England policy round-up: April 2025

In April 2025, much of the policy news centred around international trade and the ramifications of the policies of the Trump administration in the United States. At home, April is the month when many consumer bills rise; this month saw rises in council tax, gas, water and electricity bills, broadband, mobile phone, TV and transport costs all rose, some of these rising significantly above inflation. This led the month to be dubbed “awful April” (as in this ITV News article). For employers, the increases in employer national insurance and in the national living wage and national minimum wage also took effect.

Councillors’ guide to waste and recycling reforms – LGA

Councils in England are committed to decarbonisation and aim to deliver high quality local waste services. The government is introducing several waste and recycling policies in England which will impact on councils, including simpler recycling, the deposit return scheme, extended producer responsibility for packaging and the inclusion of energy from waste in the UK emissions trading scheme. This briefing note discusses the implications for councils.

The policies are designed to reduce residual waste, boost recycling and incentivise businesses to adopt more sustainable practices. For councils to make the most of the opportunities of the reforms, they must consider them holistically. Effective communication with residents, and improved waste data, will be important. The changes do come with financial risk for councils, including loss of some recycling rebates and higher incineration costs.

The LGIU published a global briefing on Litter and liveability – council leadership for clean and welcoming neighbourhoods which discusses the role of councils in creating liveable places, with examples of council action from England and the Netherlands.

Public attitudes 2025 – Electoral Commission

Each year since 2007, the Electoral Commission has monitored public attitudes towards elections and democracy in the UK. The latest study, involving a representative sample of 6,000 respondents, was conducted online in December 2024. The main findings are:

• There was an increase in satisfaction with the administration of elections this year. Satisfaction with the process of voting and registering to vote, and confidence that elections are well run are close to an all-time high.
• Over half of respondents felt that elected representatives did not care about people like them. Only one in five felt that elected representatives did care about people like them.
• Concerns remain high about threats to democracy. Many people, especially young people, believe that elections in the UK are manipulated in some way. For the first time in recent years, there has been no across-the-board decline in trust in institutions. However, trust remains low.
• There has been an increase in positive perceptions about the transparency of party finance and a belief that those who break the rules will face punishment.
• Support for Voter ID has increased. Perceptions around the ease of voting remain consistent with pre-Voter ID levels.
• Social media is now the second most common news source (up from fifth last year). TV remains the most common news source. Trust in news from social media has increased, despite a rise in the proportion of people reporting seeing misinformation.
• In recent years, less people regard bullying behaviours towards politicians as unacceptable.

Local, Actually: Establishing hyperlocal governance in England – Reform

As two-tier county and district authorities are reorganised into new unitary authorities and as regional governance expands, there will be a governance gap at the hyperlocal level and decision-making is being taken further from communities. The abolition of longstanding district authorities in some areas has spurred efforts to establish new parishes. Meanwhile, larger local authorities face significant pressure to meet statutory service demands, such as social care and temporary accommodation, leaving inadequate capacity for non-statutory services like community planning, green spaces and neighbourhood resilience – areas critical to local wellbeing which can be effectively managed at a hyperlocal level.

This report from the think tank Reform outlines a practical framework for ‘filling in the map’ of hyperlocal government through new neighbourhood councils and ‘combined neighbourhood councils’, where existing parishes join neighbouring councils to pool their resources, share back-office functions and find a more sustainable population footprint in order to draw down new responsibilities from other tiers of government. There would also be a new duty on local government to identify and support community groups to become the core of new neighbourhood councils.

As many English councils plan for the most significant reorganisation in decades, a recent LGIU briefing looked at potential lessons from local government reorganisations from around the world.

Connected clusters 2: mapping interregional connections in the UK – Bennett Institute for Public Policy

Business location decisions play a critical role in shaping regional economies, influencing investment, job creation and economic resilience. While policy has often focused on fostering competition between regions – either by directing resources to high-growth areas or redistributing funding more widely – less attention has been given to the underlying connections between regional economies.

This working paper examines firms’ location choices to provide new insights into how businesses operate across different geographies, helping to inform strategies that better support businesses and the places they operate in. The analysis highlights the economic hubs within a region and the connections between them, revealing patterns of business activity, sectoral growth and regional interdependencies.

