local council business plan

• Pricing Customers Get a Demo
• Platform Data Reporting Analytics Collaboration Security Integrations
• Solutions Strategic Planning Organizational Alignment Business Reporting Dashboards OKRs Project Management
• Industries Local Government Healthcare Banking & Finance Utilities & Energy Higher Education Enterprise

4 Local Government Strategic Planning Examples

Tricia Jessee

Tricia manages our implementation and onboarding team to ensure the success of ClearPoint customers.

Examine 4 local government strategic planning examples. Understand how these strategies were implemented and the impact they had on the community.

Table of Contents

Working on a strategic plan for your local government ? Whether you’re just starting to develop a set of goals or already looking to implement and execute on initiatives, you've come to the right place. We know that taking your ideas and turning them into real benefits for your community requires a lot of effort.

If there's anything we've learned from working with local governments, it's that you'll do whatever it takes to help your community grow and thrive. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to balance the needs of all your community stakeholders with the realities of time and financial constraints. That’s why we’ve created this comprehensive guide to government planning—to provide both practical guidance and inspiration that will set you on the right path. Keep reading to find out about:

• The necessary components for a solid government strategic plan
• How to align city-wide departmental activities with your strategic plan
• How four real local governments handle strategic planning and execution
• Tips to help you succeed in the planning process

We’ll also explain why our strategy reporting software, ClearPoint, is a valuable tool for strategy planning and execution, and what makes it a great fit for governments in particular. Let’s dive in!

Local Government Planning: Essential Elements

All successful organizations plan—and sometimes get paralyzed by over-planning. Your city likely has a lot of plans ( urban planning, capital improvements, infrastructure, community health, and other areas) on top of department plans. Sometimes it is tough to see how it will all fit together.

A government strategic plan is a city’s overall, long-term vision for the future. It’s a blueprint of the city’s goals, planned projects to achieve those goals, and metrics to determine success.

Strategic plans chart the course for a city over a three- to five-year period, at the end of which the plans should be reevaluated and refreshed. Once a plan is developed, it is rolled out to city departments to execute their individual responsibilities.

Municipal leaders (the city council, mayor, city manager, etc.) drive the process of creating a local government strategic plan, starting with gathering input from key staff members and citizens. The strategy and budget offices also take an active role in the planning process.

5 Essential Components Of A Government Strategic Plan

The point of a strategic plan is to get everyone rowing in the same direction, and that requires having a shared vision and common goals. Those essentials will be impossible to establish without open communication and buy-in.

So, before you even think about developing the components in the list below, make sure everyone is on board with your strategy efforts. Include your staff, managers and directors, city council, and citizens from the start, and engage them as much as possible to ensure your plan focuses on the right initiatives. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to delve into the five main elements of government planning.

Keep in mind that organizations might call these components by different names—and that’s just fine. Figure out what terminology works best for your organization and go with it. Calling something a “goal” or a “strategic priority” doesn’t matter as long as the meaning behind it is there.

1. Core Mission

Your city’s mission statement is the foundation of the plan; it shows what you do for the city, community, and citizens. This is a step that some people don’t take seriously—but this is the main building block that will keep you focused from this point forward.

We recommend that you look around at other municipalities you respect or admire and find some things you really like from them. Then take those components and some of your own, and come together with your staff and/or citizens to see if any or all of those components echo what they want to see.

Finally, with all of this information in mind, you can finalize your core mission, which should be a mix of some things your municipality is now and some things you want to become in the future. Everything else in your city’s strategic plan will need to tie back to this, so be sure it isn’t too specific, and try to keep it concise.

2. Vision Statement

Your vision statement builds on the mission by stating what you are hoping to achieve in the future in order to reach your mission—so this is where you can start getting a little more specific.

Try to take a similar approach to crafting the vision statement as you did for the core mission. Look at other vision statements you’ve seen and reach out to your staff and citizens. Determine where you want to be in 3-5 years (these should be the more practical goals) and also where you want to be 10-20 years in the future (these should be more audacious goals). This is where things can get exciting and fun. Some citizens will propose some far-fetched ideas—say, they’ll want to host the Olympics! That may not actually happen, but it’s neat to have your citizens thinking this way.

3. Strategic Priorities

Certain goals should be focused on above all others. During this step, pick five or six priorities that, if accomplished, will guarantee that you execute your strategy. (These can be called “strategic priorities,” “goals,” or “objectives.”) You’ll want to have only 5-7 strategic priorities which will allow you to focus on achieving your core mission statement and vision. The following are often considered strategic priorities for municipalities:

• Neighborhood livability
• Health & safety
• Transportation
• Culture & entertainment
• Efficient and high performing government

Again, you’ll want to step back and be sure to involve both your citizens and your staff at every level of this process. Be sure to think about what things are really going to help you achieve this vision.

While your city is unique in many ways, it has many similarities to other municipalities due to size or proximity. Reaching out to other cities about how they track their data or perform similar strategic tasks is a great way to get ideas. A neighboring city may have an excellent suggestion on how to set targets for your levels of performance in your strategic plan. To get started, consider the following:

• Join a municipal planning network . We highly suggest finding an organization to help you connect to regional or like-minded municipalities. Begin your search at Engaging Local Government Leaders (ELGL) or through your state-level ICMA organization. If a network of those municipalities doesn’t already exist, consider starting your own! There’s a good chance your next-door neighbors would enjoy and benefit from it.
• Share measure data with other municipalities through benchmarking or through a measures library . This is a great way to learn what others are measuring and how you stack up against them. You can also join these efforts by creating a library of your own measures for others to benchmark against. If you’re uncertain of where to begin in creating this library, this list of municipal planning measures should get you going in the right direction. At ClearPoint, we have more than 20 municipalities sharing over 250 measures they are tracking in their strategic plans. What better way to have up-to-date information at your fingertips!

4. A Rollout Plan

Everyone—from employees to citizens—needs to understand how they fit into the city’s strategic plan. If you’ve involved your staff and citizens in steps 1-3, this fourth step is so much easier.

First, understand that people need to be able to explain your strategic plan back to you in very simple terms to ensure its effectiveness. A really good example of this comes from a STAT meeting I recently sat in on. I saw that someone from the fire department—who wasn’t the fire chief—was presenting. He was third or fourth in command. He explained how the department fit within the strategic plan of the city in very simple terms, demonstrating a strong knowledge of the subject.

Unsure how to communicate your strategic plan? Get ideas from these city and state government strategic plan examples.

Altogether, this process should be extremely transparent. Consider weight loss for a moment: If one of your goals is to lose 20 pounds, it’s a great idea to tell some people about that plan, so they can keep you honest. The same is true for a city strategic plan. You should be able to put it out there and express where you want to go and what you want to do—this acts as an additional motivator and a source of accountability.

Make sure you're sharing your strategic plan externally as well as internally. Citizens, city council members, and elected officials all want to know how you’re actually doing with your strategic plan. A publicly available dashboard is one of the best ways to answer their questions!

A dashboard allows you to display your municipal plan metrics and provides explanations of what you’re doing to improve in areas that need it.

Note that this is very different from an open data platform that provides online access to raw data. While an open data platform may appear to be the “most transparent” way to share data at first look, it is actually very inconvenient for your citizens. They aren’t interested in parsing through hundreds of pages of raw data—they just want an organized, simplified view of whether or not you’re reaching your goals and how you’re working to achieve them. A dashboard meets this requirement straight on.

Learn more about why you should create a dashboard—and what you should include—in this article. You can also reference the excellent community dashboard the City of Fort Collins, Colorado has created.

5. Measures/Measure Owners

You’ll need to establish numerical goals to know if you are on track to reach your goals. To do this, it’s important to select the right key performance indicators (KPIs) that will inform your priorities and goals directly.

The KPI selection process is a very important one—but in the first year or so, you may not have the right ones. For example, if you notice that your KPIs are all green, but your goals and priorities aren’t improving, you may need to go back to the drawing board with your KPIs. You could have the wrong measures, or the targets may not be aggressive enough.

Typically, when you set priorities, you’ll set them for the municipality as a whole. Some organizations will take the additional step of setting up a scorecard for each department right off the bat, and others will expand into departmental scorecards after some experience at the city level. The department's unique priorities should be represented, but be sure that there are elements that tie back to the city level to ensure clear alignment.

Make sure you have a good way to track your data and hold your teammates accountable.

Having a local government strategic plan is one thing—but tracking the data that goes into that plan is another thing entirely. Tracking your data effectively allows you to better report on your strategic process. Unfortunately, many organizations end up in the never-ending cycle of manually adding data. This is not only extremely inefficient and tedious, but manually adding data is also prone to human error and mistakes. In order to cut out these issues, consider the following:

• Make sure every goal, measure, and project has an owner. On top of that, it’s critical to create a reporting calendar for all owners to follow. This ensures everyone is held accountable and knows when to have their information submitted. Using software can help with this, as you can assign responsibility to measure and project owners, have a place where these owners can update and document their reports, send out meeting reminders, and more.
• Load data automatically whenever possible. It’s inevitable that you’ll need to pull in data from a number of different places—automating this process is the most effective way to get most of your data into one place. Software like ClearPoint should be very helpful here assuming your software has data loading capabilities. This capability ensures your owners and leadership don’t waste their time adding data but instead can focus on analyzing and managing the results of your strategy.

