Fit for the Future: Embedding Growth and Prevention into Public Financial Management

By Alexa Ngini, Senior Consultant, ICC

Incremental efficiencies and “salami slicing” are no longer enough to manage local government finances. If councils are to build true financial resilience, they must redesign their operating models around two fundamentals: growth and prevention. Growth expands the tax base and stimulates investment, while prevention tackles demand at its source by supporting people and communities earlier. Both are vital, and both require finance leaders to think differently about risk, purpose, and value.

Finance leaders often define growth in terms of capital receipts or increases to tax bases. But inclusive, long-term growth is about reaching people who are otherwise locked out of jobs and industries, and who too often end up in crisis. It requires upfront investment and a tolerance for deferred returns - conditions not easily met in a Section 114 environment. Finance leaders also need to reimagine how to use and monetise their asset portfolios in ways that support place-based outcomes. In other sectors, such as pension fund investment, this approach is often described as “long-term patient capital”: taking a multi-decade view of return on investment and accepting a different risk profile in exchange for sustainable value creation.

With this mindset, councils could unlock significant investment-led growth, supporting local priorities while strengthening UK plc as a whole. Some understand the power of growth to strengthen their financial position - others have gone further in showing how it can be systematically embedded into strategy.

Andrew Travers, now Chief Executive of Richmond and Wandsworth, helped design the One Barnet strategy while chief executive at Barnet. By leveraging assets and regeneration projects such as Brent Cross Town and the Thameslink line, the council secured £20bn in development value and expanded its council tax base. Over in Barking and Dagenham, Chris Naylor, then chief executive and now Managing Director at Inner Circle Consulting, oversaw the creation of Be First, a wholly owned regeneration company that tripled housing delivery and generated savings equivalent to £10m per annum in each year of its first five-year business plan.

Prevention as demand management

If growth builds resilience by expanding resources, prevention does so by reducing pressure on services. Prevention is notoriously hard to evidence - you are often proving a negative. Yet across local government, there are examples of councils maintaining long-term investment in prevention, even amid financial pressure.

In Camden, Jon Rowney, the borough’s current Chief Executive and previously its Section 151 officer, has fiercely protected investment in preventative services, from children’s Family Hubs to Good Work Camden, an employment service backed by significant funding. By sustaining prevention over a decade, Camden has avoided cost escalation while delivering better outcomes. In Tower Hamlets, Julie Lorraine, formerly the council’s Section 151 officer, highlights how prevention can also be enabled by technology. She points to sensors that detect damp, mould, or empty temporary accommodation units, which could both improve public health and cut multi-million-pound overspends on temporary accommodation.

For Julie Lorraine, prevention is most effective when finance leaders adopt a mindset of strategic resourcing - a systems-based approach to financial leadership that operates within a controlled and compliant environment. It’s not about spending more, but about understanding and joining up all available funding streams, both internally and externally, to support long-term resilience.

Rethinking the role of finance leaders

Often the finance function is cast as stewardship - retrenching under austerity, prioritising certainty. Rowney argues that for the profession to be at its most effective, finance must be connected to purpose. Used well, the power of Section 151 officers can give organisations time and space to make the right long-term choices, even if it means carrying risk or tolerating less certainty short-term.

This broader philosophy could be called strategic resourcing: unlocking the full range of funding streams at a council’s disposal, and measuring success not just in pounds but in housing delivery, educational attainment, and healthier communities; understanding that growth and prevention are not optional extras, but the foundations of financial resilience.

All of the above can only happen if finance professionals step into a more strategic role - enabling and shaping transformation rather than standing apart from it. That requires courage. Growth can be measured and monetised, but demands political will. Prevention is harder to evidence, but essential if councils are to bend the demand curve. Both involve risk, and both need finance leaders who can frame that risk, carry it, and manage it in the service of purpose. It also requires governance frameworks that enable that courage to be exercised responsibly.

Finance has always been about numbers. But at its best, it is also about purpose, outcomes, and enabling better futures for the people and places we serve.