Briefings and responses

The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill aims to drive local growth, empower local leaders to regenerate their areas, and ensure everyone can share in the United Kingdom’s success.

Councils are best placed to safeguard the future of high streets. As leaders of place, councils have shown innovation in repurposing their town centres and responding to longer-term trends in how our high streets are used.

As we leave the European Union, the Government’s industrial strategy provides an opportunity to drive the creation of a successful, world-leading economy. We welcome the strong focus on place as one of the five foundations of productivity and the building block of local industrial strategies.

The Bill requires councils to produce improvement plans for some of their high streets at the same time as the tools available to them to make improvements continue to be blunted because of the continued erosion of planning controls.

National economic growth can only be achieved if every local economy is firing on all cylinders. Councils need the right powers and adequate long-term funding to play a lead role in unlocking the labour market, creating jobs, plugging skills gaps and delivering for all our communities.

Key briefing and summary points for local government on the Digital Economy Bill.

Access to fast and reliable broadband is a necessity for households and businesses in the UK.

By devolving the skills and employment system we could better match supply with employer demand. The LGA’s Work Local proposals sets out a vision for a localised service, which would enable communities to design an offer customised to the individual need of their area.

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted that broadband is essential infrastructure. Access to fast and reliable broadband connectivity is vital to help communities stay connected, drive inclusive recovery and create quality jobs.

Local government continues to lead the way in the public sector to improve outcomes for people while making savings for the public purse. The LGA’s Productivity Experts Programme forms part of our sector-led improvement (SLI) offer. Since 2012, we have worked with over 174 councils contributing to £194 million worth of savings and income generation.