Online brainstorm: Chief Execs' key issues

From Future of Local Services to the Public

In the online brainstorm and prioritisation exercise among LA Chief Execs and other local decision-makers, participants were asked what issues or trends had been missed from the top 20 issues that had been used in the online brainstorm. They were asked to do this from their own local perspective.

They had been invited to review this wiki prior to the brainstorm but we cannot be certain what proportion of respondents had done so, and therefore what proportion of these issues are already covered in the wiki.

The following direct (verbatim) responses were given, and these give us an insight into what local leaders consider to be genuinely important in thinking about the future of their own areas.

They will need follow-up work from the local government horizon scanning community to fill in evidence gaps, monitor change, instigate and track innovations.

• True Local Democracy: The willingness from national politicians to cede power to local areas is absolutley essential. A recognition that local administration of national government will not provide the complex breakthroughs required to revitalise individual communities
• Shortage of suitable development areas: Our place is under pressure to meet growing demands to live here. We will run out of suitable areas for development very quickly and that will put pressure on green and open spaces. It will exacerbate pressures on affordabale housing.
• Off balance sheet funding: The access to monies to stimulate groth and the potentail return to such issues as local bonds (per american model?
• Growth agenda: Recognising the significant house building targets for the East of England and the pressures that this places upon both public authorities and developers, it is essential to ensure that new and existing communities can benefit from such growth (assuming this still progresses during a mini-recession). The strain being placed upon public authorities to deliver such major house building targets is not being backed by the necessary funding to support the revenue pressures inherent in such capital delivery, nor is it being supported by sufficient investment from Government in the infrastructure necessary to create sustainable and inclusive growth which goes beyond physical assets and supports cultural and community development activities. Such pressures will ultimately create a more significant strain upon public finance within an environment of tight funding - leaving essential universal service provision to communities in risk.
• Increased diversity of country: There is different experience of being part of multi cultural GB - danger that this experience could create greater differences between regions/ city and country. Much more complex environment - with new communities. With the younger population being more diverse - impact on society in 10-15 years. Need to have a much more robust approach to this - rather than being reactive
• Skills for young people: I believe we are heading for a generation where many young people will be left behind because they do not possess the neccessary skills to contribute to society. We make it too easy for them to sit at home and do nothing, yet live quite a comfortable life.
• Jobs: Relevant well paid jobs with local people getting them and staying in them
• school closures: The development of the extended schools programme and then proposed closures and rescinding of the programme has impacted on local communities in a very negative way. Respect for the local authority has been badly dented, but schools use and closures will still have to be investigated and changes implemented.
• Infrastructure: Delays in investing in the transport and public service infrastructure to support housing growth in the south east will either obstruct development or result in isolated and impoverished communities.
• Urban based policies: There is no 'rural ' policy specifically on energy, transport or food security. Equalities is all about urban areas and terrorism. Large areas of the country but smaller numbers of people find little of relevance in many initiatives and we find it difficult to attract attention / funding for our versions
• Stop inventing fads: We seem to need to constantly invent new initiatives, fads, Boards, Quangos, partnerships, plans, PIs. It leaves the public totally cold and confused. Focus, keep it simple, flexible and understandable to allow localities to use their evidence and need to do what needs to be done in the best way for that area. The really imporatant things get missed or lost because of all the fads that come and go and just create words and work and not actions.
• Loss of faith in Govt: The loss of faith in govt to intervene beneficially on behalf of the community is deepening at all levels of govt and within communities and govt. This is leading inexorably to a more US-style social model.
• Funding Shortfalls: Increasing pressure to do more will not be matched by sufficient funding; public unrest at high council tax will block this avenue.
• Work-arounds: There is currently a trend in practices which resorts to 'partnership' as a way of avoiding tackiling issues head-on. My belief is that many so-called partnership issues picked up via LAAs amount to gaps which are created because a primary agency is not doing its job properly. A reason for the failure to do the job properly is frequently lack of resources, ironically caused in some cases throgh too much involvement in 'partnership' (meetings etc). Goverenment has come up with the idea of LAAs as way of chanelling funding to address such gaps, but there is also an impact on Local Authorities picking up work which has previously not been necessary, placing an added burden on the Council Tax payer.
• Increasing economic polarisation: the north south divide will get wider. Prosperity within major urban areas will become more polarised. The gap between urban and rural areas will get wider.