The impact of hybrid working on the high street – Centre for Cities

Five years ago, the UK went into lockdown and many office workers began working from home. There were predictions of the death of the office, the hollowing out of cities and the rise of the local high street. This briefing looks at the third of these predictions, examining what impact hybrid working has had on spending by workers in city centres and their local neighbourhoods. It concludes that:

• Hybrid working means that city centre workers now do a smaller share of their spending in city centres, but this has not led to a boom in local spending. While these workers do spend more of their money close to home, the uplift has been modest. Suburban supermarkets appear to have been the biggest winners.
• Thursday has become the new Friday for the post work drink in central London, but after-work socialising appears to have become less common post-pandemic in other large city centres. Instead, in other large city centres outside London, Saturdays have overtaken Fridays as the day workers are most likely to spend money socialising in the city centre.
• Large city centres had vibrant high streets pre-pandemic due to the volume of commuters, creating a market for shops, bars and restaurants. While city centres remain a popular location to spend money, the reduction in worker footfall reduces this source of sales for city centres.

Going for growth: Measuring economic opportunity in UK towns – Social Market Foundation

Towns will play a critical role in the government’s economic growth ambitions. They are home to nearly half the population and provide over a third of national employment. However, their economic potential has often been overlooked, with investment and policy skewed towards cities.

This research highlights the dynamics of growth in towns over time, identifying key drivers and common themes. A growth benchmark tracks town performance across nine indicators: productivity; jobs; high streets; business environment; workforce; housing; green growth; transport, and; digital growth. High performing towns are categorised into four types:

• Thriving towns: these towns excel across multiple indicators; digital growth is a factor in the top 10 of thriving towns. Examples include Windsor and Halifax.
• Accelerator towns: the fastest-growing towns tend to be fuelled by green growth, commerce and job creation. Geographically dispersed, they include a mix of market towns and coastal communities.
• Productivity champions: these are high-productivity towns, mainly clustered near London, benefiting from proximity to major economic centres, strong industry links and strategic transport networks.
• Dynamic trading hubs: these are towns with buoyant consumer demand, helping them navigate the changes to retailing; they are widely dispersed.

On the topic of growing local economies, the LGIU published a briefing on Devolution and local economic growth in the lead up to the 2025 Spending Review.

Sub-regional fuel poverty data 2025 (2023 data)

These official statistics relate to sub-regional fuel poverty in England in 2023. Fuel poverty in England is measured using the low income low energy efficiency (LILEE) fuel poverty metric. The data tables show the rate of households in fuel poverty by region, local authority administrative area, parliamentary constituency and lower level super-output area (LSOAs).  Key points are:

• The overall level of fuel poverty in England in 2023 was 11.4% of households.
• The west midlands had the highest rate of fuel poverty (16.7%) followed by Yorkshire and the Humber (14.7%).
• The 20 local authorities with the highest rates of fuel poverty in 2023 had a fuel poverty rate higher than 15%. Over half of these authorities were in the west midlands (12 authorities) with the others in Yorkshire and Humber (4), north west (3) and south west (1) regions.

Summary of the Great British Insulation Scheme: April 2025

The Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) is a £1bn government scheme to help people insulate their homes. The scheme is scheduled to run until March 2026. These statistics are based on Ofgem data covering installations since the scheme started in March 2023 to the end of February 2025.

Since the start of GBIS, there have been 70,300 measures installed in 55,600 households to date. The most common measure so far has been cavity wall insulation (41% of the installations), loft insulation (28%) and heating controls (21%). The level of delivery under GBIS varies between local authorities. The authorities with the highest rate of upgrades so far are West Lindsey (1,665 upgrades per 100,000 households), Stoke-on-Trent (1,296 per 100,000 households) and Salford (1,015 per 100,000 households).

Programme of flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes – Environment Agency (EA)

The EA works with local authorities, internal drainage boards and local communities to develop projects to reduce flooding and coastal erosion. The government is committing a record two-year investment of £2.65bn in FCERM. This covers the period April 2024 to March 2026. The EA has published information about over 700 projects that will receive funding to better protect 52,000 homes and non-residential properties such as businesses, schools, hospitals and utility sites from floods and coastal erosion.

