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Innovation Explored: Creating the conditions for a radically different relationship with your communities

This member-exclusive Innovation Explored takes a look at how councils can develop their focus on community wellbeing.

4th April, 2024

Community engagement • Community Power • Local government • Measurement and Evaluation • Public Services • Wellbeing

Member Exclusive

Innovation Explored: Design-led systems change

This member-exclusive Innovation Explored takes a look at the opportunities emerging from design thinking for local government, and how design-led systems change can improve outcomes locally.

4th March, 2024

Local government • Public Services • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Building intentionally inclusive community conversations

28th February, 2024

Community engagement • Community Power

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Reducing our carbon footprint through retrofit and local energy

We put Des Keighan in our ‘How We Did It’ hot seat to hear how Swansea Bay University Health Board has become low carbon by retrofitting buildings and turning...

22nd February, 2024

Climate change • Community Power • Finance

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Transforming public services into people power with Good Help

Helen Chicot from Rochdale Council introduces a three-year project which has used Good Help principles to tackle the council’s most pressing challenges, transforming the way the way it works...

23rd November, 2023

Community engagement

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Unlocking community assets through local partnerships

Lorinda Freint from Richmond and Wandsworth Councils and Bex Trevalyan from Platform Places introduce Local Property Partnerships and explain how it’s helping tackle high street decline in Wandsworth Town.

17th October, 2023

Community engagement • Community Power • Local government

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Participatory Action Research

Xia Lin from Toynbee Hall introduces a research method designed to embed resident participation in local change-making and explains how co-design principles can be used to level the power...

6th September, 2023

Community engagement • Community Power • Local government • Participation and co-production

Member Exclusive

Embedding a Culture of Continual Engagement

Councils are constantly looking for new ways to engage their residents, from citizens’ assemblies to listening sofas. Critical to doing this well is to understand and to tell the...

15th June, 2023

Community engagement

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: Tackling Rough Sleeping

Shuff Tariq and Sarah Cooke explain how Manchester delivered one of the most successful homelessness projects in the UK.

5th April, 2023

Community engagement • Homelessness • Public Services

Member Exclusive

Outcomes Not Outputs

16th March, 2023

Community engagement • Culture

Member Exclusive

Moving Beyond Consultation to Meaningful Conversations

8th March, 2023

Community engagement

Member Exclusive

Putting the Climate Emergency at the Heart of Everything You Do

7th March, 2023

Community engagement

Member Exclusive

Working with Residents to Meet Local Housing Needs

22nd February, 2023

Community engagement

Member Exclusive

How We Did It: A Truly Person-led Service

In this instalment of our ‘How We Did It’ event series, Ben Hughes from Essex County Council shares his experience of setting up the Essex Recovery Foundation which is...

8th February, 2023

Community engagement

Member Exclusive

Adaptive Leadership

Places need new types of leaders, ones who increasingly collaborate with staff and communities to tackle today’s biggest challenges. This type of leadership is about starting to shift power to put...

16th January, 2023

Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Measuring What Matters

How can you properly measure something when you are working in a system that frequently asks the wrong questions, focuses on the wrong measure, and can obsess over costs...

16th January, 2023

Impact

Member Exclusive

Integrated Public Services

Making integration happen is by no means easy. Ambitions are often weighed down by complex restructuring, governance arrangements, and technical challenges around issues such as sharing data.

17th November, 2022

Partnerships

Member Exclusive

Engaging Residents in an Emergency

We live in unprecedented times, where we are facing increasing emergencies in our communities. From Covid-19 to the cost-of-living crisis; the answer to solving these issues sits with our...

14th November, 2022

Community engagement

Member Exclusive

Eradicating Health Inequalities by Working with your Communities

Practice needs to shift in the council itself, in the local system and in working with communities to develop a community-focused approach to addressing health inequalities.

18th October, 2022

Health and social care

Member Exclusive

Risk-Taking Behaviour (And how to encourage it)

Risk – and aversion to it – is often thought to be the reason why a given innovation will fail to emerge in the public sector. Councils are strongly incentivised...

3rd October, 2022

Local government finance

Member Exclusive

Building a Participatory Local Economy

Local economic change looms for many communities. High streets are transforming as consumer habits shift, working patterns are altering in the wake of the pandemic, and new kinds of...

3rd October, 2022

Community Power • Economy and business • Finance

Member Exclusive

Telling your Story of Council and Place

Ideas and reflections on the challenges of: Developing a simple narrative that is owned by partners and communities, not just the council, and reflects the diversity of voices and...

