Category: Articles
Mainly due to budget cuts over the past seven years, councils have become more efficient in how they work. But a new approach is needed in order to boost productivity and maintain the quality of service. Lucy Terry explains...
11th July, 2017
This week, Richard Nelmes joined the NLGN team as Head of Network, following almost a decade at the United Nations Association. The United Nations is a global body of 193 countries that was created with the express purpose of...
20th June, 2017
Having first assumed his role as communities secretary and local government last year as the aftershocks of the Brexit vote reverberated, Sajid Javid’s reappointment last week came at no less a turbulent time at Westminster. Without a working majority...
19th June, 2017
This blog is for Carers Week, an annual campaign to raise awareness of carers, the challenges they face, and the contribution they make to society. There is no doubt social care has risen dramatically up the agenda recently. It’s...
16th June, 2017
With air pollution causing some 40,000* early deaths in the UK each year, poor air quality is the largest environmental risk to UK public health currently. Addressing air pollution from transport emissions, as part of longer-term air quality management...
15th June, 2017
Many of us knew little about the DUP until Friday morning, but now it looks as if they will be instrumental in forming a functioning government. Now is a timely opportunity to examine what the DUP’s manifesto means for...
13th June, 2017
Whatever their party allegiance, I suspect councillors and officers everywhere will be scratching their heads about what this unexpected outcome means for local government. On one hand, this result spells uncertainty for many issues that councils were hoping might...
9th June, 2017
Theresa May is not the only potential casualty of this election. The social care issue has taken a pretty severe political beating as well. After May promised not to “duck the issue”, many in local government had hoped that...
9th June, 2017
Health and social care • Political Systems • Politics • Social Care
What do all the party’s election manifestos say for local government? We’ve picked out all the relevant issues in the posts below: what does Labours manifesto mean for local government?what does Liberal Democrat’s manifesto mean for local government?what does...
7th June, 2017
At this General Election, local government is at crossroads, with the two main parties offering very different directions for the future of councils and the communities they serve. The role that councils play in supporting local people means that...
6th June, 2017
The Prime Minister is right in elevating social care to one of this election’s defining issues – reflecting the very need for radical change that many of us have long been calling for. Some may have been disappointed the...
5th June, 2017
Pye Nyunt writes about his experience of setting up a council insight function. In October 2016, we set up the “Insight Hub” at Barking & Dagenham Town Hall, with the aim to focus on making better use of the...
2nd June, 2017
What’s clear from this report is that there is an appetite in the worlds of both health and social care for greater integration to deliver a more joined-up care experience for users and to make more efficient use of...
31st May, 2017
The local elections earlier this month saw several city regions elect first time Metro Mayors. The turnout in places like Manchester (29%), where Andy Burnham was elected, was pretty good for a plebiscite on a newly devolved role. In...
30th May, 2017
UKIP support has grown out of local opposition to the effects of a globalised economy, channelled through its anti-EU stance. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, following the public vote to Brexit last June, the party have struggled to set out a...
30th May, 2017
Like the Green or Women’s Equality Parties, the Cooperative Party Manifesto was written with an explicit desire for its policies to be adopted by another party. But unlike them, this manifesto represents the priorities of a number of MPs...
24th May, 2017
The likelihood of this manifesto being enacted is probably about the same as aliens invading Britain the same day you’re struck by lightning and win the lottery jackpot. As we’ve seen with intention of the Women’s Equality Party manifesto,...
22nd May, 2017
Finance • Local government finance • Politics • Public Services
After months of worry, devolution’s loved ones finally got some news from Dr May. The patient, it turns out, isn’t terminal, but sadly there will be no return to the old, vibrant ways. Devolution has suffered ‘life-changing injuries’. The...
21st May, 2017
First the good news. We’re having a vibrant debate about social care funding slap bang in the middle of an election campaign. Now the bad news: the policy that has prompted the debate is a stinker. Theresa May and...
19th May, 2017
Manifestos are always launched with a certain amount of excitement, but none more so than the Conservative Manifesto this morning. While the Lib Dem’s manifesto explicitly positioned them as the party of opposition, the Tory manifesto would reveal what...
18th May, 2017
I was planning for this to be a blog about the implications of Labour’s freshly leaked manifesto for local government. As it turns out this is a very difficult thing to do. Labour’s plans – were they enacted –...
17th May, 2017
Reading the Labour manifesto was a bit like watching a magician determined to show you every trick they have ever learned as quickly as possible moving from disappearing an elephant to finding a coin behind your ear and back...
17th May, 2017
The Women’s Equality Party manifesto was published late on Friday, and unlike other party manifestos, has been expressly drafted with the intention for other parties to adopt its policies. While the manifesto focuses on their core aims with no...
16th May, 2017
The issues crying out for solutions in this election remain woefully unaddressed. For years the UK has struggled with a rapidly ageing population, an unbalanced economy and a mess of a housing market. Politicians of every party have promised...
16th May, 2017
The links between problems like homelessness, substance misuse, mental ill health, violence,domestic abuse and extreme poverty often go unrecognised by services and systems mostly designed to deal with one issue at a time. As such, people rarely get the...
10th May, 2017
After years in the offing, the election of the first wave of new metro-mayors means this once theoretical tier of governance has now become a group of six actual human beings. Their coming into being has not been without...