• Crime: The danger on streets dfrom use of guns and knives I think will increase
• Adaptation to climate change: Businesses and public bodies will need to adapt and be community leaders to inform the public on this issue. Could be a high resource demand in the longer-term.
• Community leadership: Local community leadership (by councils, with partners) more able to address 'wicked' issues (eg. health improvement, prosperity, community cohesion)which cross services and agencies, especially if combined with improvement in our ability to engage with local communities
• Inneffective partnership working: There is a danger that LSP partners will pay lip service to partnership working. This could have a major impact on the delivery of LAA's and other longer term priorities.
• Regeneration: Regenberation in outer London is leading to poorer white working class voting for BNP
• Talent Drain: The more skilled members of the community see bigger and brighter prospects outside of the region and leave the area leaving a skills and knowledge gap that creates problems in developing and growing business in the area
• The rise of sustainability: I'm surprised that the survery has made virtually no mention of the impacts of climate change driven impacts, and the whole sustainability agenda. Sustainability will be the shaping factor of social and economic life over the next15-20 years.
• Sourcing personnel and materials: The old hidebound rules about how we can source from external supppliers and recruit labour will have to be swept away if we are to keep pace with the demand for transformation in public services.
• Growth of Chinese/far eastern economies: Economic growth slows, Britain becomes less competitive, more deprivation results
• Peak Oil / fuel insecurity: Only so much natural resource to go round and competition for it increasing globally - impacts on direct energy use and energy intensive products (e.g food).
• Adult Social Care: The increasing number of older people will place a huge drain on resources unless we make provision now.
• Rising expectations: People want instant responses and they want their own way. Little sense of broader community interest.
• Infrastructure provision: Continued crumbling heritage, lack of access to high level technology and poor road network - lack of funding to deliver
• The growth agenda: This Council is within a growth areas and this will have a signiifcant impact on regeneration plans and service delivery, particularly in the short to medium term
• Community Cohesion: The ability of a changing mixed communty to handle tension and conflict yet still grow and thrive
• development on greenfield sites: My area is subject to several development proposals which would fundamentally change the nature of the landscape forever. This is the key issue for officers and members in the short, medium and longer term.
• Too much organisational infrastructure: There are too many separate organisations, excessively concerned with their organisational interests rather than those of their community.
• Loss of apetite for tight management from local politicians : Wandsworth is in a league of its own in controlling its expenditure and getting value for money. This is dependent on Member pressure. The current group of Members are ageing and will be very diffcult to replace.
• Decline of local town centres: The investment in town centres and shopping in adjacent areas threatens the viability of our town centre. Coupled with increasing on-line ordering and delivery from warehouses, our town centre could continue to decline.
• Changing social and economic paradigm: Traditional definitions of what constitutes 'merit' and 'public' goods are no longer valid. These areas are the traditional territory of local government. Local government should lead the redefinition of what public services are for.
• Representative democracy: How many people, in a digital world, are needed to represent the community via the electoral process? Fewer, or more?
• facing the unrpedictable: Scenarios and future gazing are useful but do not lead to forecasts we can simply plan for - need to develop the ability to adapt not just locally but across geographical and organisational boundaries
• Unitary Council: Likely to cause implosion- budgte pressures much more sever than initially thought
• Intelligent technology: On current trends, in 30-50 years the increases in intelligence in technology will be so great as to potentially affect the nature of humanity (the singularity). In 10-15 years time this will be more obvious and it will be a more current issue. Artificial intelligence will also be making more substantive impacts on daily lives and local government services.
• Islamaphobia: Increasing islamaphobic attitudes fuelled by sections of the mass media and a small number of irresponsible politicians are starting to make people fear muslims in this country . At a time when we need to build links across communities , respect differnces but celebrate what we have in common this poses a serious threat to the social fabric of our cities over the next couple of decades. It is even more frustrating because it means we risk missing the opportunities to make real progress by harnessing the full potential of diverse , young and growing populations.
• Reorganisation: Recent reorganisations have been a shambles with a danaging war of words between those involved and a corresponding dip in performance in the areas affected. My plea would be to eitehr 'just do it' in one fell swoop across the whole of local government or leave us alone to get on with the job
• city regions: The creation of stronger city regions, leading to an additional or replacement layer of local government.
