REASONS TO BE HOPEFUL – HOW THE GAP IN LIFE EXPECTANCY BETWEEN ENGLISH REGIONS WAS NARROWED

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Nicholas Hicks and Jon Bright

In this blog, we discuss a major success in health policy that’s been largely forgotten.

What happened?
During the 2000s, a government strategy to tackle health inequalities in England led to a reduction in geographical differences in life expectancy. Furthermore, this success reversed a trend that had been increasing. It was achieved by reducing death rates caused by coronary heart disease.


The chart below shows an overall reduction in coronary heart disease mortality and a reduction of nearly 20% (19.07%) in the gap between the national average and the poorest areas. [Barr et al 2017]


This is the only period in the last 50 years when inequalities in death rates between rich and poor have narrowed. It was a considerable achievement and an historic result.

What was the impact in terms of lives extended?
This policy meant that many millions of people lived longer and healthier lives. Much of the benefit was probably due to reductions in smoking and managing risks such as high blood pressure and cholesterol. In 2000, 38% of the adult population smoked and smoking was twice as common amongst those on low incomes. Today, only about 13% of the adult population smoke, the lowest since records began.

But this achievement was not down to health policy alone. Importantly, it was also due to coordinated action across Government to tackle inequalities more generally. This is because many of the factors that affect health lie outside the health sector.

What were the policy drivers?
This work started in 2000 with the NHS Plan (that committed Government to publishing inequality targets), and the Department of Health’s National Service Framework for Coronary Heart Disease, and continued over several years.

These policies led to a national commitment to reduce inequalities. In the wake of the NHS Plan, the Government set Inequalities targets and incorporated them into national Public Service Agreements (PSAs). These Agreements required central government Departments to do better in those parts of the country where outcomes were poorest. This applied not only to health but also to low income, family functioning, education, employment, and crime. These wider issues are major influences on people’s health and targeted action on these made it more likely that health-specific interventions would succeed.

PSAs defined the goals of the 2002 and 2004 Comprehensive Spending Review. Departmental budgets were only agreed once each Department produced credible plans showing how they would contribute to the inequality targets.

What did all this mean in practice for people living in poorer regions?
Health-specific interventions included smoking cessation clinics; improving the distribution of GPs – many disadvantaged areas had no GP service; more resources for disadvantaged areas; national guidance on best practice; and improved access to mental health services. Action to tackle the wider causes of poor health included improving housing (the Decent Homes Standard); increasing household income (the Minimum Wage, Tax Credits); investment in education and skills; reducing the number of young people not in education, employment and training; teenage pregnancy prevention; and investment in early years (Sure Start and family support).

This approach is consistent with Prof Michael Marmot’s conclusions in his 2010 report, ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives‘ .


What did evaluators find?
Evaluators found that regional inequalities decreased for all-cause mortality and that the strategy was broadly successful in meeting its ambitious targets. Writing in 2017, Barr et al they concluded that ‘future approaches should learn from this experience”. They noted that current policies were probably reversing this achievement of the previous decade. See also Holroyd et al’s systematic review.

In our main paper REASONS TO BE HOPEFUL we discuss the evaluations in more detail.


Health inequalities-narrowing the gapOct2023FinalDownload

What lessons should we draw?
There are five main lessons to draw from this evidence:

  1. When Government takes a coordinated approach to a problem – and sticks with it over time – the results can be impressive, even with problems thought to be intractable.
  2. Health is a good proxy for Levelling Up. Narrowing the health gap between regions is a good proxy for ‘levelling up’ more widely. Health inequalities are in large part due to poverty, poor education, and poor housing. Regional inequalities in educational attainment and crime also narrowed.
  3. Leadership and persistence are essential. A ‘whole of government’ approach requires good cross departmental working, full engagement with local government, and leadership from the Prime Minister.
  4. Tackling the nation’s problems needs longer term policy making so successful approaches don’t fizzle out whenever there’s a change of Government. As we’ve seen, benefits achieved up to 2010 may have been lost by 2017. Maintaining progress requires cross-party, long-term collaboration.
  5. This approach worked by influencing mainstream budgets via better targeting and evidence-based interventions, rather than relying only special ring-fenced funding

Today, the big health challenges today are obesity, diabetes and related conditions. Again, poorer populations are much more affected. Will today’s politicians rise to the occasion?

