Democracy representation and participation

When accountability fails to bite: governance, democracy and the 2026 Tower Hamlets elections

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Dr Gulay Icoz, Visiting Research Fellow, Middlesex University London

In theory, the 2026 Tower Hamlets local elections should have been a test of democratic accountability in action. The borough entered election year under active statutory intervention. A Best Value Inspection published in November 2024 had documented serious governance failings under Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire administration: weak internal controls, a culture of concentrated executive authority, poor transparency, and slow responses to statutory recommendations. A further written ministerial statement in January 2026 confirmed ongoing failures and deteriorating financial governance. In March 2026 — just two months before polling day — the Secretary of State escalated the intervention, granting ministerial envoys enhanced powers to step in directly if the council continued to breach its Best Value Duty.

Then voters went to the polls and Aspire won 33 of 45 council seats. Lutfur Rahman was re-elected as Executive Mayor for a third time. Labour was reduced to five seats — its lowest total in the borough’s history.

I stood as the Labour candidate for Bethnal Green West in those elections. What I observed — during the campaign and in the results — reveals a deeper tension between statutory accountability and community-level democratic legitimacy: one with implications that reach well beyond Tower Hamlets.

The structural picture

The results reveal a distortion that deserves wider attention. Aspire secured 73 per cent of council seats with just over 32 per cent of the vote. Labour and the Green Party each received just under 23 per cent of the vote, yet each won only 11 per cent of seats. In ward after ward, the combined Labour and Green vote exceeded Aspire’s total — yet the block voting system used in multi-member wards — where each voter casts as many votes as there are seats and the top candidates win — converted vote fragmentation into a decisive seat bonus for the incumbent. This is sometimes called plurality block voting, and it rewards coordinated slate-voting, which incumbent parties with strong voter loyalty are structurally better placed to exploit.

The ward-level picture sharpens this further. In Bethnal Green West, Labour entered polling day with an estimated core vote of around 540; Aspire’s coordinated bloc was already three times that size, with split votes running into the thousands. Green candidates who had run no sustained local campaign outpolled every Labour candidate standing — a pattern repeated across wards throughout the borough. The block voting system had no mechanism to reward breadth of engagement or effort: it simply rewarded the most organised and unified voting bloc.

It is worth distinguishing block voting in multi-member wards from single-member first-past-the-post. The coordination premium is structurally higher: a cohesive 32 per cent bloc can sweep three seats simultaneously in a way that would not occur in a series of individual contests. The question this blog is asking is not primarily about proportionality per se, but whether the electoral system can transmit accountability signals when a council is under active statutory intervention for documented governance failure.

This points to a question the electoral systems literature and the local democracy literature have rarely addressed together: when opposition parties are structurally disadvantaged by electoral mechanics, what additional tools does a democratic accountability framework need?

The accountability paradox

A long line of research — from Fiorina’s retrospective voting model through Powell and Whitten’s clarity-of-responsibility framework — establishes that electoral punishment for governance failure is neither automatic nor uniform. Recent scholarship sharpens this further: voters weigh integrity against perceived competence and community delivery (Breitenstein and Hernández, 2024); punishment weakens when opposition is fragmented and alternation unclear (Otjes and Stiers, 2022); and elections are in any case a blunt accountability instrument compared to courts, oversight bodies, and civic challenge (Papadopoulos, 2023). The established literature identifies three conditions that must be met for punishment to occur: voters must have clear information about failure; they must be able to attribute responsibility to the correct actor; and accountability must not be crowded out by competing loyalties or trade-offs. Tower Hamlets 2026 illustrates the failure of all three conditions simultaneously.

Yet the Tower Hamlets case also points to a fourth condition, largely absent from the existing retrospective voting literature: the accountability mechanism itself must be seen as legitimate by the communities it is meant to protect. This is the accountability paradox at the heart of the 2026 result — and it is a contribution that the standard retrospective voting framework is not equipped to capture.

