Blog: 18/02/22 - Helen McGrath, Head of Public Affairs

Valentine’s Day took something of a public service turn this week as considered in an article by Camden Council employees published by think tank ‘New Local’.  

130 people from across the country, and from a range of organisations, came together within the London Borough of Camden to talk about love in public services. The event was facilitated by local residents, and public service workers and such was the appetite for the event, that it sold out within just five days. 

The event, billed as “Relationships making a difference, love shows up” aimed to focus public services away from ‘cold, transactional processes’ and ‘automatons churning out services’ to ‘new narratives with love as a central protagonist’. This is not about the romantic love so synonymous with the word, but rather an affection, a sense of caring for those we serve. Encouragingly, it reports that ‘Relational practice is undoubtedly on the rise, with green shoots in social care, family support, housing, education and health’; holding up the recent Scottish Care Review as an exemplar where the word love appears 104 times in its promise to children. Where is the Love? All around us it turns out.  

In other news, LLG continue to seek your views in our Branch and National Lead reviews to inform the future of our service delivery. If you are having difficulty accessing the new website, take a look at our quick video explaining the short steps required to activate your account. 

If you missed out on our free Planning National Lead meeting last week by Francis Taylor Buildings on a host of case law updates including tall buildings, inconsistencies between strategic level plans, borough development and SPD’s, Assets of Community Value and CIL’s then you can catch up on demand via the resources hub. The good news is there is plenty of time to register for our Partnership & Procurement National Lead Meeting on 24^th March via our events page. 

Within our training offer we continue to offer a range of courses including planning, overview and scrutiny committees, licensing, premise closure orders, anti-social behaviour orders and planning enforcement. Given the looming changes to elections, it will be essential for all those involved to attend our remote Elections Conference on 4^th March 2022.   

Finally, on a very happy note, the LLG Awards return this year with a tentative date late May to coincide with the Spring Conference, where we will finally have the opportunity to meet in person once more! Applications go live next week, and we look forward to celebrating the incredible talent and success achieved over this past difficult year.  

Best wishes 

Helen McGrath 

Head of Public Affairs 

Helen@llg.org.uk