Interview with Adele Gritten, Chief Executive of Local Partnerships

Adele Gritten has been Chief Executive of Local Partnerships since November 2022. Local Partnerships are an in-house public sector delivery partner jointly owned by the LGA, HM Treasury and Welsh Government, who work with government departments, local government, and a whole range of people doing some really interesting consultancy and support work. Local Partnerships are also one of LGIU’s founding strategic partners. Adele came to Local Partnerships with a really interesting background in the private and public sectors. She was head of economic development and commercial investments at South Cambridgeshire District Council. She’s had many years of senior management roles for a range of professional service consultancies. 

Watch the full conversation on YouTube here:

Timestamps:

01:55 Understanding Local Partnerships’ role

04:50 Local government at the heart of Local Partnerships

05:25 The significance of devolution

08:04 Balancing ambition and pragmatism in devolution

09:35 Complexity and challenges of LGR

12:22 Delivering devolution through a long-term lens

15:00 Devolution and LGR as groundwork for Total Place?

17:00 Navtigating the LGR landscape

18:58 Challenges still facing LGR

21:21 Deciding what day-one LGR success looks like

22:53 Cultural integration and bold leadership in new authorities

24:29 Future challenges for local government

26:40 Shifts in community engagement in local politics

28:43 Optimism in local government’s determination

Full interview transcript

Many of our listeners and viewers will be very familiar with Local Partnerships, but for anyone who is not, could you explain a little bit about who Local Partnerships are and how you work with councils and other partners in the sector? 

Yeah, sure. And you stole my thunder a little bit by giving the headline introduction as to who we are and the ownership structure, but it is fairly unique. So as you alluded to, we are effectively a joint venture between the LGA, Treasury and the Welsh Government. Our purpose is really quite simple. We’re here to support the public sector, specifically local government, central government departments, and involved administrations, to deliver better outcomes. So our strapline is that we deliver value and efficacy for the public purse. 

So that could mean financial savings, organisational operational efficiencies, net-zero-related efficiencies, or, quite often, more qualitative or softer outcomes such as social value, etc. So we’re effectively an in-house delivery partner supporting change, improvement and sector betterment. 

We work in England and Wales currently because of the ownership structure. We’ve done a little bit for the Scottish government. Predominantly, our footprint is across England and Wales. And we, in any one week, could be working with districts, counties, the Unitaries, combined authorities, or city regions. We’ve done some work for national parks, fire and rescue authorities, and central government departments. So it’s breadth and depth across the public sector ecosystem. And I guess the people we have got backgrounds in local government, they’ve got backgrounds in central government, they’ve got commercial expertise and quite a bit of technical skill set as well. So, a really rich and diverse set of skill sets to bring to the complex projects and programmes of the day. 

I think that ownership structure is really interesting, as you say, effectively a joint venture, but what impact does that have on the way you work and the way in which you connect with the public sector? 

From where I sit, it’s a really unique and privileged ownership structure. There isn’t anything else out there like us. I don’t think there’s anything else out there with that tripartite structure. So we are very unique in that sense. And what it means is that we can often act as that sort of interface or bridge between central government policy decision-making and local implementation. So we’re sometimes commissioned directly via the LGA or with councils on projects, but often we’re commissioned directly from central government departments, MHCLG, Cabinet Office and DEFRA to deliver large projects at scale for the entire sector. So I guess, as you said earlier, we see things from both sides of the fence. We see things from a central perspective, but we also see things from an impact on the ground, local perspective. So it’s a really privileged role that we can have.

At Local Partnerships, partnerships are key. We’re about brokering those relationships across the sector to make things happen. We often get involved in those thorny, sticky projects where stuff has been stuck, and we can leverage our partnership ecosystem to make things move. Whether that’s supporting the LGA as we are now with its council health building support service, for example, to unlock the 1.5 million homes. 

Or whether it’s supporting DEFRA with its Waste Infrastructure Development Program and the transition given EPR and all those sorts of things, that we’re often at that interface between local and central. 