For intervention to function as a democratic corrective, it must be perceived by the electorate — and particularly by the communities most affected by governance failure — as rational, impartial, and operating in their interests. Where that perception fails, intervention becomes politically legible as external imposition, and voting for the incumbent becomes an act of community solidarity rather than an endorsement of governance failure. This dynamic is not accidental: it is actively constructed through political framing, and incumbents with strong identity-based bonds with their electorate are structurally well-placed to construct it.

Recent research on statutory intervention in English local government proposes a five-stage model — crisis revelation, delegitimisation, imposed reforms, capacity building, and restoration — and argues that interventions must be carefully designed to appear rational rather than political if they are to maintain rather than undermine faith in local democracy (Lowther, Joyce and Whiteman, 2025). That model’s second stage — delegitimisation — describes central government’s work to undermine the legitimacy of the council being intervened in. What the Tower Hamlets 2026 election reveals is that delegitimisation can also operate in the opposite direction: the incumbent successfully turned the intervention itself into the object of delegitimisation in the eyes of the electorate, making the accountability mechanism the thing that lacked legitimacy rather than the council it was designed to hold to account.

Conversations on the doorstep revealed the depth of this reframing. Many Aspire supporters had not engaged with the contents of the Best Value report because they had already concluded the report itself was politically motivated — a tool of mainstream parties who disapproved of what Aspire represented rather than a genuine accountability mechanism. More striking still, when specific governance failures were raised — including nepotism and unqualified appointments — some voters had internalised a counter-narrative in which such practices represented community protection rather than misconduct.

It would be reductive to dismiss these perceptions as simply the product of misinformation. Communities with long experience of political marginalisation may have genuine historical grounds for scepticism toward central government intervention, and those experiences shape how accountability claims are received. What the Tower Hamlets case illustrates is the extent to which this pre-existing disposition was mobilised and amplified through deliberate political communication — producing not political apathy but the successful reconstruction of what accountability itself means.

This is not unique to Tower Hamlets. It is a dynamic that researchers of democratic resilience and local governance are increasingly attentive to, and it raises important questions about how accountability mechanisms are designed, communicated, and embedded — questions that are as much about institutional culture and civic trust as they are about statutory frameworks.

Tower Hamlets in context

Tower Hamlets did not stand alone in 2026. The elections produced historic Green gains across inner London — in Hackney, Waltham Forest, Lewisham and Southwark — and a significant realignment of the progressive vote away from Labour. What makes Tower Hamlets distinctive is that this regional realignment intersected with the specific dynamics of the Aspire incumbency, the governance intervention, and the structural incentives of block voting, producing an outcome more disproportionate than anywhere else in the capital.

Understanding whether Tower Hamlets represents an outlier or an advance indicator requires systematic comparison. Several English councils have been subject to statutory intervention in recent years — including Birmingham, Croydon, Slough, Sandwell, and Thurrock — yet the relationship between intervention, governance accountability, and subsequent electoral outcomes has received little comparative attention. Whether the accountability paradox identified here is specific to Tower Hamlets or reflects a broader pattern in how statutory intervention interacts with local political culture is a question that future comparative research must address.

The stakes

What the Tower Hamlets elections confirm, above all, is that democratic resilience is not reducible to electoral outcomes. The borough’s communities — residents navigating overcrowded housing, fractured services, and the cumulative pressures of one of England’s most deprived urban environments — continue to engage, organise, and hold their representatives to account through multiple channels. That engagement, not any single election result, is the foundation on which accountable local governance must ultimately be rebuilt.

What forms of accountability can work when statutory intervention loses legitimacy in the eyes of the very communities it is meant to protect?

Dr Gulay Icoz is a Visiting Research Fellow at Middlesex University London and stood as the Labour candidate for Bethnal Green West in the May 2026 local elections and Former Councillor in Hackney (2006–2014). She researches democratic resilience, local governance, and progressive voter realignment in inner London.

