In the developed world’s most centralised nation, calls for devolution and decentralisation have long gone without a meaningful answer from the heart of government. Yet in the aftermath of a pandemic which brought people closer to their local communities than many had been in generations and in the face of an economy which is increasingly unable to provide prosperity across the country, advocation of bringing money and power closer to communities is set to grow louder still.
This workstream aims to bring out the policy requirements for a better dispersed and more genuinely democratic England, aiming to chart the course to true community empowerment, bringing the levers of meaningful power within reach of neighbourhood-level organisations across the country.
We are fast approaching the twentieth anniversary of the formal establishment of the Greater London Authority. Offering strategic administration through a single mayoral figurehead, the GLA structure of governance has been woven, seemingly irrevocably, into the patchwork of the United Kingdom’s assymetric devolution agreements. As we ender the third deacde of the GLA’s existence, there […]
Taking back control means more than just transferring power from Brussels to Whitehall, it means placing empowered communities at the country’s constitutional core. Democratise, Decentralise, Deliver is a research programme of three separate but inter-related policy reports on community empowerment, national representation of local government and the incentivisation of goodwill through locally funded and controlled public services […]
The effects of lockdown and the massive strain placed on public services throughout 2020 have led to a renewed focus on local response, on the resilience and ingenuity displayed on a volunteer basis across the country. However, communities in England, particularly those in deprived areas, face a multitude of challenges to and restrictions upon their […]
From the crises in elderly care and youth crime to the desperate challenge of building enough homes across the country, the need to properly fund, so as to properly deliver valued local services and infrastructure has never been clearer to the public. In this environment, the case for giving our local authorities greater powers to […]
Physical assets act as centres in community life – be they local businesses, commons or high streets serving as economic or social anchors. Individually or collectively, these assets are hubs providing vital social infrastructure to support their local communities. Local Delivery looks at how communities have adapted and protected their social infrastructure in the face […]
In recent years, a sense of alienation from national politics has arisen in significant parts of the country and among significant cohorts. The Brexit vote has given rise to a political imperative to, on the one hand, raise productivity and on the other, ensure that gains are felt immediately across the country. This does not […]
The question of how adult social care funding is put on a sustainable footing helped to define the 2017 General Election. Along with the NHS, it has become an issue totemic of wider choices around public spending and their impact on local services. Yet the long shadow of social care funding in the public and […]