Progress in adapting to climate change: report to Parliament 2025 – Climate Change Committee

The increasing impacts of climate change are clear, both globally and in the UK. Adaptation is needed now to ensure that the UK is prepared for today’s extreme weather as well as future risks. This report assesses the extent to which the UK’s third national adaptation programme (NAP3) is preparing the UK for climate change. The key messages are:

• The UK’s preparations for climate change are inadequate and the new government has not yet turned this around.
• The government must act without further delay to improve the national approach to climate resilience, focusing on four key areas: improved objectives and targets, backed up by systems for monitoring; evaluation and learning; improved coordination across government, and; integrating adaptation into all relevant policies – the upcoming spending review is an opportunity to ensure there are sufficient resources for climate change adaptation across the public sector.

Why we need to reset action on climate change – Tony Blair Institute

There was a period where climate-change action and global agreements, notably the Paris Agreement in 2015, seemed to herald a new era and huge strides were made in renewables, energy efficiency and international commitments to climate action. However, the shocks of Covid-19 and the Ukraine war have presaged a backlash, and governments are backtracking on green policies. This paper argues for a reset of the debate and for pragmatic, realistic policy solutions. The latter include investing in carbon capture solutions; harnessing technology such as AI to support smart decarbonisation; investing in ‘frontier’ energy solutions such as nuclear fusion, as well as nature-based solutions such as forests and wetlands; prioritising adaptation and resilience; a new streamlined process for multi-lateral action, and; rethinking the role of finance and philanthropy.

Hot spot policing in England and Wales, year ending March 2023: evaluation of Grip and bespoke-funded hotspot policing

This report evaluates the impact of government-funded hotspot policing in 20 police forces in England and Wales in the year ending March 2023. It is the second in a series of reports measuring the impact of the hotspot programme called ‘Grip’. Unlike in the year ending March 2022, when the programme reduced violence and robbery offences in the hotspots, there was no statistically significant impact on crime for the year ending March 2023. However, the analysis suggests that the programme improved the number and rate of positive crime outcomes within hotspots in both years. This means that more crimes were solved in the hotspots and more weapons and drugs were found as a result of the programme. The report also discusses possible reasons for these effects.

Reducing reoffending: a synthesis of evidence on effectiveness of interventions

This synthesis provides an overview of evidence on what works to reduce reoffending, updating research previously published by the Ministry of Justice in 2013 and 2014. Evidence is drawn from a series of rapid evidence assessments conducted by academic experts in 2022. The research covered interventions such as accommodation, education, employment, finance, benefits and debt, and community ties. The evidence suggests that some interventions have the potential to deliver larger reductions in reoffending than others. For example, there is evidence that reoffending is lower amongst prison leavers who find employment or who move into accommodation with support. In contrast, there is a less direct relationship between mental health support and reoffending. It is likely the greatest reduction will be achieved where interventions are well-matched to the individual.

Measuring social and cultural infrastructure – Bennett Institute for Public Policy

This report, funded by the British Academy, explores how best to measure social and cultural infrastructure and presents a framework that highlights the core role such infrastructure plays in community life. It also offers practical applications for policymakers, funders and those people involved in the provision and maintenance of these assets, facilities and spaces, including local authorities.

Two broad themes emerge from the research. The first is that assets classed as social and cultural infrastructure demonstrate the same core characteristics as other types of infrastructure, while also contributing to the social and cultural lives of communities. The second is that measurement of social infrastructure should be seen as a process with three phases, with choices and decisions at each phase about what is measured and how it reflects the needs of all involved. The framework is designed to identify cultural and social infrastructure, measure both the ‘stock’ of infrastructure and its usage, and present the findings in engaging ways that facilitate action.

