New Local

📣 We're hiring 📣 Could you be our next Chief Executive? We're looking for a passionate and experienced leader to drive forward our work to make community power the dominant idea shaping policy and practice at national and local levels. This role requires imagination, dedication and persistence. But, most of all, it demands the ability to spot opportunities to drive change and the skills to turn those opportunities into reality. https://lnkd.in/dgZjaT5B Deadline: 9am, 30th September For further information about the role, or to arrange a confidential discussion, please contact our advising consultants at Peridot Partners: https://lnkd.in/ezUaSBTC

"Too many people end up in hospital because too little is spent in the community." Lord Darzi puts our catastrophic health trade-off in blunt terms in his NHS review. But what would a community-powered NHS look like? And where is it happening? Take a look: https://lnkd.in/eczPfzGa

Join Go Vocal's free webinar on achieving meaningful engagement in planning & placemaking. Learn about tools for collaborative problem solving to help meet critical local priorities, from affordable housing to climate change. 🗓️ 24 September 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ehmVFNMe

"Our staff are proud (and rightly so) of the work they do." Wealden District Council’s Matthew China tells us about Wealden’s ambition to become a community-powered council, how it’s building on strong foundations, and where in the picturesque district you might want to pay a visit, including Ashdown Forest – home of Winne the Pooh. Read in full 🔗 https://lnkd.in/evBBYudw Find out about more of our members in the rest of the series 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ekzKcXHR #LocalGov #CommunityPower #PlaceBased #PlaceMaking #Wealden

🆕 Total Place ‘Pilots Plus’ could help break the public service doom loop With the Autumn Budget in sight, Former Secretary of State John Denham and New Local’s Jessica Studdert make the case for Total Place 2.0. Rather than time-limited, isolated and patchy initiatives, they argue that new ‘Pilots Plus’ could be a first step in wider system reform if they: 1️⃣ Share real-time learning 2️⃣ Have shared data and community insights at their core 3️⃣ Draw on good practice and are anchored into local priorities 4️⃣ Reflect England’s emerging devolution landscape and cover different scales, geographies, levels of deprivation, and political leadership 5️⃣ Align with Labour’s mission-driven approach, with learning plugged straight into central government At the start of a new Parliament, there is now a rare opportunity to begin shifting our public services away from the fragmentation of silos towards prevention and sustainability. It’s time for Total Place 2.0. Read the blog in full 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eU-QznEU And take a look at our report on place-based public service budgets published earlier this year 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dJnDibda

To fix the foundations of public services, "people and communities could and should be agents of change and improvement". New Local board member Sir Chris Ham on what ‘Starmerism’ might mean for health and care, with lessons from Frome and beyond. https://lnkd.in/eZxw7asc #CommunityPower #Health #SocialCare #PublicServices #NHS

"Adopting a language of ‘we do together’ rewires how we think about working with residents and flattens this implicit power hierarchy." What does it mean to be a community-powered leader? What behaviours enable community-powered public services? Enfield Council's Grace Murray shares 🔟 leadership practices which empower communities, from staying curious to setting clear expectations. https://lnkd.in/eF9pHJBA

The government promises the 'most ambitious' programme of devolution England has ever seen. But these ambitions depend on fixing local government funding first. Failure to do so risks deepening inequalities and undermining the benefits of devolution. Important 🆕 piece from the Institute For Fiscal Studies' David Phillips on why funding reform matters and what needs to happen next. https://lnkd.in/eM9heCAq #LocalGov #LocalGovernmentFinance #Devolution #CouncilFinanceSystem

"We know we won't get everything right and new factors will arise that will require us to keep learning. Our journey will not be straightforward, but together we will adapt and face these head on." Wigan Council continues to push the envelope in terms of what it means to be a community-powered council. Great to read about its New Era 🔗 https://lnkd.in/egD7DEAd #WiganDeal #CommunityPower #PublicServices #CommunityWealth #Coproduction #Poverty #Inequality #Reform #Prevention #Leadership TheMJ

NEW RESEARCH: How are local authorities responding to unprecedented financial pressures? Beyond the headlines of a few councils going bankrupt, research with International Public Policy Observatory and New Local is exploring how the sector is grappling with the challenges it is facing. Our latest output over the summer set out early findings- read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eJJX7Fhv The nature of the challenge facing #localgov has many dimensions: - Insufficient & short term funding cycles - Rising demand, with certain areas of spending facing extreme pressure & volatility including children’s and adult social care, housing and SEND - Broken provider markets driving up costs and driving down quality - Lack of shared understanding over prevention across services in a place. Collective pressures mean prevention is often reduced to demand management rather than upstream or more holistic early intervention. There are some core trends emerging that reflect how councils are responding: - Using existing financial levers to create social & community value - such as community wealth building approaches which nurture local supply chains & by working with anchor institutions to keep public spend local. - Recognising diseconomies of scale - shifting away from large scale outsourcing to pragmatic insourcing such as direct provision of domicilary care or children’s homes when the market is weak or costly. - Shifting towards more distributed models of working with communities at hyperlocal level - many are structuring provision & resources around neighbourhoods, and enabling pluralistic approaches that adapt to different circumstances in each. - Taking a whole-system approach - using granular data analysis & projections of population change, to develop collaboration with other public services and the VCS. These range from borough-wide strategies to identifying specific populations in need of a different approach, such as families in temporary accommodation and developing new ways of working around their needs. The next stage of our research will include case studies demonstrating how councils are responding in practice, and make both practical and policy recommendations for how we can develop sustainable routes out of deep financial stress. Please do share any responses on our early findings that you would like to contribute- we would love to hear your views and experiences.