Blog: 10 February 2023 - Helen Edwards, LLG President

I was interested to read the new Housing Minister, Rachel Maclean, is the 15th person appointed to that position since 2010. If this raises an eyebrow the fact she is the 6th person in post in the last 12 months rather raises some fundamental questions around how the housing crisis (crisis being applicable to everything these days it seems) can effectively be addressed. Maclean’s appointment comes off the back of PM Rishi Sunak’s mini reshuffle. The flux in government has of course more than contributed to the pace of changing ministers. A period of stability is surely now due. 

We know from the increasing number of Public Interest Reports that there tends to be a correlation between governance failings, and the rapid turnover of statutory officers. Of course, here, one informs the other and the other, in turn, informs the first in something akin to a vicious circle.   

On the theme of changing ministers, we have this week, along with ADSO, written to Lee Rowley MP, the now Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government and Building Safety in respect of remote meeting provisions for local government. We have also submitted a Freedom of Information request in respect of the Call for Evidence in 2021, and look to have secured that long awaited meeting with DLUHC later this month. Alongside that, we have received some helpful contributions from our membership (many thanks) to the drafting of a clause to be inserted into the Levelling Up Bill, (which is also being campaigned on by NALC, RTIP and ADSO). A special note of thanks here to Laura Hughes and the Browne Jacobson team, for not only commenting on that clause, but researching all the other Acts and Regulations that will need to be considered.  

I realise it feels like the never ending story, but persistence on remote meeting provision, we believe, will eventually pay off. In the words of Thomas Edison “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up”.  

Best wishes  

Helen Edwards  

LLG President