Local government policy
Research Topic
Language: English
This is a research topic created to provide authors with a place to attach new problem publications.
Research problems linked to this topic
- What interventions can support communities to tap into and take ownership of social investment at local and “hyper-local” levels?
- How can levels of civil society and of pride in place in a local area be increased?
- How do we ensure a sustainable economic recovery post COVID-19 with environmental outcomes built in; and what is the potential for rural communities and businesses to contribute?
- How can different mixes of ‘responses’ – such as regulations, taxes (for example polluter pays), subsidies (for example public money for public goods), and spatial planning – impact the delivery of environmental, economic, and social outcomes at different spatial scales?
- What is the evidence for which local growth interventions are most effective in different scenarios? Does the mix of interventions matter, and how should we measure impact and value for money in that scenario? What are the displacement and spillover effects of place-based interventions to surrounding areas?
- How can local governance best be coordinated with national?
- How do issues related to CSY’s policy responsibilities affect pride in place and social capital at the local level?
- What does the evidence show about the most appropriate ways of developing and supporting local public services across the UK?
- How can we balance different interests at local and national levels, to provide the resources we need, reduce degradation of natural capital and improve the state of the environment?
- What has the pandemic taught us are the necessary pre-conditions for effective devolution of a public service to the local tier? Within that, what has the pandemic taught us about how accountability, such as managing public money, should be managed? And where does the evidence show that centralisation is more appropriate?
- How should high performing and efficient local government and local public services be incentivised?
- How does well-being matter in the context of levelling up? What are the most effective levers for government (central and local) to affect well-being? How does well-being interact with other place based interventions such as housing and regeneration?
- What motivates people to get involved and active in their area? Some people living in poverty and challenging situations do get involved, many do not; why? What can we do to remove barriers or create better conditions for wider engagement from a broader range of people in areas?
- How do you incentivise collective efforts to improve resilience capabilities locally (and in a context of scarce resources)?
- Does a tightly prescribed set of target outcomes achieve better results than locally flexible targets and interventions? What’s the evidence?
- What work has already been done to bring together evidence and analysis comparing impact of policy variation in different policy areas across the UK?
- How can local planning for nature-based solutions be best reconciled with regional and national strategies? What are the most effective ways to combine place-based participatory approaches with evidence and analysis of the likely effectiveness of nature-based solutions?
- What does ‘good’ look like for engagement of citizens in the performance and accountability of their local authority? What methods and approaches work best and what can we do to improve citizen engagement?”
- How can rural communities and businesses contribute to and benefit from the attainment of national economic, social, and environmental objectives?
- What financial pressures does new housing put on local authorities? How does this vary between types and tenure of home, and to what extent are these costs recovered through developer contributions, council tax and other forms of local authority revenue?
- What does the evidence show was more or less effective about the particularly intense engagement between local and national government during the pandemic, and what we have learnt about the key enablers developed between the tiers of government in this last period? Which of these would most helpfully be sustained in future (e.g. data sharing)?
- How do we increase societal resilience to flood and coastal erosion risk?
- What is the role of local government in influencing people’s decision-making on energy improvements?
- What are the benefits of increased levels of civil society participation and of pride in place, overall and in more localised areas?
- How do we better consider and adapt to the effects of climate change at regional and local levels, to develop a better understanding of conflicting demands?
- What has the pandemic taught us about what a good governance structure in local government looks like? How is this measured? And how can central government best support continuous improvement of place leadership?
- How can innovative forms of commissioning and effective cross-sector collaboration improve outcomes at local levels?
- How can we use novel datasets to understand capital investment needs across the UK, including by sector and region?
- How do we make risk-reduction real at the local level where it is not realistic to extrapolate from large-scale datasets and statistics?
- Using regional and local studies, what is the impact of export finance services on localised markets? How does export finance services support regional growth and development?