References

Academic sources

Breitenstein, S. and Hernández, E. (2024) ‘Too Crooked to be Good? Trade-offs in the Electoral Punishment of Malfeasance and Corruption’, European Political Science Review. doi:10.1017/S175577392400016X

Fiorina, M.P. (1981) Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Lowther, J., Joyce, P. and Whiteman, P. (2025) ‘Intervention 3.0: Designing a Responsive Model for Local Government Support in England’, INLOGOV Blog, 4 November 2025. Available at: https://inlogov.com/2025/11/04/intervention-3-0-designing-a-responsive-model-for-local-government-support-in-england/ [Also published as ‘How not to damage democracy’, Municipal Journal, 16 October 2025.]

Otjes, S. and Stiers, D. (2022) ‘Accountability and alternation: How wholesale and partial alternation condition retrospective voting’, Party Politics, 28(3), pp. 457–467.

Papadopoulos, Y. (2023) Understanding Accountability in Democratic Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Elements in Public Policy).

Powell, G.B. and Whitten, G.D. (1993) ‘A Cross-National Analysis of Economic Voting: Taking Account of the Political Context’, American Journal of Political Science, 37(2), pp. 391–414.

Government documents

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (2024) Best Value Inspection Report: London Borough of Tower Hamlets. London: MHCLG. November 2024.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (2026) Written Ministerial Statement: Tower Hamlets Best Value Intervention. London: MHCLG. January 2026.

Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (2026) Enhanced Intervention Powers: Tower Hamlets. Ministerial Announcement. March 2026.

From top-down diagnosis to co-design: what youth‑led evidence adds to the Government’s review of Young people and Work

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Sonia Bussu

The government’s Young People and Work interim report presents a stark diagnosis. Nearly one million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training (NEET), and the problem is structural, longstanding and getting worse. The report describes a system failure spanning education, labour markets, health and welfare, and it concludes that the UK lacks a coherent “participation system” to support transitions into work. It is a powerful diagnosis of a system that no longer supports young people. But it is also striking that much of what the report “discovers” has already been articulated vividly by young people themselves, many times over!

The INSPIRE programme in the West Midlands offers exactly this missing perspective: lived experience. Through participatory research and legislative theatre, a diverse group of young people aged 14–17 from across the region identified specific barriers, staged a play to reflect on these barriers with the community and policymakers, and co‑designed policy proposals to address them. Set alongside the government’s diagnosis, this youth‑led evidence helps move from description of problems to concrete and youth-led solutions.

Structural barriers are visible in lived experience

The government review highlights three major structural issues: reduced entry‑level jobs, fragmented systems and unequal access to support. The INSPIRE young co-creators showed us how they encounter these issues day to day. Their play, You’re Fried! The realities of youth employment, depicts a system where career guidance is rushed and superficial, where broken weblinks and empty words replace meaningful support, where opportunities are inaccessible, in a cycle of “entry‑level” roles that always require prior experience.

You’re Fried! The Realities of Youth Employment
Scene One: “What Should I Do With My Life?” revealed how love, when bound by fear, could become a cage. A young apprentice’s dream was crushed beneath the weight of parental expectations, where university was seen as the only safe route to independence.
Scene Two: “It’s All on You” exposed the hollow machinery of career guidance – rushed advisors offering broken links and empty words, leaving hope behind in the rush to tick boxes.
Scene Three: “Link Not Found” brought a computer to life, its customer-service smile masking the cold indifference of digital systems that fail those who need them most.
Scene Four: “This Isn’t What I Signed Up For” pulled back the curtain on the myth of ‘real-world experience’ – a McDonald’s shift where understaffing and blame replaced training and support.
Scene Five: “It’s Your Fault” returned to the family living room, where systemic failure was rewritten as personal shame, completing a devastating circle.

The government review links NEET risk to socioeconomic background, race, disability and geography. The INSPIRE young people described the same dynamics of discrimination and constrained expectations. Systemic failures are often reframed as individual shortcomings, reflecting a system that assesses young people but does not adequately support them, placing the burden of navigating complexity on individuals.