There’s a credibility and a sort of sense that you have the sector’s interests at heart and you’re not external to it. You’re for the sector and of the sector as well as serving the sector. 

Yeah, absolutely. We’re an LLP, we’re owned by the public sector for the public sector and we don’t make a profit. Our job is to cover our costs plus 5-10%and 50% of that is redistributed back to the owners for sector-wide improvement work. So everything that we do make is then ploughed back into sector-wide improvement support work. For example, the report that we did with you guys. 

Yeah, which is not the case for all people working with the public sector. You mentioned the report that we did together. We’re going to talk a bit about that in a second, but you have been doing, and we have been doing, and we have jointly been doing lots of work with councils in different parts of England around devolution. Taking a step back – and I’m conscious also that there are places in which devolution and LGR are not happening, so I want to talk a bit later about some of the other things that are happening in the sector – but why do you think it is important to focus on devolution? 

Well, I think it’s really important because it determines where decisions are made and who is accountable and I guess how resources can be aligned to deliver impact. Obviously, we’re living through a time where councils are facing acute financial pressures and rising demand. We’ve obviously all heard about the adults, health, children and social services. The need to transform and to drive inclusive growth is, I guess, more acute than ever before, and governance and powers are no longer abstract questions; they’re actually a delivery question. So it’s really important that we get to grips with the mechanics, which is again why we work together on the report. I think we’re seeing the need to better join up the various challenges that have been bottlenecks or limitations to systems before. So, transport integration, skills, pipelines and innovation, these things need to be solved at a regional scale. But there are other things, whether it’s community safety, prevention, or social care. 

Those pathways need decisions closer to the people we talk about. So devolution, in that sense, needs to be tackled at the most effective level, and that alignment and accountability piece is really where it needs to be at the moment, and obviously, a wrap-around economic resilience, reform, net zero obligations, and transitions as well. 

It’s a complicated time to be working and delivering in government, so now more than ever before, that devolution layer and what it’s there to deliver is really an important part of the overall local government jigsaw. 

I think “It’s a complicated time” is the most diplomatic statement I’ve heard so far in 2026. Yes, it certainly is complicated. But I think it’s really interesting, the emphasis you placed there. I mean, I think sometimes some of us focus on the democratic and governance aspects of devolution, which are really important, but we often focus on those. And your point, quite rightly, is that actually this is also really about the future of public service delivery. How are we making decisions about it? Where is that happening? What are the geographies? How does it connect? If we want to transform public services, we have to engage with that dynamic through the lens of devolution and devolved decision-making. The white paper the government published just over a year ago—though it feels longer—was presented as a really ambitious programme for devolution. I would tend to agree that it was ambitious. Do you agree? And if so, how has that actually landed and resonated around the country with councils, in your experience?

I get asked this question quite a lot from various bits of Whitehall as well as on a local basis. I’d summarise the response really simply and say, I think the sectors responded with ambition, but with pragmatism. I generally do believe those two words. So it’s an ambitiously pragmatic, and it’s a pragmatically ambitious response. I think there’s a huge appetite to secure the clearer powers, that decision making, that longer term funding horizon, and the coherent framework to place leadership, which many people have said has been missing in different parts of the country. When local areas are able to see a pathway from strategy to delivery, whether that’s through combined authorities, county deals, or the more mature joint committee structure, there is enthusiasm to move at pace, and that’s where stuff really works. But I think there are probably three-ish sort of caveats where there are still thorns and question marks about how you mobilise if the things are missing, and that fiscal realism is a reality. You cannot deliver transformative outcomes without predictable long-term multi-year funding settlements and sensible conditions and parameters around that. 

So, the short-term part here, we’ve talked about the frequent rebadging of parts and the complex bidding cycles, really does erode that capacity and confidence. I really do think the Whitehall Government Cabinet Office have heard this very loud and clear, and it is absolutely acting on it. But as ever, it’s complicated and very difficult to get those mechanics to be aligned all at the same time in the same way, not least in the context of this thing called LGR panning out and organisational complexity around it. 