Dr Nicholas Hicks BM BCh FRCP FRCGP FFPH is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care Sciences at the University of Oxford and a Senior Strategy Advisor, Department of Health and Social Care. He is also an Associate Fellow, Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. He was seconded to the Department of Health Strategy Unit and helped draft the inequalities chapter of the NHS Plan in July 2000 ([email protected]).

Jon Bright is a former civil servant who worked in the Cabinet Office and Department of Communities and Local Government between 1998 and 2014.

References

  1. Meadows D. Leverage points: places to intervene in a system.
  2. NHS Plan. A plan for investment; a plan for reform. Department of Health (2000): 106-7
  3. Health inequalities – national targets on infant mortality and life expectancy – technical briefing . Department of Health March 2002
  4. Spending Review 2002: Public Service Agreements, HM Treasury 2002 para 1.12
  5. Holdroyd I, Vodden A, Srinivasan A, Kuhn I, Bambra C, Ford JA. Systematic review of the effectiveness of the health inequalities strategy in England between 1999 and 2010. BMJ Open. 2022 Sep 9;12(9):e063137. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-063137. PMID: 36134765; PMCID: PMC9472114.

How digital policing may transform local relationships with the public: international perspectives from the Policing in the Digital Society Network Annual Conference 2025

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Dr Elke Loeffler

The Policing in the Digital Society Network is a European network of academics and practitioners researching the changing nature of policing in the digital society. I was recently able to attend its annual conference, held at the University of Northumbria, for the first time and found this inspiring event brought together a vibrant community actively involved in exploring the impact of digital policing on local relationships with the public.

With the rapid increase in the availability of new digital technologies, including AI applications, together with ever-mounting staff and budget pressures, police forces in the UK, the Netherlands and Nordic countries are making increasing use of digital tools, e.g. automation of processes such as the transcription of interviews with victims and offenders and use of digital forensics to make investigations more effective. At the same time, the speed of technological innovation has given rise to new forms of cybercrime such as online forms of Violence against Women and Girls and has generated new policing tasks such as digital safeguarding.

Does this mean that the ‘bobby on the beat’ will be replaced by chatbots, so that relations between local people and the police will be dehumanised at neighbourhood level? The research presented at the conference in Northumbria University provided two different perspectives on this: Prof. Jan Terpstra’s research on the impact of digitalisation on the policing of public protests suggests both that policing has become more ‘abstract’, with increasing reliance on data-based systems, and has become more distant from and less personally knowledgeable about local community groups, while protesters have sought to become less traceable by disguising their physical appearance and avoiding the use of smart technology.

Interestingly, empirical research by Wendy Schreurs and Prof. Wouter Stol on intelligence-based neighbourhood policing in a selected district in the Netherlands has shown that officers get 54% of their information from citizens and 47% from digital police sources. This suggests that the police still need citizens as much as citizens need the police. At the same time, there is evidence, that neighbourhood police officers still spend a lot of unassigned time in their cars without any contact with local people. This has given rise to an experiment to provide police officers with intelligence-based notifications about priority issues at neighbourhood level such as fly-tipping and local ‘hot-spots’, so that they are able to target these issues in a more structured way and provide feedback, which is shared across police teams, and increase their visibility and dialogue with local people.

Moreover, a study by Prof. Kira Vrist Ronn from the University of Southern Denmark on digital police patrols in Norway suggests that the use of online platforms for genuine dialogue with local people on local issues (not necessarily related to policing), together with videos on social media platforms showing police officers in informal settings (such as the famous ‘dance videos’ by Norwegian police officers), may help to create ‘proximity at a distance’, as Kira termed it. In other words, the development of trust relationships does not necessarily have to start with ‘face-to-face’ meetings.

In the light of rapid technological advances and increasing (transborder) cybercrime there is now clearly an urgent need for police forces to collaborate in order to share risks and learning from digital experimentation – something which is still underdeveloped across Europe. As one police force representative stated at the conference “We have to speed up innovation processes”.