While employers face uncertainty and capacity constraints, young people also reported the limited support on accessing valuable work placements or apprenticeships, as they suffer from limited training, little supervision and weak protections. In these situations, responsibility again falls on the young person to adapt. The issue is not a lack of motivation from young people, but a lack of fit between systems and the realities young people face. Young people want to work but are navigating fragmented and often inaccessible pathways.

Youth‑led proposals provide concrete solutions

One of the most innovative aspects of the INSPIRE project is its methodology. Legislative theatre allowed young people not just to describe problems, but to stage them, rehearse alternatives, and co-create policy responses. We co‑designed  proposals to improve access to work experience and employment through creative and structured dialogues between young people, policymakers, employers and communities.

Several of these proposals directly address the issues identified in the government review.

1. Earlier and family‑centred career support
The review highlights the importance of early intervention, noting that disadvantage accumulates over time. The INSPIRE young people proposed starting career conversations at primary school level and involving families, recognising that aspirations and knowledge about career pathways are shaped early and collectively.

2. Accessible and community‑based careers guidance
To address fragmentation and inequality in provision, participants proposed delivering career support also through community organisations and the voluntary sector.

3. Reform of work experience and employer engagement
In response to declining entry points into the labour market, young people proposed structured work experience, mentoring and exposure to workplaces through site visits and flexible placement formats. They also highlighted the need to prepare employers to support young people effectively. Working with local schools, we are now co-creating standards for youth‑friendly employers.

4. Cross‑sector coordination
The government review identifies fragmentation across institutions as a core problem.
INSPIRE proposals include the creation of a cross‑sector alliance on youth employment in Birmingham bringing together young people, education, employers, public bodies and community organisations to coordinate action.

5. Youth‑led evaluation and accountability
Young people know best what they need. They proposed mechanisms for evaluating careers services and employer practices, embedding youth perspectives into ongoing policy development. A youth-led evaluation of career and employment support is now being implemented, co-led by Birmingham City Council and the University of Birmingham.

Rethinking policy: from programmes to relationships

A recurring criticism in participation is the lack of follow-through from policymakers. Young participants expressed frustration with commitments that are vague or delayed, or carelessly forgotten, which deeply undermines their trust in institutions.

INSPIRE suggests that the answer is not simply better engagement programmes, but different relationships between institutions and young people, where trust depends on feedback loops, transparent commitments, and long-term engagement rather than one-off consultations. It’s not simply about redesigning systems but redistributing power.

Young people do not need to be fixed or made “work-ready”. They need systems that recognise their knowledge, respond to their realities, and involve them as partners in shaping policy that affects them.

Sonia researches and teaches public policy. Her main research interests are participatory governance and democratic innovations, and creative and arts-based methods for research and public engagement.

Now is the time to refresh local politics

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Photo by Michael D Beckwith on Pexels.com

Phil Swann

The sad state of many neighbourhoods and communities, with their desolated high streets, has been identified as a significant driver of the rejection of politicians and political parties which lay behind the May 2026 local election results

As the shallowness of programmes such as Pride in Place demonstrates, this is not an issue that central government can tackle alone. It requires local action reflecting local circumstances. Yet local councils lack the resources and levers to secure lasting improvements. Meeting this challenge requires deep collaboration between central and local government at a time when changes in political control locally will make that more difficult to achieve than ever.

Is it too naïve to hope that engagement between local political actors, local people and local organisations and groups could inform new approaches to revitalise struggling local communities? Could the involvement of national politicians in the process secure the reform of local government finance and the provision of new powers necessary to enable localities to act?

Writing in 1939, when he was leader of the Labour Group on Oxford City Council, Richard Crossman, argued that one of the strongest arguments for local party politics “is that they do provide a method of creating interest and focussing attention upon the enormously important issues as stake.” Crossman, who went to serve as Harold Wilson’s Minister for Housing and Local Government, added that “the real basis of successful political democracy is not to be found in politics at all, but below the surface in the organisation of a whole network of popular interests into pressure groups.”