I think, again, our report touched a little bit on this and the sorts of things that you need to consider in that context. I do think that institutional clarity piece – that councils want to understand the end state of English devolution. While yes, the white paper does a very good way to articulating that, there are clearly practical considerations and questions around making it happen and enabling it. So how do these different models relate? How are powers graduating over time? What is the cyclality of all of that? How do you avoid duplication across the tiers? They’re all very live questions that we’re working through with councils as part of LGR and the governance structures required. 

Then there’s the capacity and capability piece that we talk about a lot. Councils are already stretched. A very specialist support is needed at the moment, whether it’s governance, programme management, commercial assurance, and a lot of data, digital capacity and capability needed to get stuff in order. Luckily, that’s the bread and butter of what we do, but a lot of complexity in terms of making that happen. So ambitious pragmatism, but things to consider around that fiscal piece, the institutional piece and the capacity piece. 

As you said, we did a report together back in November looking at the future of combined authorities and mayoral strategic authorities. We concluded that there was lots of evidence of what works well and what doesn’t work so well within existing combined authorities, but that, as you said, there wasn’t that institutional clarity from government about exactly what the role of a strategic authority is going to be. Exactly what the functional division of responsibilities with constituent local authorities should be. And the roadmap about where this is going and what it should look like by, not just by 2030, but by 2040, 2050. That state-making or governance framework, what it looks like as a vision of the country, was perhaps slightly lacking. 

Okay, you’ve got that challenge around the fiscal, you’ve got the challenge around the sort of institutional clarity, you’ve got the challenge around the capacity. Those things are real, right? And they won’t be met by government just saying, this is our program and when everything needs to happen all at once. It seems to me there is a risk that if we don’t resolve those issues, a very ambitious program ends up being a bit piecemeal and fragmentary. You end up, instead of creating a sort of uniformity of devolution across the country, deepening the current level of patchwork, making it more patchy. What needs to happen to bring those things together so that we do end up with an aggregate effect, rather than just a patchwork of great things happening in one place and nothing happening in another? 

Yeah, I think, well, you could answer this in different ways, and we could have a whole hour on this question alone, but we’ll try and sort of keep it simple and high-level. I do think that there is an acknowledgement and there needs to be an acknowledgement that long-term system-wide approaches and perspectives are required in all of this. The reality is that institutional building takes time. So, the governance choices that we are making now, the committee structures, the scrutiny, the financial frameworks, the partnership protocols, all those things are shaping the institutional capacity for a decade or more. So I think the people who understand and are in tune with that will be the ones who win out longer term.

And then there’s a lot about that transition overlap. You and I have talked previously about the relay baton, it’s kind of my phrase, but it’s the way I see it that quite often when you’re talking about different organisations working together, you talk about team here, team there, but there’s very little about what happens when that person running from A to B is literally passing that baton over. Get it right, you win the race; get it wrong, drop the baton, it’s game over. I think we’ve all seen the examples in the sector, haven’t we, where that baton is dropped. 

Part of the reason for this report is to ensure that where those baton drop-off points could occur, there is mitigation in place from the outset. So leaders need to see that sequence, not siloed plans to reform and to avoid fatigue or indeed duplication. I think now is the chance for that place-based competitiveness to come to the fore in a positive way. Total Place, whole place, whatever you want to call it. I know there’s been various iterations, a legacy approach to place, but now more than ever before, you’ve got to align that skills piece, as we’ve talked about, that’s often been dealt with separately, to the transport piece, to the housing piece, to the climate investment and the resilience piece. Understanding all of those components of a place and of a region is really key. So that long-term lens can affect the investment in relationships and operating models, and indeed investment into the regions in the right kind of positive way. It’s the collaborative muscle memory that needs to retain and reinvent itself. 

Absolutely. The relay baton is a really powerful way of visualising it. You talked about Total Place, or whole place, whatever we want to call it. What’s your sense of the appetite for that?. My worry is that there’s a tendency in government to do that because government silos into big spending departments, and it’s very hard to join that up. Thinking about devolution and LGR together, does that give us the groundwork to actually take that idea seriously this time around? Thinking about integrated settlements in places like Greater Manchester. 