• Population pressure: As more people are born and survive, and more people move from poor to rich parts of the coutnry, and immigration increases to meet employment shortages, we will end up with too many peole for our services, not enough housing, descreased quality of life and a bad impact bio-diversity.
• Falling school rolls: the impact on policy decsions relating to school closures is one faced by many authorites as the demand for school plcaes reduces. This is not a single issues but affects the whole realtionship of the LA across many communites.This links in with a whole debate about edicational attainment, number of young people who are NEETS at 16, so I think education is going to be a major trigger for local authority decision making, budgets, and community interaction.
• polarisation in democractic engagement: Fewer young people voting or engaging with public services, with increasing reliance on older people to sustain our democratic institutions.
• Creation of Local Green Industries: I think we will ahve to move away from macro forms of production to imapct on envirobmental issues - so creation of local micro industries will have a number of positive impacts - particulary in my area which needs a boost to the local economy.
• Demographics: our population is increasing but this is due to inward migration of the elderly - this is already putting pressure on local services and I see no prospect of this improving ; rather the reverse
• Local Area Agreements: As the new arrangements for LAAs become more embedded and partnership-working is taken to a new level, the sharing of joint support services (HR, IT etc), co-location and joint budget-setting will become more common-place.
• Metro-life in the country: Increasing citizen expectations of quality and style of public service, based on life experience from elsewhere. Increasing intolerance of adequacy coupled with near universal remote access to cultural assets
• demographics: balance of young and old, pressure on services, direct funding to schools limiting ability to transfer resources, migration and conhesions issues
• Reflecting and respecting local identity: The UK's system of local government differs from almost everwhere else by its average size and lack of reflection of identity. District or unitary authorities, except in larger towns, tend to cover a series of smaller urban centres which elsewhere would have their own mayor and council with some realistic powers and status. We have focused on efficiency at the expense of identity.
• Local Govt Review: The change to a unitary structure will have a huge impact, and watching the experience of those ahead of our timetable does not fill me with confidence.
• Regenerating and integrating local communities : As a designated growth area this issue is key to the sucess of delivering a cohesive local community, the length of the current economic downturn is difficult to predict and will require innivotive solutions and strong leadership to ensure that the aspirations of local communities are not compromised.
• Growth: Delivering a national growth agenda against the wishes of extant local communities without prime funding support from Government
• Personalisation of services: Greater demand for services to be personalised to circumsatnces of the individual.
• Carbon reduction: Targets (which are needed and valid in terms of climate change) to reduce carbon emissions will be challenging to achieve for local authorities. I can foresee carbon hungry facilities such as swimming pools being shut down as councils struggle to cut carbon emissions from elsewhere in operations. The impact will be on customer satisfaction and health
• Community cohesion: The arrival of new waves of refugees and asylum seekers has been a perennial feature of life in the capital for decades and this is unlikely to diminish in our increasingly globalised world. This trend creates short term pressures on resources and may provoke tensions with other groups in the community. Local councils have a key role to play in managing these issues.
• systems thinking councils: The biggest impact on service delivery is to turn your organisation from a traditional command and coontrol council into a systems thinking one. This delivers huge improvement results in service design, management focus, customer satisfaction, performance and staff morale. The push towards centralised, shared services with a front office/back office split driven by arbitrary targets is SO disappointing and misguided.
• Customer choice: Individuals able to, or expecting to, exercise absolute and selective choices between and within service offers.
• Pooled budgets: Effective service delivery at a local or neighbourhood level is crucially dependant on partnership working with key organisations such as Police, Health, DWP etc. We can only go so far by aligning policy and shareing targets and the most important next step is pooling budgets if we are to truly deliver effective and efficient services.
• Lack of management capability: Not enough people in local govt with the skills to deliver the new agenda
• Heathrow expansion : Expanding Heathrow flies in the face of international and goverment policies on climate change and low carbon. There are greener alternatives.
• Coastal Erosion + Flood defence: West Dorset's Jurassic Coast and geography provide a beatiful environment but also present significant threats to coastal settlements and low lying villages and national funding is reducing
• Older People: The huge increase in the 50+ age group, who are not a homogeneous group all with the same needs and aspirations, poses a major challenge to the public and voluntary sector. We need to learn from elsewhere how we get 'upstream' to support people in this age group, or leading up to it, to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing, including financial security.
• Performance management skews delivery: The drive to measure outputs, has skewed what we measure and therefore how we deliver to improve the target figure. Measuring outputs overlooks delivery of some of the broader outcomes.