This applies in particular to the UK, where there is a risk that severe austerity pressures will drive the 43 police forces to become more inward looking and reactive, instead of breaking up silos and practicing collaborative innovation (Hartley et al. 2013) and collaborative governance (Loeffler 2024) in order to achieve much needed synergies. At European level, Europol has set up a secure infrastructure and innovation methodologies to enable the sharing of unlicensed tools and innovative projects between its members – but Brexit has excluded the UK from some of the key Europe-wide networks and partnerships. While a number of UK police forces such as Thames Valley Police have set up ‘Innovation Hubs’, which include behavioural scientists, leveraging this potential in policing faces particular ethical, legal and governance challenge. The responsible use of AI and other innovations in policing will require more public scrutiny and dialogue with the public at the local level, with a need for robust practices at local level. The independent Data Ethics Committee of West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner (WMOPCC) and the West Midlands Police (WMP) has already taken steps toward more public engagement. At the same time, there is also a need for national frameworks which learn quickly from emerging successful practice across Europe in this rapidly changing environment.

Furthermore, Wouter Stol et al. (2025) make the point that a more integrated approach to online crime is needed in terms of prevention, detection and disruption. This integrated approach will not just be the responsibility of police forces but other public services as well, particularly in local government. From that point of view, the impact of austerity at local level, resulting in lower priority to community safety in UK local government, has been damaging and will need to be reversed – a topic which the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) and the Centre for Crime, Justice and Policing at the University of Birmingham and, more widely, the Local Area Research and Intelligence Association (LARIA) and the Society for Evidence-Based Policing (SEBP) should urgently address.

The opportunities provided by this Policing in the Digital Society Network for learning from innovations and revealing practice across European police forces is likely to play an increasingly important role over the next few years. Its conference next year will be in Oslo – something to look out for!

Dr. Elke Loeffler is an Associate of INLOGOV and Director of Governance International. She undertakes applied research on local public services and has research interests in community engagement/co-production in a digital world. Elke is Vice-Chair for Doctoral Research in UKAPA and a Board Member of the European Group of Public Administration and the International Research Society for Public Management.

Cotswold District Council elections – more interesting than you imagined?

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Chris Game

I’ve literally just finished watching the LGIU’s promotion of its new Future Local Lab – asking me personally, albeit rhetorically (“Chris, are you ready?”): “How are we going to survive climate?”, “Will there be enough houses?”, “What can we use Artificial Intelligence for?” and a dozen other similar teasers. If this is the kind of thing you’re into, please skip this blog entirely. It’s right at the other end of whatever scale the LGIU is operating on.

I was emailed over the weekend by an erstwhile colleague who, driving back to Birmingham through the Cotswolds, noticed that there is a local by-election this week for Cotswold District Council. Interesting, eh? No, if you’re still there, don’t go away just yet – there’s a bit more to it.

No, not control of the council. Historically Independent, then Conservative, Cotswold DC is nowadays comfortably Lib Dem: 20 Lib Dems, 9 Conservatives, 2 Greens, 2 Independents. So, even though it’s a Lib Dem member who’s resigning, the politics of the council won’t change. The real issue is: for how long will there be a Cotswold DC, or, for that matter, any of the other five Gloucestershire DCs – following Deputy PM Angela Rayner’s White Paper announcement that all England’s district councils will be abolished, with regional mayors and unitary councils to be introduced in all areas?

A council which in Gloucestershire’s case would currently be odds-on to be no longer, after two decades, Conservative, but, like Cotswold DC, Lib Dem. Or would it? The general assumption following the Government’s December White Paper seems to have been that in counties like Gloucestershire all six of the district councils would merge with the county council to produce, well, a pretty large and definitely non-local Gloucestershire Unitary Council.

To which prospect, as I assume is happening quite widely across England, there has been adverse reaction. Gloucestershire would be just in the top third largest counties (by population), and in its case five of the county’s MPs have recently written to the Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution, Jim McMahon, proposing instead something on at least a slightly less ginormous scale. In this case, that two unitary councils be created – covering, in this instance, the Forest of Dean, Gloucester and Stroud in the West, and Cheltenham, Tewkesbury and the Cotswolds in the East. The area is simply too large to be covered by one council, they argue, although, probably unsurprisingly, the County Council would disagree.

Indeed, it has been looking at how Gloucestershire could enter into an even bigger Combined Authority with neighbouring counties: variously joining Herefordshire and Worcestershire to the north, becoming part of the West of England Authority around Bristol to the south, or joining with Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Reading and Swindon to the east. I’m guessing similar deliberations are happening across the country.

