As April gets into full swing we’re just going to take a moment to look back over the past month and round up some of what has been going on at LGiU.
A lot of briefings of course; among our members the most widely read included, unsurprisingly, Brexit and the UK Economy but also Veg out: why 5 A Day hasn’t worked and High streets and town centres in 2030. Towns and place is a topic to which we will be returning in April and throughout the year in our policy and other work.
The work of our Homelessness Commission is drawing to a close. The Commission met last month and one of the presentations they heard was from Bob Jordan the National Director of Housing First for the Republic of Ireland; he has also authored a blog for us on responses to homelessness in Ireland. The final report of the Homelessness Commission will be coming out at the end of May.
Homelessness was also the topic of one of the three LGiU podcasts in March; LGiU researcher Andrew Walker, Southwark Cabinet Member for Housing Stephanie Cryan, and Dawn Eckersley from the East London Housing Partnership discuss the drivers behind the housing crisis.
We continue each month to build on our longterm work on local government finance and funding; look out in early summer for the report from our Finance Taskforce. Jennifer Glover’s blog article published last week serves as a searing reminder, if one were needed, of the crisis that we are in: aptly titled Countdown – one year til the financial cliff edge it’s well worth a read.
And finally at the end of March we kicked off our local election work with a guide to elections communications, with a focus on using comms to help achieve better democracy. Our elections focus will of course continue throughout April (this week we published Ones to watch, our look at where the election action will be) right up to election day – and night – on 2nd May. Keep up with all our elections blogs, publications and other work on the local elections page.
Members can access all our policy briefings here.
Everyone can read all our blogs here.
We also run excellent seminars and training open to anyone (though members get a discount).
