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Local authorities report a lack of candidates for the top jobs, as well as for senior professional posts in finance, environmental health and IT.

Succession planning is still treated as something of a ‘black art' in the public sector, but it is becoming increasingly crucial. In local government, more than 30% of the workforce is aged over 50, yet less than one-third of local councils have succession plans in place.

The problem of public sector demographics is, however, shared by Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US, all of which are now actively engaged in workforce and succession planning. Clearly, there are economies of scale in providing formal training for local government professionals and leaders at regional and sectoral levels, and real benefits in providing opportunities for individuals to develop knowledge and skills alongside colleagues and partners from other organisations.

However, in many instances, these programmes have been for current post-holders rather than future ones.

The key questions are – how do you, fairly, identify and select talented individuals for future senior positions? and what development do you offer to meet the future demands of these posts?

The Institute for Employment Studies has been involved in a new initiative by the IDeA to gain a better understanding of the barriers local authorities face in succession planning. Through a series of workshops with Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Tewkesbury and West Oxfordshire councils – two counties and two small districts – the following lessons for best practice have emerged. Think about purpose and focus. Ask questions such as: ‘Where do we have real issues with succession which affect our business?' ‘So which types of roles do we want to focus on?' and ‘For what purpose are we identifying successors – what will we do as a result?'

HR professionals in local government sometimes appear reluctant to work closely enough with senior managers, from the very start, in ensuring these questions are properly addressed before a process is designed.

The IDeA consortium members who worked closely with at least one senior management champion throughout the process found this helped enormously. Some chose to focus on succession for experienced professionals, first line or middle management, rather than on senior leadership.

Driven by a desire to guarantee fairness and equality of opportunities, the public sector tends to respond to complex people-management tasks by developing complicated rules for managers to follow. The way into a more positive spiral is to expect line managers to make sound judgments about people, but only those which they have the information to make.

So managers need simple principles and guidelines to use in identifying possible successors, including some criteria – related to the job groups and people they will be thinking about – and what evidence to look for.

The real business benefit of succession planning lies in its link with the proactive development of people identified as potential successors. But training courses do not always make for effective workforce development.

Skill development needs to be balanced by a range of career experiences over a period of years to build the specific know-how and evidence of achievement for key roles.

There is also a mistaken notion that equality of opportunity is at odds with the organisation targeting people for specific types of development. The IDeA consortium members were concerned about this, but found that a clear process for succession planning supported their equality and diversity agendas.

Both ACAS and the TUC strongly support succession planning as part of wider workforce development.

In addition to the workshop programme, the IDeA has been developing and promoting other ways to attract and develop talent, from a ‘Talent pool' – a searchable database of potential job applicants, a large number of whom have undergone assessment as part of the national graduate-development programme (ngdp) recruitment process, www.LGtalent.com) to the creation of a ‘Talent management' community of practice, which is open to anyone interested in the issue within local government, and provides support, advice and innovation, combined with practical solutions to improve talent management (www.communities. idea.gov.uk).

Dr Wendy Hirsh is a principal associate at the Institute for Employment Studies