Whatever – it’s not exactly ‘local government’ as my emailing ex-colleague and I once knew it! Yes, back to him, and indeed the prompt for this blog. His main reason for emailing about this week’s Cotswold Council by-election was that he knew we would both recall what was almost certainly the last time one of those was in the news – the national news, that is.

It was in May 2023, when the Lib Dems strengthened their control of Cotswold DC, thanks in part to a Chris(topher) Twells taking the Tetbury with Upton ward from the Conservatives. Yes, the same Cllr Twells who was at the time and continued for a further year to be also a member of Salford City Council, 160 miles away, just west of Manchester.

As it came to be public knowledge, it was, of course, controversial – with initially, in some circles anyway, some uncertainty about its legality, not helped by the fact that apparently even the local leadership of his new party group had been unaware of the situation. All of which seemed barely credible, since even I could have told them about the legality bit, without even checking. Anyway, soon after his Cotswold election he was suspended by his own party, “to enable a complaint to be assessed”, which had prompted my weekend emailer to contact me. But I decided even I couldn’t pad it out into a blog – until now!
Double-Cllr Twells’ own self-justification was clear enough, but didn’t do him any great favours. Most obviously it was legal because “your qualifications to stand for election can be based on occupying property or work”. Correct. Working for himself gave him the “flexibility” to attend all necessary meetings of both councils. OK. The councillor sitting on two authorities 150 miles apart had no problem fulfilling all his duties because an elected member’s workload “is not enormously onerous”. Hmm – not guaranteed to make you many friends.

And the killer punch: “I don’t want to worry anyone, but I’m technically qualified to stand for up to five districts in England and Wales”. I don’t think he meant contemporaneously, but it’s a good way of remembering just what the law says.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

Placemaking: how do we design better homes and neighbourhoods?

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Jon Bright and Vincent Goodstadt

The Government wants to build 1.5m new homes. Here, we discuss one aspect of this ambition: how to ensure that they are designed well. Many in the past have not been.

Good design results in attractive homes, streetscapes and neighbourhoods. It contributes to placemaking, creating popular places, with community facilities, green spaces and essential services.

Well-designed neighbourhoods are sustainable: they don’t rely on high levels of car ownership and energy consumption. As a result, homes are more affordable with low energy bills and access to public transport.

There’s lots of guidance on design, for example, the ‘National Model Design Code’, Oxfordshire County Council’s ‘Street Design Guide’, and the Building Beautiful Commission’s report ‘Living with Beauty’. The problem is not primarily with the guidance.

The problem is that developers and housebuilders don’t use the guidance that exists and planning authorities don’t enforce it.

What’s the evidence?
A 2020 report, ‘A housing design audit for England ‘, concluded that the design of new housing developments in England is overwhelmingly ‘mediocre’ or ‘poor’.

The audit reveals that 75% of new housing developments studied should not have gone ahead due to ‘mediocre’ or ‘poor’ design. It inspected 142 housing developments and found that one in five should have been refused planning permission outright as their poor design was contrary to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). A further 54% should not have been granted permission without improvements to their design.

The importance of design has been reaffirmed in the new NPPF (December 2024).

In addition:
• Housing for less affluent communities is much more likely to be poorly designed.
• Low-scoring developments scored badly in terms of character and sense of place.
• The worst places were dominated by access roads, storage, bins and car parking.
• More positively, schemes scored highly for security and included homes of varying sizes.

The author, Professor Matthew Carmona said: “Planning authorities are under pressure to deliver new homes and are prioritising numbers over the long-term impacts of bad design. At the same time, house builders have little incentive to improve when their designs continue to pass through the planning system. Some highways departments do not even recognise their role in creating a sense of place.

“House builders, planning authorities and highways departments need to significantly raise their game. This can’t come soon enough”.

A second study – ‘Delivering Design Value’ – assessed the problem of design quality by looking at what happens on the ground when large housing schemes are built. It confirmed that although planners want to create attractive places, design is frequently overlooked because of the pressure to meet housing targets. This is because we don’t have enough planners, especially with design skills.

Of course, developers are also responsible for design quality. But it’s widely known that volume house builders use tried and tested site layouts and house types that lack design value. Too often, local authorities approve them when they shouldn’t.

The study recommends that design should be at the heart of development and design value standards prepared that are simple, concise and translatable into clear guidance.
Without change, the housebuilding industry will continue to receive a ‘free pass’ on design and local authorities’ powers to shape places will be eroded further.

