Five insights on local government and its future from LGIU’s 2025 Top Thinkers

In 2025, local government was challenged to navigate an ever-changing landscape. The sector confronted rising complexity, from social fragmentation and the development of AI, to climate risk and the rise of misinformation. Now more than ever, leaders across the sector are calling for a shift in how councils engage with and protect their communities.

In light of the events that have unfolded throughout 2025, we asked our Future Local Lab Top 25 Thinkers for their reflections and advice. Five key ideas stood out and offer a helpful guide to navigating the future of local governance and leadership.

1. Rebuilding trust and connection with communities
2. Shifting from service providers to co-producers
3. Courageous and imaginative leadership
4. Resilience and systems for the future
5. Local government can do this

1. Rebuilding trust and connection with communities

As we move into the future, local government’s legitimacy will increasingly depend on deep, sustained trust-building with residents, not one-off consultations. It will be genuine partnerships with residents that define community engagement.

Across multiple reflections, there was a strong call to recentre local government around genuine, place-based relationships. Alicia McKay, writer, speaker and strategist, emphasised that the true strength of local government lies in “the genuine connection to people that live in your place, and the capacity to build trust, cohesion and community.” She encouraged local government to invest in the shared spaces and face-to-face relationships that bind communities, not in online performance.

These reflections remind councils to step away from online performativity, as it underscores how easily trust and cohesion can be strained in digital settings. Mary Agostino, CEO of Mitchell Shire Council in Australia, echoed this sentiment. Reinforcing that local government’s close proximity to communities is what gives it its unique power to build strong relationships based on trust and wellbeing “from the ground up”.

2. Shifting from service providers to co-producers

Throughout 2025, it was made clear that the future of local governance is built through collaboration. Looking to the future, it will be more important than ever for local government to build structures that empower their communities to imagine, lead and own the solutions shaping their homes.

Several of our Top Thinkers highlighted this need for a cultural shift in how councils operate, moving from being providers of services to co-creators of local projects. Sheila R. Foster, Professor at Columbia University’s Climate School, challenged leaders to consider whether they are establishing systems that enable community innovation or suppress it. The reflections emphasised this need to look beyond whether innovation purely exists, and instead consider whether local systems help emerging ideas thrive or inadvertently hold them back.

With the acceleration of climate disasters, housing crises and institutional breakdowns, there was strong encouragement for councils to invest early in supportive intermediaries and more flexible structures so that resilience can grow from within communities themselves. Top Thinkers urged council leaders to design outcomes with the people they serve and to allow community voices to guide and reshape practice. Professor Donna Hall, former CEO of Wigan Council, echoed this, emphasising that leadership must go beyond isolated initiatives, noting that it’s no longer time for silo working, “It’s time for everything, everywhere, all at once.”

3. Courageous and imaginative leadership

Courageous and imaginative leadership emerged as a unifying theme across the responses. To be future-ready, local government needs brave leaders ready to rethink systems and take risks for the public good, rather than tinkering at their edges. Ultimately, leadership must move beyond managing decline; however, it is crucial that local government is properly resourced if it is to implement this meaningfully and effectively.

Donna Hall argued for a form of “radical place leadership” to reset the broken social contract between citizens and the state. Such leadership depends on nurturing a culture of questioning, exploration and imaginative thinking to overcome constraints and drive innovation in local government. Others stressed that maintaining the status quo is no longer viable, and that leadership now demands a willingness to act boldly.

Jack Shaw, Senior Advisor for Labour Together, offered another particularly striking reflection, warning that the sector is now feeling the consequences of what he terms a “death of imagination.”  Local government’s constant exposure to challenges has often left councils in conditions that make innovation feel almost impossible. Yet, Shaw argues, this context makes imagination even more essential. The importance of asking fundamental questions and fostering space for new ideas and thinking was acknowledged by other Top Thinkers. They warned that without this, councils risk stagnation.

This insight aligns with broader encouragements for leaders to be audacious and to experiment. Together, these reflections point to the need for a new culture across local government, one where courage, curiosity and creative risk-taking are central to leadership and shared across the whole workforce.

4. Resilience and systems for the future

The local government sector’s future resilience depends on systems-level thinking, breaking silos, deepening partnerships and embedding flexibility into local institutions.

Finally, across these reflections, there’s a shared understanding that councils operate in an increasingly complex world, with crises in climate, housing and governance demanding new capacities. Trusted intermediaries and interdisciplinary capacities in fostering resilience have never been more important, and our Top Thinkers highlighted how councils have already demonstrated remarkable adaptability in crisis, offering a foundation for what comes next. Professor Jaap de Visser of the Dullah Omar Institute, reaffirmed this point, stressing the importance of staying anchored to principles of democracy and human dignity during times of uncertainty.

Councils and leaders were encouraged to approach 2026 with sharper questions. Who are the trusted intermediaries in your community? What political or administrative barriers currently block local innovation? What new capacities must be built to meet the next decade’s challenges?

5. Local government can do this

Across all the reflections, a shared message emerged: local government is more capable and resilient than the challenges surrounding it. While the pressures are undeniable, the sector’s greatest strength remains its deep, grounded connection to community. This closeness enables councils to build trust, listen effectively, invest in shared spaces and relationships, and anchor their work in the everyday realities of the people they serve.

Our Top Thinkers highlighted that communities are already innovating in response to crises, and councils have the power to create processes that help this innovation flourish. By removing barriers, supporting trusted local intermediaries, and embracing collaborative models, councils can shift from delivering to communities to building solutions with them. Resilience grows when local government is flexible, curious, courageous, and committed to whole-system approaches rather than isolated initiatives.

Most importantly, it was made clear in these reflections that over the past year, councils have already proved they’re doing the work. Across regions, local government has responded to crises, forged new partnerships, amplified local voices, and led change from the ground up.  The collective insight is clear. Local government can not only meet the needs of today, it can shape tomorrow.

Looking ahead

Together, these five themes sketch a hopeful yet challenging vision of the future: one where local government must lean further into trust, collaboration, courage, imagination and systemic resilience. In an era defined by uncertainty, the sector’s future will be shaped not only by what councils deliver, but by how they lead, connect and create alongside their communities. Mary Agostino’s final reminder to “never do it alone” captured the spirit of all these reflections. The future of local government will be achieved not through isolated effort but through thoughtful partnerships and community integration. Future challenges become opportunities when they are tackled collectively.