That’s a great question. I wasn’t around in the sector at the time, although I was supporting the sector from the other side of the fence in a consultancy guise. I would say, going back to the points I mentioned earlier, I regularly spend time in meetings with cabinet office colleagues, MHCLG, or DEFRA, and I think understanding the matrix management across Whitehall is much more prevalent now than perhaps it would have been 10, 15, 20 years ago. The digital capabilities we all have at our disposal mean we can share data, have the same data at the same time, more readily than perhaps was the case in 2000, for sure. So I do think what I call the matrix management approach to understanding thorny issues is definitely very much embedded across the Whitehall system. The challenge now is to make the very complicated regional and local system marry that. And that’s precisely what LGR is meant to do. It’s meant to simplify structures, isn’t it? 

So we’ve talked a lot about devolution. Let’s talk specifically about LGR. When you look at the sector, where are we? What’s working? What’s not working? What do we need to change to make a success of that process? 

Yeah, we’re obviously in what I could call a sort of selective opportunistic led reorganisation phase where clearly some are on a faster programme than others and I think some areas have moved quite decisively where there’s local consensus, business cases simplification, all that kind of stuff and alignment with the wider devolution piece we’ve talked about but equally there are some areas where they’re probably still grappling with the political complexity of that region. But in terms of what’s working well, I would say that the service simplification piece and the strategic coherence are welcomed by residents, businesses and I think most of the political fraternities. New unitaries that can integrate strategy, commissioning and delivery across core areas like planning, housing, waste, that’s reducing duplication across the system, is obviously a good thing. 

There is something about needing to see the pace of decision-making and accountability ramp up. So again, a single-tier governance structure should theoretically shorten decision chains and clarity of who’s responsible for what, but obviously remains to be seen with new areas. Ultimately, on paper, that is exactly what is meant to happen and can happen. 

And again, a huge bit where we get involved is the commercial side of things, that procurement, commercial leverage. Now is the chance for the sector to really leverage its unified buying power and contract management at pace and scale. The reality is a lot of what we find with where finances have gone awry is because contracts are diverse, contracts are expensive. Once the local government ecosystem understands the buying power that it has collectively or as larger units, I think further savings, efficiencies and commercial pragmatism can ensue. 

So a lot of good things can arise. But I think there are still quite a few things that perhaps aren’t working or need more ironing out. Obviously, the compressed timelines are very difficult for many. That clearly does create bottlenecks and stresses in teams, particularly some of the core finance, ICT, HR – that’s legal transition stuff. If it’s not carefully managed or managed with due diligence and appropriate due diligence, that could come back to bite you further down the line. 

There is still a little bit about the unclear interface that we’ve talked about in different regions, where there is going to be a mayoral authority or MCA, or there’s going to be different regional powers. That intersection again. That baton piece between spatial planning and where different local plans versus macro regional plans sit. The net zero funding streams; where they go, where they sit, there’s some complexity around that at the moment and general business engagement. So quite a few things to sort out. And obviously, there’s the legacy complexity. Complex pensions in local government, complex assets and liabilities, complex estate, complex harmonisation of terms and conditions, and, not least, the cultural integration. There are huge things that we need to do. They would take FTSE 250s an awful lot of time to do this, whereas we’re expected to do it in a matter of months. So the challenge is not to be underestimated and huge hats off to the sector for rising to that challenge and delivering broadly on the timelines set by central government. 

When we think about LGR, one of the things on which there are different approaches, and again, there’s probably no right answer, but where some places say, look, this bit of the process is very much about the transition, making sure we’re safe and legal on day one, which is essential, of course, but public service transformation, culture, etc. We see other people saying, we need to make sure as we start building these new unitaries that we’re getting the design principles right, that we’re building a transformative effect to public service delivery, that we’re thinking differently about how we engage communities. No doubt there’s a spectrum there, and presumably the answer is somewhere in the middle. Where would you sort of advise people to be thinking on that spectrum? 