• lack of financial resources: the lack of financial resources could result in some non core services being stoped or supplied by another provider, eg lesure & muesums etc.
• Unitary status of local government : Accountability clear about services Less confusion and more trust Less time wasted in fostering and chasing after diverse partnershipsrust to deliver cheaper support services
• Housing supply: The lack of housing supply will silt up job mobility, increase house prices making it more difficult for younger people to get on the housing ladder, increase the cost of support services, and increase community tensions. The credit crunch simply exacerbates the lack of adequate investment in new housing over the last 20 years, and the outmoded need of the likes of the CPRE to cling to a 'Green Belt'.
• Growth of the super city: London (and other large cities) will increasingly dominate and those towns and areas within a 50-80 mile radius will be drawn in or become the subservient satelittes.
• Employer of Choice: Lack of stability, fewer jobs and the lack of any perceived career structure making Local Government unattaractive as a career option.
• Direclty elected fragmentation : Concern that the gians in joing up public services are underminded by the trend for direclty elected public leaders (eg. Police Green Paper)
• Centralisation: continued removal of powesr from district councils to County/regions
• Local Development Companies: A recognition that the place shaping agenda can not be delivered through the planning framework alone. Councils will increasingly assume the role of the developer through land ownership, finance, and construction procurment.
• Waste management: Simply the issue of costs, penalties and the difficulty of getting agreement ot possible solutions which no one wants in their back yard
• Drugs and Crime: The increase in drug related crime is a potential disaster for our society. I do not believe that making drugs illegal helps the position, rather, it creates a ready and lucrative market for those who want to exploit dependent people. Perhaps we should try legalising all drugs?
• better management of population and migration: Inner city areas suffer from an overburden of highly dependent families. Many are not even counted so resources do not match actual population but even if they did excessive dependency would stuill drain resources. We need a far more honest discussion about how to manage this within government immigration and housing policy
• Quality of LG Officers: The reluctantance (of members?) to appoint high calibre managers from outside LG will lead to increasing single-loop working and a deterioration in the quality of performance and output, so leading to public disenchantment.
• Changing Family Demographics: Changing family and co-habiting arrangements will mean more single parent families, more transient (step) parents and childen from 'broken homes'
• reputation: Local government will be able to reverse falling resident satisfaction with councils (despite rising satisfaction with services), by focusing more strongly on things which local people say are a priority to them. Councils will get better at managing and promoting their own reputation and that of the area they represent
• Local govt reorganisation: It is the solution to my first issue. We need a unitary county
• The localisation agenda: This is a central government myth. Even the form of local decision making is being controlled by central government. Community involvement is a thinly disguised form of alternative politics for various political groupings who cannot gain power through election. It is time wasting and demoralisaing for elected politicians and debases local elected officials and structures.
• Co-ordinated local governance: Significant co-operation between the Council, the Police and the PCT locally copuld see shared service delivery to a greater extent than envisaged by Gobvernment. Current discussions about joint units could progress to merged organisational structures providing greater efficiency and ease of access.
• Local government becomes valued, interesting, sexy: A turnaround in how loc govt is viewed and valued (less contempt, mistrust from public) and therefore greater ambition and scope to act, leaders want to work in it, others champion it. Comes with accepted powers over police and local health services. Highest impact of all ...
• constant blurring of boundaries between home life and work: though covered under digitisation and cost of fuel, the true opportunities aligned the 'future of the workforce' may be untapped, if not harnessed correctly
• Climate change: An increase in average temperature of 1-2 degrees wouldn't have too much impact, but if climate change generally gets out of control (bigger feedback loops than anticipated) or, for instance we lose the gulf stream and get very hot summers and cold winters, there will be a lot of adaptation to do and big impact on L.G.
• Local Democracy under threat: Although the Community empowerment agenda is well meaning it comes on top of recent legislation which takes the focus of local democracy away from the elected member. In trying to re energise local democracy the proposals are actually blurring the lines and causing uncertainty as to what the councillor's role actually is. My personal view is that we need fewer Councillors who are better trained and resourced in order that they have the time and the support to do the job properly
• pollution: more traffic will lead to ever worsening air quality; failure to tackle waste disposal will led to more mess; increased numbers of human beings will lead to degradation of natural environment by sea and land; all of whch is likely to combine with increased asthma, allergies etc
• colloboration: The need for LA, health services, police, etc to colloborate in Wales is already changing hte perspectives and horizons of service delivery, the blurring of lines of accountabiliy will have a very important polictical dimension for members, and will also have a major impact for the way organsiations are structured, and how services are delivered.