What is to be done?
Central government has revised the NPPF and the chapter on design is strong. But much will depend on how its implemented. Drawing on the two studies, we recommend that:

National design standards should place design at the heart of planning and housebuilding. Local design codes should be prepared for each major site and highways design should be a part of the planning process.

Applications for new housing should reflect national design standards and local policies covering placemaking, sustainability, streetscape, landscaping and access for pedestrians, cyclists and motor vehicles.

Local Design Panels should include specialists and review the design of major housing schemes. This should not cause delays if guidance has been followed. Design guidance should be a part of the Local Development Plan.

Local Authorities need more planners with design expertise. The main players – house builders, planners, design experts and community leaders – should collaborate on the design and master planning of large housing developments.

Conclusion
Too many housing developments are poorly designed. This must change. Local Authorities should give more attention to design, review large developments and set and enforce planning conditions.

As the new NPPF notes, ‘Development that is not well designed should be refused, especially where it fails to reflect local design policies and government guidance on design.’ (Para 139).

Developers and housebuilders need to raise their game by drawing on their best achievements and stop relying on a small number of site layouts and building types.

(Our full paper which amplifies the views in this blog can be accessed through the link here.

Jon Bright is a former Director at the Department of Communities and Local Government. He was involved in designing and implementing the Government’s national strategy for neighbourhood renewal (1998-2007) and is currently a Trustee of a charity that advises communities on Neighbourhood Planning. His book ‘Modern Management and Leadership: People, Places and Organisations’ was published in 2023.

Vincent Goodstadt is a member of the Design Council’s Network of Experts and advises organisations in the public, private, and voluntary sectors. Previously, he held senior planning posts in local government. He is a Past President of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), holds an Honorary Professor at the University of Manchester, and is a Vice-President of the Town & Country Planning Association.

Dusting down the cautious welcome: Initial reflections on the devolution white paper

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Phil Swann

When I was director of strategy and communications at the LGA I was frequently criticised, by the late professor John Stewart among others, for issuing press releases “cautiously welcoming” one Blairite initiative or another.

The criticism was probably justified, but I would definitely have deployed that phrase in response to the government’s recently published devolution white paper.

There is undoubtedly a lot to welcome, not least the stated commitment to devolution, the additional powers for metro mayors, the revival of strategic planning, its reference to struggling small unitary councils and the focus on audit and standards.

There are, however, at least four reasons to be cautious.

First, every serious reformer of local government since George Goschen in the 1860s has argued that local government finance and structures should be reformed together. No government has ever had the political will or energy to do so. This government has also ducked the opportunity. As a result, this white paper will not fulfil its potential.

Second, the current mess and confusion in the structure of English local government is the result of incremental change. Just think of Peter Shore’s “organic change” and Michael Heseltine’s ill-fated Banham Commission. There is a real danger that this government will run out of restructuring energy or time. The contrast with Scotland and Wales, where local government was reorganised in one go, could not be starker.

Third, the effectiveness of the structures being proposed will depend on the quality of the relationships between mayors and councils, between councils and parishes and between ministers and mayors, councils and parishes. In England we are not good at relationships like these and there is precious little in the white paper to signal the trust, effort and imagination that will be needed to make these relationships work better than the previous ones did.

Finally, key to the revival of local government and effective devolution is a revival of citizen engagement in local politics and local governance. Word has it this will be addressed in a forthcoming white paper, but it should be central to this one.

So, a very cautious welcome it is.

Phil Swann is studying for a PhD on central-local government relations at INLOGOV.

How the ‘Make a Difference, Work for Your Local Council’ campaign aims to help councils address the local government recruitment crisis

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Cllr Abi Brown OBE

The successful recruitment and retention of skilled professionals in local government has long been a challenge for the sector. Given the impact of the pandemic, a significant shortage of staff in several key delivery areas, increased demand on services, together with being the lowest paid part of the public sector, capacity and capability issues are at the forefront of concerns across local government. It’s why there has never been a more important time for a recruitment drive.

In a survey of local council leaders, over half of those surveyed told us that workforce capacity issues were likely to affect their council’s ability to deliver services. Of those surveyed, 94% said they were experiencing recruitment and retention difficulties, 90% said they had a capability skills gap in their management teams in at least one area, and 83% said they had a capacity skills gap in a least one area. Areas in the sector we identified as needing the most help included adult social care and children’s services, finance, planning, and environmental health.

