Blog: 15th September 2023 - Rachel McKoy, LLG President

LLG Presidential Blog

It’s been another eventful week in the world of local government packed full of busyness, woes and opportunities.

 I was fortunate to attend the Local Government Chronical Summit 2023 this week. It was a fantastic event that lived up to its pitch of bringing together senior local government leaders “to collaborate and deliberate over the most pressing issues of the day as well as reflect on the future role of local government.”

The programme was full of various insightful Chatham house panel sessions with a stellar line up of industry experts, academics and local government leaders. It was interesting to hear the various opportunities for Labour and the Conservatives in the current climate during the “Planning for Change” with input from DR Tony Travers (LSE) alongside colleagues from New Local, Onward and Savanta.  He spoke so eloquently about how local government should respond to the current environment and opportunities. The impact and importance of bolstering “civic pride” and the importance of redressing social fabric decline was a strong theme that permeated this conversation and a number of other sessions.

Other specific highlights included the excellent session on “Oversight and regulation in local government” with James Bullion (Care Quality Commission), Paul Najsarek (Local Government Ombudsman) and Abi Brown (LGA Improvement Board Chair). Super interesting to hear the panels thoughts on the new assurance duty applicable in Adult Social Care and whether, generally, OFLOG will have  a central role in “holding the ring” in this space in the way it is currently constituted. What was so apparent from this session is how the sector can get better at gathering soft intelligence of governance failings across the vista through the intelligence gathered from various regulatory arms. This could enable issues to be be identified at an earlier stage and enable adequate support to be offered.  All in all - lots more work coming down the track for us to navigate.

The excellent session on “Weathering the Storm – sharing insight and strategies for intervention and transformation ” provided practical guidance to council’s in the s114 and commissioners space with brilliant advice from the coal face delivered by Katherine Kerswell (CeX – Croydon, Threesea Grant (former CeX Liverpool), and Skokat Lal (CeX Sandwell).

This session really added flavour to what it feels like to go through intervention in practice and what does post-intervention looks like. It also addressed how to ensure resilient leadership is in place to face it. An uplifting session that channelled the opportunism and positivity that there is light at the end of the tunnel in these circumstances. Given the woes of more s114’s on the cards, the messaging was again the role that culture, denial and resistance to change can play in these situations.

A real focus was on “doing the boring well, ” building a psychologically safe space” for staff.  Given that Lawyers in Local Government are often seen as blockers and barriers of bureaucracy it struck a chord that we should stand firm in doing the right thing and that we now have a massive opportunity to elevate our presence and importance in the Local Government eco-system.

We do a fabulous job.

Have a fab weekend.