NEWSROOM

Thursday, 16 December

WE’VE GOT URGENT LEARNING TO DO ABOUT BUILDING CLIMATE RESILIENCE INTO OUR COMMUNITIES

By Hannah McShane

Losing power means much more than sitting in the dark. Without gas or another fuel source, it also means no heating and no way to cook food. If local pumping stations fail there may not be water to drink, cook or wash with. Internet and telecoms can go down, cutting off contact with the outside world and increasing the isolation and vulnerability for those already at risk.

Earlier this month a major storm hit the North East coast of Britain with winds of 98mph. (To put that into perspective, hurricane classification starts at 74 mph.) Around a quarter of a million homes across the North of England and Scotland lost power. Homes were damaged and huge swathes of forest felled while the northern power grid experienced the worst damage to its infrastructure in 20 years. Lives were lost. And a week later, tens of thousands of homes were still without power.

I was one of those affected. And working as I do on embedding climate action into housing planning and design, seeing the human impact of mass infrastructure failure so close to home reminded me all over again of the urgent need for all of us practitioners in the built environment to re-assess our approach on tackling extreme weather and mitigating against its impact.

Read full article here

Wednesday, 03 November

IT’S TIME TO REDESIGN HOUSING FROM THE BOTTOM UP TOO

By Matthew Nimmo published in the MJ

I’ve worked in housing for 20 years, often replacing poorly designed projects with new better-quality ones. ‘Estate regeneration’ has for decades meant ‘tear down and rebuild’ and often framed overhaul as best practice. But when the world’s biggest architecture prize goes to a practice with the motto of ‘never demolish’ and climate activists pile on pressure for sustainable homes, I believe the time has come to redesign our own work.

French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal scooped the 2021 Pritzker Prize for Architecture – referred to as the Nobel Prize for Architecture – for their sensitive refurbishment of post-war social housing blocks. These architects focus on designing social housing from the inside out to prioritise the welfare of a building’s inhabitants and their unanimous desires for larger spaces. Their approach has the potential to be transformative.

Local authorities have always faced a balancing act when deciding what to do with post-war estates. The short-term approach of ‘maintain and refurbish’ has the advantages of managing costs, keeping communities together and minimising disruption to residents from construction works. But demolition and redevelopment has become attractive because it can offer housing that meets a range of income levels as well as helping to sustain local shops and services, which in turn boosts local economies. It can also address poor post-war urban design that often resulted in inward-facing estates with poorly overlooked walkways, dark car parks, and inadequate open spaces and parks.

Read full article here

Wednesday, 13 October

LEVELLING UP ISN’T JUST ABOUT MONEY. IT’S ABOUT GROWTH, REFORM, AND TRUST.

Two years ago, with two words, Boris Johnson set the ultimate challenge for everyone who is working in public services. The freshly-elected Prime Minister’s promise to voters who felt left behind that his party would respond by ‘levelling up’ has sparked countless debates and column inches about what that means and how to do it.

All eyes now are on the new communities secretary Michael Gove, who publishes a white paper on the subject in the coming weeks that will set out his plans. In his recent speech to the Conservative Party conference, Gove said that levelling up meant four things: Strengthening local leadership, raising living standards, improving public services and giving people the resources they need to enhance the pride they felt in the place they live.

However, with Chancellor Rishi Sunak reported this week to be planning cuts of £2 billion for departments including local government and education, even while planning to lift the UK’s tax burden to the highest sustained level in peacetime, the discussion around ‘levelling up’ has quickly turned again to one that focuses on where to cut and where to splurge in a continuation of the give-it-and-take-it-away equation that has dogged our approach to national investment for so long.

Read our full blog post here

Wednesday, September 22

BUILDING A MOVEMENT FOR BETTER: IT’S TIME TO MAKE POST-COVID DREAMS A REALITY

Starting work in the aftershocks of a major world event is both the hardest and the most necessary work of all if you are driven by a desire to create and deliver better ways of living.

We set up our business when the true impact of the financial crisis was just starting to be understood, and austerity measures taking grip. We set up as strategic advisors to the public sector at a time when it became clear that public sector money was drying up and delivering good outcomes would require creativity and collaboration.

Now, with the lessons of a decade under our belts, we are gearing up to respond to the challenges of the Covid era. Where familiar elements like squeezed budgets and strain on local government leaders combine with a radically new world ravaged by a pandemic that has exposed both deep inequalities and inadequacies in the public response.

Read our full blog post here

PRESS RELEASE

Tuesday, September 21

BARKING AND DAGENHAM COUNCIL CHIEF MOVES TO PUBLIC SERVICE CONSULTANCY INNER CIRCLE

Barking and Dagenham Chief Executive Chris Naylor is moving to Inner Circle Consulting after nearly seven years at the helm of the London borough, to focus on “reimagining public services and connecting them fully to the people who need them.”

Naylor, Municipal Journal’s Chief Executive of the Year in 2020, will take up position in January 2022 as Director at Inner Circle, which is currently leading a range of projects in partnership with councils, public services and communities across the UK.

He said: “The pandemic has shown that we need to find answers to big problems, and we need them to work for everyone, for years to come. For the most vulnerable people, what we do next is the difference between barely getting by, and flourishing.”

Read our full press release here

LOCAL GOVERNMENT CHRONICLE: NAYLOR TO LEAVE BARKING & DAGENHAM

Barking & Dagenham LBC chief executive Chris Naylor – one of the most prominent chief executives in local government – has announced he is moving to the private sector.

Mr Naylor will in January move to become director of the public service consultancy Inner Circle after nearly seven years in the east London council’s top officer role.

He is understood to be keen to work with as many councils as possible on rethinking their services, in line with how Barking & Dagenham has sought to adopt a more preventative and proactive stance on service provision.

Read the full article here

THE MJ: NAYLOR QUITS COUNCIL FOR CONSULTANCY JOB

Barking and Dagenham LBC chief executive Chris Naylor has announced he will step down after seven years at the council.

Mr Naylor, who was named as The MJ chief executive of the year last year, will join Inner Circle Consulting as a director in January.

Read the full article here