Growth isn’t good enough – Centre for Social Justice (CSJ)

Growth is important but it isn’t everything. Relationships, marriages, work, homes and environment all matter just as much, if not more, for a good life. Even though gross domestic product (GDP) is rising, the UK’s citizens, and especially its youth, are less satisfied with their lives. GDP is not an efficient measure of life satisfaction or national wellbeing and, therefore, should not be used as the ultimate barometer of the success of a nation.

In this report, the CSJ looks at all four areas of wellbeing (happiness, life satisfaction, worthwhileness and anxiety) to show that 719,000 people now live in misery in the UK: they score poorly on every count. 27% of people living in deprived areas have a low quality of life compared to the average of 13%. This report quantifies the current life satisfaction levels across the UK, examines models of life satisfaction and proposes policies to improve the wellbeing of Britain’s most vulnerable people.

Community, not catastrophe: what a whole society approach to preparedness really means – Young Foundation

The range of threats, risks and predictable crises facing the UK is rapidly growing. This report seeks to build greater awareness and understanding of the vital role of social infrastructure, social capital, voluntary capacity, and trusted information-sharing in crisis response and recovery. It calls on state actors, investors and businesses, all who play a critical role in a national or local crisis to recognise local people and communities as part of critical national infrastructure in times of crisis.

Get Britain Working outcomes

The government has an ambition to raise the employment rate to 80%. This policy paper describes the outcomes the government wants from employment, health and skills support to tackle economic inactivity, support people into good work and boost economic growth. The key outcomes are to increase the employment rate for people aged 18 to 66 (towards 80%) and to increase real earnings amongst non-retired households, especially in the bottom half of the income distribution. These key outcomes are supplemented by several intermediate outcomes to reduce employment inequalities between localities and between different groups of the population. The paper also sets out some key indicators that the government will monitor and report on annually.

How to do industrial strategy: a guide for practitioners – Resolution Foundation

This essay sets out a practical approach to industrial strategy in the UK, focused on boosting private investment and productivity. It considers the case for sectoral, technological and place-based approaches to industrial strategy; and proposes twenty policy tools spanning sectors, technologies, places, funding and state capability. Key proposals include sector deals for high-potential service industries, reform of planning rules to unlock urban productivity, and greater use of ‘catapults’ and challenge funds to support emerging technologies.

The paper argues that successful strategies combine top-down clarity with bottom-up engagement from businesses and localities. Sectoral approaches work best when tightly focused and supported by supply chain and skills initiatives. New technologies and innovation need stronger institutional support and better diffusion mechanisms. Finally, national security is now a key dimension of industrial strategy, requiring different approaches. As the UK looks to raise investment and tackle regional inequalities, this research offers a roadmap for turning the rhetoric of industrial strategy into results.

Nation Rebalanced: How do we create a country that works for all places? – Labour Together

The challenges of barely growing living standards, unaffordable housing, declining trust in politics and stagnating economic growth are a direct result of regional inequality. This paper advances the moral, economic and political case for rebalancing the country. It makes four recommendations:

• Use planning reform, pension reform and smarter regulation, to create a self-sustaining engine of privately-led growth, particularly in the greater south east.
• Change national government spending patterns and the Treasury green book to rebalance public growth spending outside the greater south east.
• Increase the spending and autonomy of the established mayoral authorities to deliver growth quickly in underperforming cities.
• Create growth corridor plans, agreed between national government and strategic authorities, around major transport schemes to spread the benefits across regions.

At your service? Why the 2025 spending review must reckon with the distribution of public service use – Resolution Foundation

After the financial crisis, the share of GDP spent on ‘unprotected’ public services – courts, police, social care, local authorities and more – fell from 8.3% to 5.9%. The current government’s plans to increase defence spending while protecting health services implies further cuts for unprotected services, including local government. This briefing note uses a novel microdata approach to build an ‘in kind’ benefits distribution model, which estimates which public services most benefit low-to-middle income families. Key findings are:

• Public services matter for all families – in 2025/26, English households will receive, on average, around £13,000 of ‘in kind’ benefits from the state, based on the costs of providing them.
• Public spending is redistributive: total in-kind benefits to households in the poorest fifth are £15,900, compared to £10,400 for the richest fifth.
• A balanced and progressive settlement at the upcoming spending review would give priority to services which are under performing and with which low-income households are less satisfied but rely on the most; including adult social care, special educational needs support and free school meals.

