Coverage and updates from the biggest event in the local government calendar.
Published: Councillors' perceptions of sustainability and transformation partnerships: summary of key survey findings. Our survey results strongly support the messages we have been hearing for months – STPs are largely excluding councillors from the STP planning process.
The LGA launched our Housing our homeless households report, which responds to rising concern among local authorities about the increasing homelessness pressures being faced across the country.
New research for the Local Government Association estimates that 12 million people – the combined population of London, Greater Manchester and Staffordshire - will be without a job or in work they are over-qualified for by 2024.
Council leaders say the current national employment and skills system is failing local businesses and residents. A maze of centrally-governed skills and employment funding – totalling £10.5 billion a year – run by eight government departments or agencies and scattered across 20 different national schemes – is confusing, fragmented, un-targeted and ineffective.
- Read more about Work Local, the LGA's positive vision for an integrated and devolved employment and skills service – bringing together information, advice and guidance alongside the delivery of employment, skills, apprenticeships and wider support for individuals and employers.
Along with our Growing Places paper, we have also launched a number of other publications, focusing on everything from the impact of the smoking ban ten years on, transforming the delivery of sport and physical activity in local communities, and mental health.
Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, used his keynote address to announce a £2.3 billion investment in infrastructure for new housing. You can read more about the scheme here.
The LGA's Growing Places publication aims to ensure residents and their families have access to the best possible opportunities to live a healthy, independent and prosperous life.
Lord Porter has addressed Conference. You can read a full transcript of his speech here.
The money local government has to provide vital day-to-day local services is running out fast. There is also now huge uncertainty about how local services are going to be funded beyond 2020.
Councils can no longer be expected to run our vital local services on a shoestring. We must shout from the roof tops for local government to be put back on a sustainable financial footing.
Every penny in local taxation collected locally must be kept by local government and spent on our public services. The cap on council tax also needs to be lifted to ensure new money can be raised locally and spent locally.
Local government is the fabric of our country, even more so during this period of uncertainty for the nation. Councils are the ones who can be trusted to make a difference to people’s lives. To build desperately-needed homes, create jobs and school places, provide the dignified care for our elderly and disabled and boost economic growth.
If austerity is coming to an end, then we need to make sure councils are at the front of the queue for more money. Only with adequate funding and the right powers can councils help the Government tackle the challenges facing our nation now and in the future.
You can watch live webcasts from Conference here - the key sessions will also be archived too.
You can read through all of the Conference publications here.
Welcome to LGA Annual Conference and Exhibition 2017 in Birmingham - the first major local government event to take place after the UK general and local elections. This page will contain all the key information and publications throughout the next three days.
Lord Porter, Chairman of the Local Government Association, will use his keynote address to more than 1,200 local government leaders, councillors and ministers today to demand that councils are at the “front of the queue” for new funding if “austerity is coming to an end”.
