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Conservative Group Izzi Seccombe For Conservatives in local government, the LGA conference will start on a sad note as Lord Porter stands down after four years as our chairman. As the leader of South Holland DC, Chairman of the District Councils' Network, chairman of the Conservative Councillors' Association, leader of the LGA Conservative Group and, most recently as LGA chairman, Gary has been a champion of local government in Lincolnshire, within the Conservative Party and in cross-party, non-partisan national roles. The contacts he has formed at the highest levels of Government have been instrumental in securing the LGA's biggest ‘wins' over the past four years, including the removal of the HRA borrowing cap (something for which he has personally long campaigned), extra funding for adult social care, and significant improvements to building safety in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, to name just a few. Those of us who have worked with Gary feel honoured to have had the opportunity to do so and we have the consolation of knowing he will continue to be a strong and respected advocate for local government and the LGA in the House of Lords. Looking ahead to the coming year, it will not surprise you to hear my biggest wish is to see a successful resolution of the current impasse regarding Brexit. I am not alone. From a purely party political point of view, any Conservative who spent time on the doorstep during the recent local elections will have been left in no doubt about the public's anger over the ongoing Parliamentary deadlock in relation to Brexit. Whatever your views on Brexit itself, it is clear the current issue can only be resolved in Westminster, and a failure to do so will lead to more electoral pain for the Conservatives. A successful resolution to Brexit will also allow us to focus on the many other pressing issues that the nation faces and which we in local government have a key role to play in addressing. To name but just a few these include: getting the Social Care Green Paper published and adult social care put on a sustainable long-term financial footing; building more homes and providing the necessary infrastructure to make such development sustainable; delivering fairer funding and business rates retention; investing in children's services and special educational needs and having greater control over skills and training to reflect local needs and priorities. The current Tory Party leadership election, which is at the Parliamentary stage as I write this, provides the ideal opportunity to lobby on these issues and the LGA Conservative Group has written to the contenders to highlight our key priorities and our willingness to work with them to deliver these for the benefit of our communities and the nation as a whole. These issues and many others will of course also be discussed during the LGA Conference, and I am looking forward to seeing many of you in Bournemouth. Izzi Seccombe is deputy leader of the LGA Conservative Group Labour Group Nick Forbes The local government family is assembling in Bournemouth with a sense of pessimism, largely due to extraordinary uncertainty about what the next year holds in politics and government. Within weeks we'll have a new Prime Minister, and almost certainly have a new chancellor, but there is no clear indication of who that will be, let alone what their attitude towards local government will be. The current deadline for leaving the European Union is supposedly less than four months away, but if anything, seems further away than ever, with no candidate for PM able to articulate a clear and credible plan for how we would be able to leave without causing long-lasting and possibly irreparable harm to the UK's economy. In a leadership contest dominated by fantasy approaches to Brexit, there has been almost no room for serious discussion about their respective approaches to public spending, housing, or the environment. The Government can't even make up their mind about whether there will be a Spending Review, let alone the content of it. The current chief secretary declared in May that there would be, only to contradict herself less than a fortnight later. This year the Government made yet another damaging cut of £1.3bn from council budgets, but at least councils had known three years earlier that it was likely to arrive, and could plan for it. However, councillors beginning their budget planning for 2020 are completely in the dark about what may happen to funding next year. The most obvious and pressing concern remains the embarrassing failure to address the crisis in adult social care. While a long term funding plan for the NHS finally emerged last year, adult social care has again been overlooked. This is now the third year in a row I have used this article to bemoan yet another delay to the promised Green Paper, and there is no prospect of long-term funding either. There cannot be a sustainable NHS without a sustainable adult social care system, and if adult social care is not given the cash injection it so desperately needs then the future of local authorities are at risk. So will the Green Paper arrive before the end of the year? I wouldn't bet your Christmas presents on it. This triple whammy of uncertainty – on national leadership, on funding, and on Brexit – is at risk of creating an uncertainty meltdown. Ambiguity about the future doesn't just make it hard to plan, it also has a chilling effect on the sort of innovation that has helped to cushion some of the pain of austerity. Our latest LGA Labour publication 100 More Innovations was packed with examples of Labour councils who have found radical new ways to deliver services, but without the ability to plan ahead this will become almost impossible. One glimmer of hope is the way councils across the country are coming together to face our greatest challenge of all – the emergency of climate change. At a time when people rightly feel let down by the failure of national government, it may be that it falls to leaders of local government to take the action needed to ensure the next generation even has a future to worry about. Cllr Nick Forbes is leader of the LGA Labour Group, and leader of Newcastle Council Lib Dem Group Howard Sykes What a year 2018/2019 was for us. It was a