Acceptance of cash – Treasury Committee

Over the past few years, cash usage has decreased significantly across the UK. This committee inquiry focused on the acceptance of cash (following an earlier committee report on access to cash). In 2024, regulations were brought in to require banks and building societies to ensure access to cash, but there is no requirement for businesses and other services in the UK to accept cash. In many spaces – including some local authority car parks and leisure centres – cash is no longer accepted, and some fear a gradual shift towards a cashless society which will exclude people who rely on cash.

The committee concludes that the government must act to manage the decline in cash acceptance. The report makes recommendations on how HM Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority and Bank of England should maintain acceptance of cash, and how businesses and local government can be encouraged to support financial inclusion (including potentially mandating the acceptance of cash).

On Leadership: what makes delivery a success? – Tony Blair Institute

This is the second think piece in the TBI’s series on leadership. Success is not just a matter of having the right policies or the most ambitious goals – it is about creating the conditions that allow those ambitions to be delivered. These include leadership commitment, dedicated delivery teams, reliable data, a culture of problem solving and a relentless focus on results. While focused on national leaders, the advice on conditions for effective delivery is equally relevant to local leaders.

How to build equality and data protection into your AI commissioning and procurement processes: a guide for councils in England – LGA

This guide has been co-developed by the LGA, London Office of Technology and Innovation, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and Information Commissioner’s Office. It provides councils in England with questions to help them comply with the public sector equality duty and data protection law when procuring artificial intelligence (AI) based technology or contracting out part of their public functions to an organisation that uses AI-based technologies. This guide applies to the procurement of any goods or services that include AI-based technologies.

National Travel Survey (NTS) mid-year estimates: year ending June 2024

The NTS is a household survey of personal travel, with data collected via interviews and a seven-day travel diary. These statistics for the year ending June 2024 include data from the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2024. Main findings are:

• People living in England made on average 922 trips in the year ending June 2024, 5% higher compared to the year ending June 2023, however trip rates remained 3% lower than in 2019.
• Average trips increased for private transport modes, car drivers and car passengers, as well as some public transport modes, buses outside London, London Underground and surface rail compared to the previous year. Trip rates for these modes remained lower than pre-pandemic levels (2019).
• Active travel modes remained similar in the year ending June 2024 compared to the previous year. Walking was the only mode where trips were higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Transport and environment statistics: 2023

These official statistics show the environmental impacts of transport, including greenhouse gases and air pollutants emitted from different transport modes for the UK. In 2023, UK domestic transport accounted for:

• 111.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e), a decrease of 1% compared to 2022 and a decrease of 10% compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
• 29% of domestic greenhouse gas emissions.
• 49% of domestic nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions.
• 26% of domestic airborne particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5) emissions.
• 20% of domestic airborne particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 10 micrometres (PM10) emissions.

Planes, trains and automobiles: how green transport can drive manufacturing growth in the UK – Institute for Public Policy Research

Transport is essential to everyday life but it is also currently the largest source of UK domestic carbon emissions. This report calls for investment in infrastructure and the UK production of green transport equipment such as electric trains and cars, for which there will be high demand both here and abroad. The UK is well placed to capture this green growth potential, with its existing areas of advantage and specialisation in transport manufacturing. The government should lean into these strengths, supporting transport manufacturing clusters across the country.

The experience of additional [Jobcentre Plus] work coach support (AWCS)

This research was commissioned by the Department for Work and Pension (DWP) in order to inform the development and delivery of the AWCS programme, which aims to give Jobcentre Plus work coaches more time to understand customers’ barriers to work and provide (or signpost to) appropriate support to move customers towards work. This report discusses the experiences of AWCS customers and will be followed by a full longitudinal impact report next year. The main findings are:

• Customers typically had complex barriers to work, including health conditions and disabilities, and had limited support networks.
• Work coaches provided well-received referrals and signposting to other organisations to support with issues such as mental health, housing, financial problems/debt and social isolation.
• Customers had mixed views on the specific work-related advice they received, with some feeling that it was not tailored enough to their needs. But others found that simply talking to a work coach helped improve wellbeing.
• Only a small minority of participants achieved employment outcomes (in line with the general experience of this customer group) but some people took steps that moved them closer to work.