19th May, 2022

Community engagement • Community Power • Community Voices • Narrative building • Place building • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Freeing up the Frontline for Community Power

Ideas and reflections on embedding a more autonomous and permissive working culture; building greater resilience within the workforce; and creating a culture of co-production with local partners and communities....

2nd March, 2022

Commissioning and Procurement • Community Power • Culture • Participation and co-production • Partnerships

Member Exclusive

The Climate Emergency: Mobilising your Residents

Ideas and reflections centred around three main challenges: Engaging the whole community on climate change. Telling an external story connecting local and global environmental issues. Ensuring climate change is a priority...

8th November, 2021

Climate change • Community engagement • Community Power • Members • Mobilisation • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Community Deliberations: Practicalities for Positive Conversations

Ideas and reflections centred around three main challenges: building trust with communities; creating an organisational culture that values and enables community deliberation; and ensuring that councils are engaging with and...

1st September, 2021

Community engagement • Community Power • Culture • Democracy

Member Exclusive

Making the Most of International Relationships

Councils share their lessons learned from partnerships with Europe, Miami-Dade County in Florida, and with a charity in Sierra Leone.

22nd July, 2021

Partnerships • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

How to Run a Successful Commission

Six key factors to consider when setting up a commission that will help you maximise impact.

22nd June, 2021

Commissioning and Procurement • Democracy • Devolution and reorganisation • Political Economy • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

The Climate Emergency: Mobilising your Council

Balancing short-term and long-term political and financial pressures with the imperative to respond meaningfully to the climate emergency.

25th May, 2021

Budgeting • Climate change • Community engagement • Community Power • Culture • Finance • Members • Mobilisation • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Putting Community Power into Practice

Pivoting from the short-term emergency response to Covid-19 towards long-term organic community development.

24th February, 2021

Community Power • Culture • Democracy • Members • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Working with Central Government

How to build relationships with Whitehall and present persuasive evidence to civil servants.

22nd February, 2021

Central government • Community Power • Local government • Members • Partnerships

Member Exclusive

Organising for Change

Avoiding a drift back to old norms and ways of working, addressing exclusion and preserving accountability.

15th February, 2021

Community Power • Culture • Local government • Local government reform • Members • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Establishing a New Working Relationship with Partners

New Local partnered with Social Finance for an innovation exchange on establishing a new working relationship with partners.

20th January, 2021

Community engagement • Community Power • Culture • Members • Partnerships

Member Exclusive

Better Jobs for People Locally

Creating partnerships to maximise impact on jobs, and how to match skills to opportunities.

8th December, 2020

Community Power • Economy and business • Education and skills • Employment • Members • Partnerships • Skills

Member Exclusive

Leading Partnerships to Transform Place

How to create a sense of shared purpose and navigate each partner's different objectives and cultures.

9th November, 2020

Community Power • Culture • Members • Narrative building • Partnerships • Place building

Member Exclusive

Making the Member-Officer Relationship Work

How to build a shared agenda and tackle big decisions with elected members.

22nd September, 2020

Community Power • Digital • Members • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Mobilising communities through deliberative practices

Experiences of engaging communities - both successes and initiatives that didn't work as well as hoped.

15th June, 2020

Community engagement • Community Power • Culture • Democracy • Members

Member Exclusive

Measuring Impact and Improving Performance in Complex Systems

How to identify what to measure and get buy-in for assessing impact.

30th April, 2020

Community Power • Culture • Impact • Innovation • Members • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Using Behavioural Insights to Manage Demand

Exploring how to manage demand using insights from behavioural science.

13th December, 2019

Behavioural Insights • Community Power • Impact • Innovation Insights • Members • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

The Environmental Challenge

How to overcome common challenges and think strategically when implementing climate change policy.

4th December, 2019

Climate change • Community engagement • Community Power • Innovation Insights • Members • Narrative building • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Transforming Organisational Culture

Insights of changing organisational cultures in councils from chief executives.

29th November, 2019

Culture • Innovation • Innovation Insights • Leadership • Members • Strategy and leadership

Member Exclusive

Testing Ideas through Prototyping

Exploring the importance of prototyping in developing an innovation.

28th November, 2019

Community Power • Design • Impact • Innovation • Innovation In-depth • Members • Strategy and leadership

Page 1 of 2

Older posts

Members’ area

Member Resources

Search/Filter +

Themes