Yeah, and that’s a great question. I am sort of asked it in slightly different ways. And I guess I look at it from the perspective of what does success look like? So, when a new unitary is created, post vesting day, what does day one post vesting day look like? Because you say a lot of the effort is going into that safe and legal, but that stuff doesn’t happen on day one, there’s so much you need to be doing by way of groundwork before. 

We advise our councils that we’re working with on thinking about how you’re going to show and demonstrate that you are that organisation that’s moved quickly from standing itself up to genuinely functioning as one coherent council, so that one voice, that one coherence is there. How are you going to make sure that your core services are stable and uninterrupted? Residents can’t be experiencing cracks; they need to have that smooth transition rather than the mechanics of reorganisation. And again, that’s yet to be tested in some of the areas undergoing it right now. Staff absolutely need to know how decisions are made, who’s accountable, and how to navigate the new operating model. There’s no good people rocking up day one to a new organisation and they don’t know who their line managers are or who is effectively heading their services or systems. And believe me, that has been the case in previous iterations. So we need to get all of that right. 

The leadership team absolutely has to be aligned and visible from day one around priorities and the shifting focus from that structural change to the outcome delivery piece. Obviously, all of that financial control stuff, governance, take that as read that that needs to be in place. But I do think that the cultural pieces are important. From day one, people need to feel that they belong to a single organisation. They can’t arrive and wait for the new leadership team to set out their vision, it’s vision at that, otherwise it is in danger of becoming a group of legacy councils coming together. So that cultural piece cannot be underestimated and does actually need to be started right now, even if the new leadership is not clear. 

You’ve got to be brave, you’ve got to be bold, you’ve got to set some context and parameters so that partners, particularly externally, see joined-up authorities, confident places in essence. Success today means momentum for tomorrow. 

Long-winded way of answering your question, but that cultural piece is often underestimated, but it’s the most crucial. We talk about culture eating strategy for breakfast, don’t we? It’s a well-used phrase, but that’s ultimately what makes things fall apart, it’s people. It’s rarely processes or systems, or the processes and systems fall down if people and relationships are falling down. So you get that right first. 

That’s really, really helpful, a really important message because yes, I understand that hesitancy. It’s so much for leaders who have to hold all of this at the same time. I totally get how challenging that is. But you’re right, we just have to have the courage to seize it and start creating that early on. I think that’s really important. 

Look, that’s a lot on LGR because LGR is a lot, Devo is a lot. But of course, local government is a big beast, right? And there’s a lot of other stuff going on. What are the other big policy issues that you see coming through that councils really need to focus on? 

I mean, it’s still the same buckets of what we’ve talked about. So that financial resilience and sustainability and service sustainability piece is key. But there is that more fundamental question of what is local government here to do? As I’m not quite sure that’s been addressed fully enough at the moment. Now is the chance to not only think we have to continue the services we have on a slightly larger footprint, but it’s also; are the services fit for purpose in a 21st century digital landscape? Not least if devolution and combined authorities have gone to different things. So that radical approach to what a local government footprint should look like is being discussed in some quarters more than others. But that’s certainly something that we’re seeing more on the radar. 

There’s obviously the stabilisation piece we’ve talked about, the pressured services. And there’s the still net zero and climate adaptation, resilience and risk work. So we’re getting brought in a lot more to do that scenario planning and worst case design to make sure the regional ecosystem stacks up. So, police crime health working well in crisis and climate adaptation guises; quite a lot of work that needs to happen there. Unfortunately, the floods and the adverse weather conditions we’re seeing are going one way, the wrong way. Local ecosystems need to be able to work together in different ways and perhaps more complicated ways than they have done hitherto. So again, we’re part of a lot of that resilience planning work. 

Yeah, flooding in particular opens up a whole set of governance issues that we haven’t got time for today. It’s massive. But what’s really important is that we’re also seeing that even in areas where some of the current structural change doesn’t directly impact them, they are still starting to ask those fairly fundamental questions about what is local government here to do? What should public services look like? How do we sort of manage all this at the subregional and local level? That feels to me like quite an encouraging development. What’s your perspective? I think that feels like it’s more true now than it was even three or four years ago. 