Where will cuts to sickness and disability benefits fall hardest? – Joseph Rowntree Foundation

The Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall has announced a package of reforms to sickness and disability benefits which will cut an estimated £7bn a year from the welfare budget. This new analysis by JRF indicates where the cuts will fall. Constituencies with high proportions of people on sickness and disability benefits will be hardest hit; these areas also tend to have high levels of deprivation.

The reforms will affect families in different ways depending on how multiple cuts interact with each other – for example, Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is a ‘passporting’ benefit so the loss of PIP may also mean losing other benefits. The JRF estimates that a single person over 25 losing PIP and Limited Capability for Work and Work-Related Activity (LCWRA) could lose £795 per month or 57% of their income after housing costs. Disposable income could fall the furthest for families where one person cares for another. If they lose eligibility for PIP, LCWRA and consequently Carer’s Allowance, they could lose £1,005 per month or 54% of their income after housing costs. It warns that the cuts will increase poverty and food bank usage.

Welfare reform: why Labour must go further – Centre for Policy Studies

The recent reforms announced by the Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, aim to make £4.1bn in savings by 2029/30, but the overall bill for disability and incapacity is projected to rise by 47% from current levels to a total of £97.7bn. This report outlines the scale of the challenge of bringing welfare spending down and getting more people into work. It urges the government to go further in four areas:

• Further reduce the PIP caseload, looking at mental health claims in particular.
• Extend the policy of removing the health element of Universal Credit (UC) for young claimants to those up to the age of 25 or even 30.
• Address the rising number of children getting Disability Living Allowance for mental health conditions, flowing into PIP when they reach 18.
• Implement the previous government’s plans to reform the work capability assessment, which the Office for Budget Responsibility and DWP say could have saved £1.6bn and led to 400,000 people fewer on the health element of UC (or expedite alternative plans).

No money, more problems: reconsidering asset-based welfare – Fairness Foundation

As well as providing resilience against economic shocks, financial assets have proven positive impacts on employment wages, mental and physical health, and civic participation. Individuals with financial assets are more likely to vote, volunteer and engage in society more broadly. However, there is little attention from policy makers on asset-building policies, a gap this paper seeks to address.

While the proportion of individuals in the UK with zero or negative financial wealth in the UK has decreased from 26% in 2008-10 to 21% in 2020-22, concerning trends persist, including rising personal debt and significant inequalities in asset ownership by region and age group. 25-34 year-olds are the age group with the highest proportion of people with zero or negative wealth; this is notable because this age group undergo critical life transitions that require financial stability. As well as focusing on policies that address extreme wealth such as wealth taxes, policy makers should reconsider earlier experiments in asset-based welfare, for example child trust funds.

An interim update on the practical implications of the UK Supreme Court judgment [on biological sex and gender] – Equality and Human Rights Commission

The EHRC is working to update its statutory and non-statutory guidance in the light of the recent Supreme Court judgement, and has issued an interim update on the main consequences of the judgment. The Supreme Court ruled that in the Equality Act 2010, ‘sex’ means biological sex. This means that, under the Act: a ‘woman’ is a biological woman or girl (a person born female) and a ‘man’ is a biological man or boy (a person born male). If somebody identifies as trans, they do not change sex for the purposes of the Act, even if they have a Gender Recognition Certificate.

This judgment has implications for many organisations, including workplaces and services that are open to the public including schools and leisure facilities. The update states that employers and other duty-bearers must follow the law and should take appropriate specialist legal advice where necessary.

Arts and culture round-up: November 2024

Early childhood education round-up: 2024

England policy round up: March 2025

Health, public health and social care round-up: March – April 2025

Housing and planning round-up: April 2025

Northern Ireland Programme for Government – Insights for local government

Parliamentary update: April 2025

Young people and youth services round-up: November 2024

Scotland Programme for Government 2025/26 – Insights for local government