Category:Prospects

From Future of Local Services to the Public

What are the "Prospects" for the future of local services?

Previous studies undertaken by the LGA and others (e.g. ODPM) looking to the future of local places, have used scenarios to assess current strategies and provoke debate, while others have conducted horizon scanning to identify possible factors and trends that may shape the future context (Clayton/Schultz ) so as to help planners stay abreast of issues that may affect their localities. 

As part of a project consulting with stakeholders on the future provision of local services to the public, Outsights/Ipsos MORI and produced a report which synthesises the many findings and contributions to the project from the various strands into a set of eight key themes or “Prospects” which between them span many of the future ambitions, opportunities and challenges that we heard about, either explicitly or implicitly, for local services across all phases of the study.

Another way to view these Prospects is as “dimensions of uncertainty” in the traditional futurist sense i.e. descriptors of macro-level forces which are known to be of importance but which may exert influence for good or ill. However they are couched in the positive sense of Prospects to reflect the sense of activism, opportunity and innovation that authors feel should spur the work of horizon scanning

These key prospects are illustrated in separate pages on the wiki and are listed below: