Policy experts say English devolution will remain unfinished if we do not embed accountability into everyday practices. For long-term sustainability, there needs to be a shift from top-down Whitehall-centric to bottom-up community-centered accountability.

bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/english-d…

How can political accountability be improved in English devolution? Jack Newman, Sam Warner, Michael Kenny and Andy Westwood offer 4 recommendations in their new paper for The Productivity Institute: productivity.ac.uk/research/rebui…

How were the allocations of the Towns Fund split between Conservative and Labour?

From the Guardian this morning:

With a foreward from me, taking in the contrast with age-old Westminster accountability processes, the problems facing the local press and the way all of this interacts with the unravelling of local govt in general (full essay due out in the coming weeks)

🚨NEW REPORT🚨

Rebuilding Local Democracy:
The accountability challenge in English devolution

bit.ly/49TrVt4

The Productivity Institute Sam Warner Michael Kenny Andy Westwood Jennifer Williams

How to shift from top-down to bottom-up accountability in England.

🧵Key findings

Here’s our new The Productivity Institute Insights paper on accountability and Mayors, MCAs (and others) in England. Especially important as we’re about to have more of them! Written by Jack Newman Sam Warner Michael Kenny and me - plus a foreword from the fantastic Jennifer Williams

“No compelling examples” of delivery from more than £10bn in levelling up funds, some of them dating back to before this parliament, according to the public accounts committee. Just 10% has been spent on the ground:

on.ft.com/3wUSvUp

Homeless children are spending their entire childhood in temporary accommodation, with 14,000 households in temporary accommodation in England for five years or more - and 2,000 of those in temporary accommodation at least a decade.

New research from me:
theguardian.com/society/2024/m…

Jeremy Hunt’s budget: the problem for Labour explained theconversation.com/jeremy-hunts-b……
… Commentary piece with martin smith
Sam Warner drawing on our research for The Productivity Institute Nuffield Foundation UoM News UoMPolitics Politics Research at York

“The Government’s own ambition to end rough sleeping by 2024 has moved further out of reach with these latest statistics and yet more record highs. We should all be deeply worried.' Emma Haddad, CEO

St Mungo's responds to new Government statistics on homelessness showing a 27%…

Enough. Local government needs a long term plan for recovery, reset and renewal.

Plugging funding gaps is a short term fix, our whole system of local resourcing needs a complete overhaul.

My new The MJ column…

bit.ly/3uG01l6

My new piece in The Conversation with Geoff Bates based on truud_research research.

We outline
...the potential public health costs of cuts to The Labour Party £28bn pledge.
...the failure of the UK govt to embed public health in its housing policy.

theconversation.com/labour-scaling…

Quick look at Birmingham Council's children's services spending.

Their spend on early intervention children's services is not far off a third of what it was a decade ago.

The cuts listed here will wipe the rest of it out.

Birmingham children's services to be cut by around 25%. First wave of cuts include these. This is a very obvious disaster in the making. birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-…

More than 40 Conservative Members of Parliament have signed a letter to the Prime Minister reportedly threatening to vote against the Local Government Finance Settlement if the Government doesn't provide authorities with 'hundreds of millions' in additional funding:

Thrilled to see in the Financial Times in print this morning, write-up of Reform analysis showing structures & incentives of Whitehall are *not* set up to prioritise getting most from every £ of spending

V. grateful for expert input of all who we interviewed for this & Reform team

📢We are delighted to announce the outcome of the BJPIR John Peterson Best Article Prize

🏆The winning paper - '‘Guided by the science’:(De)politicising the UK government’s response to the coronavirus crisis' by Steven Kettell and Peter Kerr

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13…

It has become a key flaw of UK governance that the state both destroys value and produces dreadful outcomes, above all for the most vulnerable x.com/crisis_uk/stat…

'The Treasury’s project evaluation framework is designed for small projects yielding static, linear returns. For large, transformational investment projects where the network benefits are dynamic, the framework misses most of them'
ft.com/content/70d1b7…

🆕Our new piece in The Conversation: What Angela Rayner’s speech tells us about Labour’s potential to curtail short-termism in UK politics

Sam Warner Prof. Dave Richards The Productivity Institute Comparative Politics Research Cluster UoM Politics UoMPolitics Policy@Manchester

#Lab23 Angela Rayner 🌹 The Labour Party

theconversation.com/what-angela-ra…