Tag: Public Services
Prevention has become a bit of a buzzword. As public services struggle to meet demand alongside widespread funding cuts, increasingly people are recognising the need to focus on the factors that lead people to these services in the first...
22nd May, 2018
This was first published in the Local Government Chronicle on 8th May 2018 After the celebration of victory comes an eye-opening and somewhat shocking week for new councillors elected last Thursday. Many of the pressures they will hear about...
9th May, 2018
NLGN is today launching our latest Innovation Briefing, exclusively for our members. This focusses on how local authorities are using co-production to transform their services and make sure they meet the needs of the people who use them. For...
8th May, 2018
How should we regard the NHS as it celebrates its 70th year? A much-loved elderly aunt who offers nothing but care and support to an increasingly demanding family despite being rather down on her financial luck? Or something more...
29th March, 2018
In 2012, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that Wigan Council was the third worst affected council by austerity in the UK. We realised that we couldn’t continue to operate as we were. We also knew that by simply...
13th November, 2017
This blog is the first in a new series which will attempt to highlight key trends that may help identify the causes behind the continued rise in the demand for children’s services. In this first blog, we will explore...
13th October, 2017
Elysium is a big star sci-fi action movie from 2013, which even its director admitted was pretty mediocre. But in among the one-dimensional characters and gore-filled explosions there is one short scene that stands out. Sent to see his...
13th September, 2017
The pressure on the chancellor to ease austerity is intensifying by the day, with increasingly noisy calls for a more doveish approach from within his own party. This nervousness seems to reflect a growing popular anxiety about the impact...
6th September, 2017
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Homelessness receives a lot of media and policy attention this time of year, as the effects of sleeping rough are all too apparent. As it gets colder, and floods and snow are frequent, councils will be working hard with...
25th January, 2017
Is public service reform harder in the north? In June 2014, NLGN and its partners convened a workshop in York to discuss how councils in the north were integrating and transforming their public services. This paper summarises the discussion.
3rd September, 2014
NLGN posed this question in a recent survey of more than 65 councils from across the country. Depending on how you read the results, the findings are either remarkably optimistic or deeply worrying.
23rd July, 2013
NLGN today calls for radical reform of council services including transport, waste and libraries, as new analysis reveals that the cost of issuing a book can be so high that in some cases it might be cheaper to buy...
13th October, 2011
Local authorities are indispensable in our current crisis and are therefore under enormous pressure. They manage the public services that people are increasingly reliant on, support the most vulnerable people in our communities, and hold information that keeps local...
1st January, 1970
Local authorities are indispensable in our current crisis and are therefore under enormous pressure. They manage the public services that people are increasingly reliant on, support the most vulnerable people in our communities, and hold information that keeps local...
1st January, 1970