Publications

This toolkit has been developed to support delivery of the National Procurement Strategy for Local Government in England 2018.

Councillors and officers are indispensable to one another and mutual respect and communication between both is essential for good local government. Together, they bring the critical skills, experience and knowledge required to manage an effective council.

This strategy builds on councils’ achievements under the National Procurement Strategy for Local Government in England 2014 – the first strategy developed by and for English councils.

Every child deserves a good school place, but that isn’t currently available to everyone. Government rules ban councils and council-maintained schools from helping academies and free schools improve. But given their excellent track record in maintaining high educational standards and in turning around failing schools, councils need to be recognised as effective education improvement partners, ready and able to support schools of all types.

Councils currently spend hundreds of millions of pounds on insurance nationally.

‘Non metropolitan England’ is an expression that captures the large and small towns, the villages and hamlets, the coastal communities and the rural and the deeply rural areas in which 62 per cent of the English population live. It refers to a diverse range of places with significant differences in their demographic make-up, geography and economy, populated by people that want to live fulfilled and successful lives and businesses that strive to prosper and grow.

The Kent Homechoice partnership has developed and implemented three online tools to transform the way in which people across Kent and Medway gain access to homelessness support and the housing registers.

By 2020, local authorities will have faced a reduction to core funding from the Government of nearly £16 billion over the preceding decade.

This week is an opportunity to celebrate the work of councils up and down the county.

During these tough times, interest in commercial activity – both improving internally delivered services and establishing new delivery models – continues to grow.