• north south divide: Not a new issue - but in the news over the summer as we see the latest in a line of reports to suggest that past attempts at regeneration are not closing the gap
• climate change: the risk of coastal flooding will increase and whilst we will be prpepared in terms of contingency planning the challenge of responding to the spatial planning implications is more significant e.g. do we plan for abandonment of large communities? in the past the numbers involved in potential abandonment of caostal communitiies has run into hundreds at most there is now the potential for that to be thousands unless the government puts much more resources into flood defences . there seems little prospect of this but neither are they willing to discuss alternatives - at least at the moment .
• Plymouth's Growth Agenda: Plymouth plans to grow its population by 40,000 over the next 15 years. This will have huge impacts on the LA and its partners in terms of a critical mass of population, housing, education, jobs etc.
• expectations: custeomr expectations are continually rising and therefore the ability for us to deliver to their satisfaction decreases given financial pressures and this will disincentivise the involvement of communities in local governemnt and reduce their apetite for council tax
• Mismatch of growth and infrastructure: There is an expectation that there will be growth in the local area, but the local infrastructure is poor. This is a contradiction that will impede progress and undermine delivery.
• Learning and skills: The need to deliver a step change in learning and skills performance to provide a high quality skills base to ensure local people realise their full potential. This needs to be seen in the context of the need to overcome a generational benefit dependency culture in the most deprived areas.
• Lack of Affordable Housing: Significant reduction in house building capacity + severe scarcity of mortgages for shared ownership affordable housing + impact of second homes + reducing Housing Corporation grant levels = less S106 (planning agreement) affordable supply and RSL's faced with unfundable developments - all adds up to massive slow down in supply of affordable homes over next 10 years
• Partnership working: Whilst there are excellent examples of truly innovative and productive partnership working, it's not universal and there are often vested interests, especially where there is political accountability for some organisations but not others. If everyone wants to be the leader, we won't achieve the greatest synergy.
• Parking and congestion: Our borough was not built for 2 car families let alone 3 or 4 car families. Problems are building up which are not possible to solve. Pressure is mounting, communities are revollting.
• Unhealthy population: Obesity and other health issues result on rising service costs and reduced quality of life
• Excessive managerialism: There is a growing rift between the internal culture of th providers of public services - the stuff we read in professional journals and white papers - and what people actually expect from their local authorities. This is leading to a growing rift between people and their local authorities.
• health and obesity: Major issue for LG and all employers to lead ojn lifestyle change to reduce the cost to health service and off potential ill-health effects
• Combined technological change: Developments in nanotechnology, genetics, bio-engineering, ICT (e.g. robotics, artificial intelligence) could together lead to significant changes, for instance in care for people. It is difficult to predict what sort of thing will happen, but tremendous opportunities could open up.
• Food: We'll start to worry about the quantity and quality of our food. Will there be enough to feed the world? Will fuel costs mean that imported food is more expensive? will food cost more to grow and distribute? will we be asking people to grow their own vegetables? will even more people eat even more junk and get even more obese?
• quality of elected members: with 275 district and county council seats on offer in the county the ability to find sufficient enageged and capable memebrs of the public willing to take up the challenge of being a councillor is very hard. This can severly limit the potential of a council to really meet the needs of the community.
• Customer Focus: Improvements in local government services will increasingly be brought about by customer demand and knowledgeable expectation around requirement and quality....local government will embrace responding and improve their customer focus
• Relationship of central and local government: This can be fraught. Hypothecated funding and different policies which potentially conflict with each other in central Govt depts don't make for a healthy relationship where the needs of local citizens are looked at in an holistic way.
• potential resurgence in crime- esp. intelligent drime: linked to petabyte issue-and globalisation/migration
• Global instability: Global tensions and wars could have significant impacts from the effect on the economy, to migration and direct involvement of citizens. Local govt will have to pick up many of the pieces.
• Globalisation: Although the British economy is predicted to do well in the next 7-10 years, in the longer term the rise of India, China and other economies will threaten the status of Britain in the world and our relative, if not absolute, standard of living.