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Edition 4: The Impact of Brexit on Community Cohesion

NLGN’s Leadership Index is a quarterly survey which provides insights into the level of confidence on key issues affecting local government. It is sent to all chief executives, leaders and council mayors in the UK.

Key findings from the NLGN Leadership Index January 2019 include:

  • Councils are concerned about the negative impact Brexit is having on community cohesion. Over half (58.2 percent) of councils believe Brexit is having a negative impact on community cohesion in their area; with 45.6 per cent deeming the impact to be neither positive or negative. Concern is more pronounced among councils with Labour political leadership when compared with Conservative-controlled councils, with 73.0 per cent of the former group perceiving the impact to be negative, compared to 35.4 per cent of the latter.
  • Councils would like to nearly double their resource allocation for preventative measures. Councils estimate they are currently spending 27.8 per cent of their budget on prevention, but ideally, they would apportion 47.4 per cent of their budget for this purpose.
  • Confidence in the optimism and opportunities for local businesses is declining. Levels of optimism in the business environment have fallen by ten per cent between the first and fourth survey of NLGN’s Leadership Index, from 66.6 in March 2018 to 60.1 in January 2019 (on a scale of 1-100).

The Leadership Index survey includes 12 recurring questions across three key themes – economy, society and environment – and a series of topical questions which focus on current events affecting local government.

The full results of the survey can be downloaded HERE.

For an overview of key findings, read Trinley Walker’s blog HERE
For more detail on how Brexit is affecting community cohesion, read Jessica Studdert’s blog HERE


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