Writing just over 40 years later, when he was leader of Sheffield Council, David Blunkett also called for collective local action. He argued that politicians and communities should “do things together rather than having them done for us, to remove the conditions of poverty and dependence rather than trap people in them, and thus to develop a sense of supporting and being supported.” He made a similar point in 2004, when he was Home Secretary, recognising the importance of a partnership between local politicians and citizens “to revitalise democracy and strengthen citizenship and civil society, so that people are part of the process of reform and modernisation.”

Now more than ever it is important to follow the advice of Crossman and Blunkett and refresh local politics through collaboration with local groups and communities to deliver improvements locally and secure reforms nationally to enable that local action. Succeeding in doing this could also begin to restore trust in politics and politicians.

Phil Swann is studying for a PhD at INLOGOV in the Department of Public Administration and Policy, University of Birmingham, on the contribution of politicians to central-local government relations.

Understanding Mayoral Accountability: Insights from Japan and the UK

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Jason Lowther

What makes a directly elected mayor genuinely accountable to the public? How do contrasting political and administrative systems shape the conduct, choices, and leadership styles of those entrusted with substantial local authority? These questions were central to a recent Inlogov seminar led by Akinari Takehisa, former mayor of Setouchi City in Japan, and as part of his PhD studies at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, visiting researcher at Nottingham Business School. Drawing on a rare combination of long mayoral experience and rigorous academic research, Aki offered a compelling comparative exploration of how accountability is constructed and enacted within Japan and the United Kingdom.

Aki’s work centres on executive mayors, leaders who uniquely embody both political and managerial authority. Unlike council leaders or ministers, who operate within more layered decision-making structures, executive mayors face the dual responsibility of providing political direction and ensuring the effective, lawful, and ethical delivery of public services. This dual role offers the promise of coherence and visibility in leadership, while simultaneously demanding a careful balance between responsiveness, organisational discipline, professional values, and legal boundaries.

Why Compare Japan and the UK?

Although Japan and the UK represent different political traditions, their local government systems share notable similarities. Both countries are advanced democracies with historically strong central oversight of municipal administration. Both have grappled with questions of local leadership and experimented with models aimed at enhancing the authority and public visibility of mayors.  Japan has adopted the directly elected mayor model across all of its 1,718 municipalities, embedding it deeply into local governance. The UK, by contrast, has applied the model selectively, introducing executive mayors in just 13 principal local authorities since 2002. This contrast creates a rich basis for comparison: one system fully institutionalised, the other still evolving.

But the most significant insights emerge from how each country structures accountability. Japan’s governance arrangements involve vertically layered responsibilities shared between national, prefectural and municipal governments. This can foster helpful coordination, but it can also confuse responsibility when things go wrong. The UK, meanwhile, relies heavily on arm’s-length accountability mechanisms, with statutory roles such as Section 151 Officers and Monitoring Officers acting as key guardians of financial integrity and legal compliance. These institutional safeguards create clearer boundaries around mayoral authority.

Three Core Questions

Aki’s research explores three interrelated questions. The first concerns how institutional environments in Japan and the UK shape mayoral accountability. The second looks at how personal characteristics (leadership styles, professional backgrounds, and the use of performance information) influence accountable behaviour. The third examines the behavioural traits that support or undermine accountability, identified through interviews and narrative analysis.

To address these questions, Aki conducted extensive fieldwork: interviews with 15 mayors and six key stakeholders in Japan, and with six mayors and six stakeholders in the UK. This qualitative evidence was supplemented with a literature review and advanced comparative techniques, including fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), which allows researchers to understand complex relationships across multiple cases.

What the Early Findings Reveal

A first major insight concerns the impact of institutional contexts. In Japan, accountability reforms have unfolded gradually since the 1990s, driven by incremental devolution and efforts to improve transparency. The use of performance information has grown, though its uptake varies significantly between municipalities. In the UK, accountability has evolved in more dramatic cycles. Reforms associated with New Public Management in the 1980s, followed by the Best Value regime in the late 1990s and 2000s, significantly expanded performance oversight before many national requirements were rolled back during the austerity era after 2010.