How then do we attract the talent we desperately need when budgets are so challenging, and public perception of what we do is so misunderstood?

This was the question asked by local council HR and recruitment teams up and down the country; one that the LGA, together with SOLACE, Regional Employers Organisations, and councils across England sought to address with the launch of the ‘Make a Difference, Work for your Local Council’ campaign. Funded by UK Government as part of the LGA’s sector support offer, the campaign aims to help attract new talent and highlights the benefits that a career in local government can offer.
The national campaign was launched on 4 November 2024, this followed a successful pilot in the north east of England that took place between January and March of this year. The pilot campaign has since won an LGC Workforce Award for ‘Best Innovation in Recruitment’.

Research and planning

Working together with market research agency Habit5, we spent months understanding our audience and their challenges using a mix of focus groups and online surveys. This research was crucial in helping us prove that not only was there a wide audience base to speak to, but it identified who were the most open to the idea of working for their local council. We identified these as ‘career starters’, aged between 21 – 29, and ‘career changers’, aged between 30 – 49 (although we would absolutely encourage anyone to consider a local government career!).

The research also helped us understand which elements of working for local councils appealed most to people; this would inform the brand identity and campaign messaging. These elements were, helping their local community, flexible working, the range of roles available and career development. It’s from this detailed work that ‘Make a Difference, Work for your Local Council’ was born.

Bringing the campaign to life

We’ve been so lucky throughout this process to work with partner agencies who have not only understood our mission but have helped us to bring our ideas to life. Advertising and communications agency Storycatchers created a bespoke campaign toolkit for councils, packed with a suite of digital and print assets that are simple, yet vibrant in their design. Perhaps most importantly, they are human, using wording and imagery to resonate and identify with people wanting to make a positive change in their communities.


Together we’ve worked hard to ensure that the campaign creative is as much authentic as it is captivating to our audience. All campaign imagery and videography capture the real-life experiences of officers working on the ground in local councils across those four key professional areas. We can’t thank Kerry, Omaid, Daniel, and Susanna enough for their enthusiasm and commitment to this project which has truly brought it to life.


Getting the message out

The team at Republic of Media developed a detailed paid media strategy that has seen our campaign advertised across England via multiple channels including on digital billboards, audio channels such as national radio stations and Spotify, and social media – specifically Meta and LinkedIn.


Our dedicated website localcounciljobs.gov.uk was developed to be clear, informative and helpful. As well as giving useful insight into why a career in local government is a good choice, the website also offers job seekers a postcode search, making it quick and easy to access the council vacancies available in their area.


Sector support
The support from the local government sector and our partners has been huge, and for that we are incredibly grateful. It’s been fantastic to see councils up and down the country throwing their support behind the campaign and utilising the toolkit assets to complement their own recruitment efforts. It’s with their help and their passion for the sector that we’ve already seen some impressive results since launching on 4 November, indicating that our authentic approach is working.

The new website has attracted 62,651 users in its first month, with 34,546 postcode searches being made. Our newly launched social media channels have already gained 1,374 followers who have been excitedly sharing campaign content with their networks. So far, organic social media posts have achieved 32,399 impressions and 3,290 engagements such as likes and shares. Paid for advertising on social media has generated close to 2 million impressions, and out of home display activity continues to outperform key benchmarks week on week. Digital display advertising on websites has so far generated over 5 million impressions and 9,302 clicks to the campaign website.


On top of all of that, we’ve already heard positive feedback from local councils on how the campaign is having a direct impact on the number of job applications they are receiving. The ‘Make a Difference, Work for your Local Council’ campaign paid media activity runs until the end of January 2025, during which time we expect to hear many more examples of positive campaign impacts from across the sector.


The success so far demonstrates clearly to me what my colleagues and I already knew to be true; that the power of local government and people’s desire to make a difference in their communities still runs strong. I’m immensely proud of everyone who has collaborated on this campaign to date. The results we are starting to see is testament to all their dedication, hard work, and expertise; just some of the attributes we’re hoping to attract into local council jobs across England to secure the future of vital public services.

Cllr Abi Brown OBE, is Chair of the LGA Improvement and Innovation Board.