I think it is. We often talk about the democratic deficit of residents not being engaged in local elections, and we can talk at length about turnout in elections, etc. But I think there is more happening on the ground in terms of residents and across all cohorts of society, younger generations, older generations, sort of getting together, talking, connecting, trying to think more about place in society, not least in the context of everything we see in our press. I’m not going to make any political commentary, broken Britain, et cetera, et cetera. But I think people are thinking much more about how do I fit me, myself and I within a community? What kind of community do I want to be part of? And that by default ladders up to then the local authority ecosystem, meeting new groups, meeting new people, new cohorts of society to engineer services and support required for them. 

I think there’s probably more happening that we’re not seeing because it’s not embedded in the sort of traditional ways in which we’ve engaged with our residents and businesses. But again, lots of interesting stuff, I think, is happening in different parts of the country in terms of how they’re doing their listening exercise, how they’re building their local plans, how they’re working with residents and businesses on climate resilience. There’s lots of really good stuff happening that I think will come through in new service design eventually over the couple of years. 

100% agree. And I think for the sector, the challenge is how to make sure we surf that wave of energy, rather than just running parallel to it, which is a really big challenge. 

Look, things are challenging out there. There is a lot of political contestation. There’s a lot of uncertainty. There’s a lot of turbulence. We’re all aware of that. But also, at LGIU, and I suspect this applies at Local Partnerships as well, we’re sort of by definition, professional optimists. We wouldn’t do this if we didn’t think there were ways of making things better, and there weren’t things to build on and scope to keep improving. When you look at your work programme, what are the things you are looking forward to? What are the things you’re looking forward to working with councils on?

That’s a good question. I am excited. I am a glass-half-full person, always have been, rather than the doom warrior, as it were. But I really am quite optimistic actually, because I can see the determination and the ingenuity across local government. I can see that can do attitude, we’ve got to make this happen, we’ve got to make it work, let’s do it, let’s mobilise. That’s the bread and butter of public service. I’m seeing that in abundance across the ecosystem, even though there’s an acknowledgement that it’s difficult. Our job, alongside delivering that value and efficacy, is to turn local and central government ambition into reality and reliable delivery. We are completely excited to be working at the heart of that day in day out. So I guess I’d answer in a more general sort of chief exec type terms, but I am looking forward to ensuring that we continue to support long-term place strategies that really stick. 

Helping leaders create those governance, financial structures, and delivery capacity that endure beyond electoral cycles. Stepping outside of the politics and what’s going to work for the longer term is absolutely what we’re about. The net zero and decarbonisation piece is still core to what we do and core to what’s needed, whether that’s homes, whether it’s public estate, whether it’s fleet, heat networks. We work very closely with DEFRA and other central government departments and DESNZ to make sure these aren’t just strategies, but they’re visible pipelines of projects that ultimately drive job growth, creation and resilience. And then, as I say, that interface between local, regional, and national governance is where we’re going to be working a lot this year. We’ve been really proud to be the delivery partner for the LGA on its council house building support service, for example. So that’s a tangible example of us really working with the sector. I think we’ve got 85 councils we’re working with at the moment to help them shore up the pipeline to be able to deliver those homes where there’ve been bottlenecks or stuff has been stalled or stuck. We’ve got all the “Avengers Assemble” like teams to go in to help support, mobilise and move that stuff quickly. So wherever we can see, we’re making a tangible, practical difference to moving the dial on those key government priorities. I guess it’s what makes a lot of my colleagues get out of bed every day and be proud to come work for the public sector. 

That’s tremendously exciting. I think there’s a tired narrative, isn’t there, about local government being bureaucratic and jobworthy. But what I see is a sort of can-do attitude linked to some really practical delivery on really difficult, complex challenges, and that is tremendously exciting. So, we don’t need to get into the politics of Britain, but there is an awful lot of building and doing and making out there that we should celebrate, and that’s exciting to be involved with. So, I’m going to stop us there because that’s a brilliantly positive note. Let’s end on a high. Adele, thank you so much for joining us.