A second key finding arises from the fsQCA analysis. Mayors who demonstrated consistently high levels of political, hierarchical, professional and legal accountability were far more likely to sustain long and stable careers. By contrast, those whose professional or legal accountability was weak were more likely to experience short or troubled terms, particularly in Japan where mayors enjoy substantial personal discretion. Interestingly, extensive use of performance information did not necessarily correlate with stronger accountability. Its effectiveness depended on how thoughtfully and transparently it was applied.

Aki also found that behavioural characteristics play a decisive role. Inclusive leadership, transparency, ethical judgement, and constructive collaboration with professional officers strengthened accountability in both countries. Conversely, secrecy, impulsive or populist decision‑making, and blurred boundaries between political campaigning and administrative neutrality frequently undermined it. Japan and the UK each demonstrated examples of positive “synergies” between political and managerial roles, such as the ability to commit to long‑term policies or communicate strategy clearly to the public. But both also exhibited negative synergies when these roles clashed or overlapped in unhelpful ways.

Conclusions

Aki’s emerging conclusions highlight the importance of recognising accountability as a multidimensional and dynamic practice. Japan continues to advance its approach through gradual decentralisation, while the UK contends with the legacies of shifting reform agendas. Yet in both countries, the success of directly elected mayors rests not only on the formal powers they hold, but on the quality of leadership they exercise and the institutional structures that guide and constrain them.

The research offers valuable lessons for policymakers, practitioners and scholars. It suggests that accountability must be intentionally designed and continuously reinforced. Clear institutional roles, better training and development for mayors, and stronger professional support structures can all contribute to more effective local leadership. As debates about mayoral systems continue in both countries, the insights from Aki’s work provide a timely and thoughtful contribution to understanding what truly makes local democratic leadership accountable.

You can view the whole (50 mins) seminar here:
https://bham.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=76530fc7-ce2a-4884-964a-b3fd00c80704&start=1315.148058

Jason Lowther is director of Inlogov, the Institute of Local Government Studies, at the University of Birmingham

Job half done, it’s time to tackle council tax

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Jason Lowther

It’s hard to deny that the local government finance settlement this month marks big achievements for the ‘new’ (now almost two years old) government.  Labour’s manifesto promised that “to provide greater stability, a Labour government will give councils multiyear funding settlements”, and the new finance settlement duly covers three years.  By the end of this multi-year Settlement in 28-29, Core Spending Power will have increased by over 24% compared to 2024-25, equivalent to £16.6 billion.  And this increased amount is distributed in line with a new formula designed better to match resources to needs (albeit with £440m last minute tinkering).  There is much to celebrate here, which should give the government confidence to tackle another elephant in local government’s room: council tax.

Everyone knows that the council tax system is bad.  It’s outdated (based on 1991 values, before an eighth of current housing was built), highly regressive (people in cheaper homes often pay a higher proportion of their property value than those in expensive homes), regionally unfair (a recent article in the i newspaper found 292 council areas across England paying higher rates of council tax than they would in the wealthy Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea), and over centralised.

As Inlogov recommended to last year’s Select Committee on The Funding and Sustainability of Local Government Finance, the Government should start to improve council tax by amending council tax bandings and giving discretion on the details of the scheme’s design locally, such as the rates in each band and discount/subsidy arrangements.  The committee’s chair commented that “councils are trapped in a straitjacket by central government, with local authorities lacking the flexibility or control to devise creative, long-term, preventative solutions which could offer better value-for-money”.

There are already tentative moves to reform Council Tax in the different nations of the UK.  The Scottish Government no longer caps council tax increases but leaves this decision to local elected representatives.  This year’s Scottish Government budget also funded a revaluation of the highest value properties, with higher bands for properties valued over £1m (compared to the current highest band of £212,000), a change expected to affect around 1% of properties.  This is less radical than most of the options considered in the IFS report the Scottish Government commissioned to inform its decision.  In Wales, properties were revalued in 2003 and an additional council tax band above the highest band in England introduced.  In Northern Ireland, domestic rates are based on 2005 prices and a percentage rate applied.