great set of elections for us with an increase of more than 700 councillors, that's over 2,500 now across the country. We gained majority control of 12 new councils from North Norfolk to Cotswolds, Vale of White Horse to Somerset West & Taunton. The icing on the cake for me was taking control of Bath and North East Somerset. Jacob Rees-Mogg now has a Liberal Democrat council! We reinforced our control of Three Rivers, Eastleigh, South Somerset and Watford. We also saw the great Dave Hodgson re-elected Mayor of Bedford, with an increase in our number of councillors on the council. And this doesn't include the places up and down the country where we are forming ‘coalition' administrators like Eden, Mendip, Guildford, South Oxfordshire and York where we have put communities before party political squabbling. Something that MPs here in Parliament should take notice of. At the time of writing we either have the leadership or deputy leadership of 47 councils – more than double the number we ran before 2 May. We also gained seats across the country from Labour, including Sunderland, Sheffield, Liverpool and Barnsley. And this was topped off by stunning Euro elections for us, with many of our MEPs either being sitting councillors or ex-councillors. As the LGA meets in Bournemouth we still have no idea who our next Prime Minister will be. I objected when Blair knighted Brown as PM, and I object that the decision over the leadership of this country will fall to just 100,000 conservative party members. Who knows what the next 12 months hold for the country let alone for local government. We have a Parliament paralysed by Brexit and MPs whingeing they don't have enough to do. Maybe they could agree a plan to fund social care properly? We still have no idea what the local government financial settlement will look like, the fair funding review has been left hanging in the wind and don't get me started on business rates retention. Devolution has stalled and the Social Care Green Paper has been kicked down the road so many times I have lost count. The list of questions that still need to be answered after the terrible events of Grenfell is as long as your arm. Where is the leadership from Westminster? And whatever happens with the national government, we look forward to next year's local elections, and the elections for Metro Mayors and police and crime commissioners. In the meantime, we will have our own party leadership contest and we look forward to welcoming both Ed Davey MP and Jo Swinson MP to the LGA conference. Cllr Howard Sykes is leader of the LGA Liberal Democrat Group Independent Group Clive Woodbridge May's local elections were the most successful ever for Independent and Green candidates. The Independent Group at the Local Government Association now has a record membership of more than 2,700 councillors in England and Wales, following gains in excess of 600 seats right across the country, as voters turned their backs on the big two political parties in droves. Independents currently run more councils than ever before and have a share of power in many others. Overall there are now more than 25 councils that are either run by Independent Group members or where members participate in progressive coalitions or have similar working arrangements with other groups. These are exciting times indeed for Independent politics. There is a real chance to break the mould and take advantage of the fact voters have showed that they value candidates who put local people and local interests before national party politics. Our main aim over the coming year is to build on the momentum we have gained in these elections. Where Independents are in power they have the chance to show the positive difference they can make, delivering tangible benefits to their communities. Where Independents are a bigger opposition force, they can set out alternative visions for their local areas as a counterpoint to the failing solutions put forward under the direction of Westminster controlled national political parties. Independents are a broad church but are united in their commitment to local government for local people; and a belief that decisions should be taken as close as possible to the people those decisions affect. We have one of the most centralised Governments in the Western world and people are fed up with top down decision-making directed from Westminster. The elections in May provide a springboard for a real challenge to the status quo. The LGA is pushing for an English Devolution Bill immediately post Brexit, and that is something that the Independent Group is keen to fully get behind, with our Welsh members doing similar for Wales through the Welsh LGA. Local democracy has been undermined by a decade of austerity and excessive cuts to local government budgets. It is Independent councillors' closeness to their communities that gives them strength and has propelled the recent increase in electoral popularity. We are looking forward to the police and crime commissioner elections next May, where Independent candidates have traditionally done well, and beyond that to county council and other elections in 2021. Another of our priorities for the year ahead is to reach out to our communities and encourage more people from currently under-represented groups to stand and be elected as councillors. Taking advantage of the Be a Councillor campaign and EnAble Fund resources, we have already been very successful in bringing more diversity into our councils. There is however much more that we as a group must do to encourage a new generation of young people, women and members of BAME communities to play their part in local government. Having more Independent councillors is both an opportunity and a challenge; a challenge to show we can collectively be a game changer, taking local government in new directions that better reflect the ambitions and diversity of our communities. We are committed to rising to that challenge in the months and years to come. Cllr Clive Woodbridge is deputy leader of the LGA Independent Group

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LOCAL GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION

LGA politics in a time of turmoil

By Nick Forbes, Issi Seccombe, Howard Sykes, Clive Woodbridge | 26 June 2019

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