5th May, 2017
We need to talk about fiscal devolution. Fiscal devolution is an issue that national politicians won’t touch even with someone else’s bargepole. So scared are they of the electorate getting a whiff of the prospect of a tax increase,...
28th April, 2017
Devolution • Devolution and reorganisation • Finance • Local government finance
Since Theresa May took over as Prime Minister, local councils have increasingly understood that their future now resides in their own hands. The devolution agenda, once driven by the former Chancellor, has severely lost energy. Instead, the new Government...
24th April, 2017
Finance • Local government finance • Politics • Public Services
Yesterday NLGN hosted a roundtable with senior local government executives and a handful of academics to discuss ‘place based policy’ after Brexit. The starting point of the discussion was work by Will Jennings and Gerry Stoker of the University...
21st April, 2017
One entirely unforeseen consequence of last year’s referendum was the brakes being put on the devolution locomotive. Despite Government protestations to the contrary, May and Hammond have shown little of the true-believer enthusiasm exhibited by Cameron and Osborne. As...
19th April, 2017
Devolution • Devolution and reorganisation • Political Systems
Like it or not this will be the Brexit Election: a strange sort of quasi-referendum on the decision made in a previous referendum and everything that has happened since. But if that’s all this election ends up being about,...
18th April, 2017
Devolution • Devolution and reorganisation • Political Systems
NLGN’s recent Place-based Health conference brought together many experts in local and national healthcare to discuss the need to move away from reactive health services, towards holistic, place-based systems – and the practical changes needed to make this happen....
6th April, 2017
We recently published our report on improving the productivity of councils, with a focus on collaboration. It’s been an interesting time to look at productivity in local government. Councils are at a point where they’ve already taken many of...
30th March, 2017
The letter has been sent. The deed is done. But today is really just the beginning. Whether you are watching today’s events begrudging, jubilantly, with denial, or even boredom it is impossible to ignore the forceful eruption of a...
29th March, 2017
In recent years, the word ‘place’ has become a bit of a buzzword in the local government sector. Terms like ‘place-leadership’, ‘place-branding’ and ‘place-building’ are now ubiquitous in strategy documents and comms plans – used to imply a more...
27th March, 2017
At Essex County Council we are passionate about making a positive contribution to the lives of Essex residents and businesses. It is what we exist for. The qualities of the places around us play an important role in our...
23rd March, 2017
Local government faces a funding gap of £5.8 billion by 2019/20. At the launch of NLGN’s latest research report Tomorrow’s Places, Theo Blackwell, Councillor at LB Camden, stated “Technology will help us balance the books if we do it...
22nd March, 2017
Most councils indulge in partnerships, but how many actually achieve what they were set up to do? As a county council, our oldest partnership is with our unitary city and our 8 districts and boroughs, both separately and collectively....
16th March, 2017
On International Women’s Day this year, we celebrated the role of women in the local government workforce, and the importance of diversity in policy-making. We made three short films full of advice and experiences from women across the country,...
16th March, 2017
I know someone who’s renowned for his scepticism. The only problem is, he’s now so sceptical that he doesn’t feel able to trust anything. People who post videos on YouTube seem to have as much, or little, credibility as...
15th March, 2017
“Too many areas of policy covered by local government are male dominated – infrastructure, highways, planning… the most important thing is to put women in positions of responsibility in those areas, leading by example, reflecting the needs of their...
14th March, 2017
Cities are largely designed by men, and for men. There is nothing unusual in this – we instinctively design, plan and make policy that reflects our own experiences and biases. However, this has led to places that don’t work...
10th March, 2017
The Chancellor’s first Budget, and the first following the UK’s decision to leave the EU, needed to shore up the domestic economy, particularly against structural challenges of weak productivity and our ageing population. So how do the announcements affect...
8th March, 2017
Finance • Local government finance • Policy • Politics • Public Services
It is true that instead of being a hierarchical old boys’ club in the same way as many industries, local government has become significantly more open and approachable, reducing hierarchy and making a greater effort to reflect the community...
8th March, 2017
Disruptive, cognitive technology will be a major driver of change in our economy over the next decade, as Artificial Intelligence becomes more accessible to UK organisations, very quickly. This has wide-ranging ramifications for the productivity of the UK workforce...
28th February, 2017
Yesterday’s NLGN Annual Conference came with a painful sting in the tail. The day was dominated by talk of creativity and collaboration – bursting with ideas about how technology, new approaches to the workforce, co-operation between public sector agencies...
22nd February, 2017
Budgeting • Finance • Local government finance • Public Services
Firstly, I would like to thank the City of London Corporation for hosting our conference in the fantastic surroundings of the Guildhall. I also want to offer very special thanks to Norse and the Municipal Journal for partnering on...
21st February, 2017
Few would deny the need for change, or even what needs to happen to improve our care system. From reaction to prevention, services to systems and institutions, to people and place, the theory is there. But how do we...
14th February, 2017
What happens to council leaders after they leave their leadership role? How do they adjust? Do they stay in politics? What employment do they find? I suspect that you have little idea other than the anecdotal. Few do given...
10th February, 2017
If solving the housing crisis was a simple case of fixing legislation or introducing incentives for builders, the housing crisis would have been fixed ages ago, or never reached this magnitude at all.
10th February, 2017