In the long term major transformation of local government funding is required, as the Select Committee concluded:

In the long term, only true transformation, supporting a clear vision of what the role of local government should be, can make the local government funding system fair and effective. Beyond mere stabilisation, the Government must consider approaches to strengthen the system, including allowing councils to set their own forms of local taxes such as tourist levies, and placing stronger responsibility on central government to fund the services it requires local authorities to deliver. Central government, so used to its tight control of local government’s purse strings, must learn to ease its grip and let councils have more power to control their own affairs, accountable not to Westminster, but to their own local electorates.

As the government enters its third year, agreeing long term plans for local taxes could make a big contribution to the “change” they promised and turbo charge the real devolution we need.

Dr Jason Lowther is director of the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) at the University of Birmingham. He was previously Assistant Director (Strategy) at Birmingham City Council and has worked at the West Midlands Combined Authority, Audit Commission and Metropolitan Police.

Empowering People with Learning Disabilities

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Cllr Ketan Sheth

I recently chaired a landmark event hosted by The Advocacy Project, where community leaders, local government officers, NHS representatives, and voluntary sector partners converged at Hampstead Old Town Hall to confront a pressing issue: the systemic inequalities faced by people with learning disabilities. This event was more than a conversation – it was a catalyst for change.

Acclaimed playwright Stephen Unwin shared insights from his poignant book, ‘Beautiful Lives: How We Got Learning Disabilities So Wrong’, inspired by his son Joey’s experiences. Unwin’s words laid bare the dark history of societal attitudes towards people with learning disabilities, exposing the stark reality that despite progress, these individuals remain disproportionately disadvantaged in healthcare, social services, education, and beyond.

The discussion illuminated the critical role local government plays in shaping inclusive policies. By leveraging commissioning powers, local authorities can ensure services are co-designed with people with learning disabilities, prioritising their needs and preferences. This can address the stark health inequalities highlighted in the Learning Disabilities Mortality Review (LeDeR) programme, which revealed concerning disparities in healthcare outcomes.

Katherine Shaw, CEO of The Advocacy Project, underscored the imperative of confronting this history and committing to a future where dignity, equality, and human rights are non-negotiable. The Advocacy Project’s work with local government exemplifies this commitment, amplifying the voices of those with lived experience to inform responsive, respectful, and community-rooted services.

Through user involvement projects and partnerships, The Advocacy Project demonstrates the power of collaboration. For example, their work with local authorities has led to more accessible community services, improved mental health support, and increased participation in local decision-making. These tangible outcomes show that when people with learning disabilities are involved in shaping services, communities become more inclusive.

Local government’s role in education, housing, employment, public health, and adult social care is crucial. By promoting inclusive policies and supporting initiatives like person-centred planning and supported internships, local authorities can break down barriers and foster resilient communities. This can help tackle loneliness, improve mental health, and ensure economic participation for people with learning disabilities.

Moreover, local authorities can learn from The Advocacy Project’s approach to co-production, ensuring that services are designed and delivered with people with learning disabilities, rather than for them. This shift in approach can lead to more effective, person-centred support. By adopting this approach, local authorities can ensure that services are tailored to meet the unique needs of individuals, promoting greater independence and autonomy.

As local government leaders, policymakers, and community advocates, we are tasked with a profound responsibility – to listen, learn, and act. Let us strengthen partnerships, centre lived experience, and forge a more inclusive future for all. The Advocacy Project’s work is a beacon for this change, highlighting the importance of inclusive policies. Indeed, it’s essential to recognise the long-term benefits of such policies, including economic benefits, improved health outcomes, and increased social cohesion. By working together, we can create a more inclusive and equitable society, where people with learning disabilities are valued and supported to reach their full potential, contributing to a richer, more diverse community.

In conclusion, the event reinforced that inclusion is a collective responsibility. Local government’s leadership and partnerships are vital in driving this agenda forward. Let us heed the call to action, champion the rights of people with learning disabilities, and work tirelessly towards a more equitable society.

Councillor Dr Ketan Sheth is Chair of the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee at Brent Council