Is your strategic plan not producing the results you expected? Uncover 8 things missing from your city's strategic plan here

Linking government strategic plans & work plans.

For strategic planning to work, the strategies of all departments must be aligned with the top-level mission and direction. This requires creating direct links between your city’s overall strategic goals and your departments’ work plans.

A work plan is a department’s operational plan (sometimes referred to as a department business plan). Generally speaking, it’s more tactical and operational in nature than the high-level government strategic plan. The work plan typically covers only 1-2 years of the strategic plan, and is linked to the budget directly, so it can be more concrete and restrictive than the strategic plan.

Ideally, city divisions and departments would have formal strategic plans in place, but most operate off their work plans and the planning process around them. A good work plan outlines each department’s responsibilities in relation to the strategic plan, including:

• Department mission statement
• Goals and measures
• Mandatory initiatives (e.g. legal requirements)
• Projects and initiatives to improve performance
• Budget and resource allocations
• Core competencies and developments in human resources within the department

Depending on the size of a city’s division, it might be necessary to break down a work plan by department, service area, or program. If “sub-work plans” are created, they must roll up to the department’s larger work plan, which will then roll up to the overarching government strategic plan. It’s a cascading effect and all plans should link to each other.

It’s important for the work plan to align with the city-wide strategic plan. For example, if the city has a larger goal to develop transit infrastructure that supports population growth, the Public Works division will have more granular goals and metrics. It might have goals around traffic speed during rush hour and metrics related to road maintenance.

This city-wide alignment may sound difficult, but it’s certainly not impossible. By learning about each part of the process, you’ll be better equipped to institute good governance at every level.

How Should Government Strategic Plans and Work Plans Be Linked?

Work plans and strategic plans should inform one another, but do not have to be the same.

In other words, don’t fall into the trap of focusing on operational and tactical items during the government strategic planning process. Your strategic plan should include items that are top-level, forward-looking priorities. Operational initiatives and goals should be reserved for department work plans.

Let’s say a city wants to address a rise in criminal activity. The city’s strategic plan and the police force’s work plan may both have a goal around lowering the crime rate, but the work plan will include hard targets and details, while the strategic plan will have a broader goal to improve community safety.

Having both a strategic plan and work plans will help you create alignment across the city, as well as within departments. This also helps you gain buy-in from employees because they can see how their role and department connects to the larger, long-term vision.

A last word of advice is to be methodical with the government strategic planning process. Don’t try to create work plans and strategic plans at the same time as it will cause an overload of change management issues. Choose one to focus on first and you’ll be more successful. Most organizations build a strategic plan and then ask departments to align their key activities to this plan.

Manage Your Government’s Strategic Plan With ClearPoint Strategy Software

The wide array of responsibilities shouldered by local governments makes it a challenge to coordinate efforts across a city. To overcome those challenges and achieve your short- and long-term goals, it’s imperative that you take advantage of strategy software tools like ClearPoint.

ClearPoint simplifies nearly everything associated with strategy planning and execution. That simplicity is what makes it possible for government organizations like yours to stick with it—and keep your eye on the prize—throughout the duration of the lengthy strategy execution process.

Important elements of strategy planning and execution that ClearPoint supports include:

• Strategic alignment. In ClearPoint you can make a high-level strategic plan as well as department-level work plans, and align division, department, and team activities with your municipal goals. (This is known as “cascading” your strategy.) You can even create reports that clearly show the relationship linkages.

• Strategy buy-in. Give access to top-level or department-level plans to anyone in your organization, so they can see where they fit into the bigger picture of what you’re trying to achieve.

• Reporting. Creating regular strategy reports is a necessity for tracking progress. ClearPoint automates the bulk of that reporting process, even sending out reminders to individuals to make updates. (No need to manually collect data or create new reports each quarter—the software handles it!) You can also take advantage of our attractive report templates, which are fully customizable to match your specific reporting requirements. Make your reports as granular and detailed as you’d like!

• Accountability. In ClearPoint, you can define owners of projects and measures to promote accountability for reaching goals internally. You can also create public-facing dashboards to reinforce your awareness of the community’s needs and allow citizens to stay up to date with progress.

With the support of ClearPoint, some ambitious local governments have managed their strategic planning processes so successfully that they’ve won awards (see one of those stories in Chapter 3). If you’re serious about making your community vision a reality, there’s no better tool than ClearPoint to help you do it!

See ClearPoint Strategy in action! Click here to watch a quick DEMO on the software

4 government strategic plan examples.

Cities have started to adopt the same strategic planning process as the private sector over the last few years. With tightened budgets, it’s critical that city governments can accomplish as much as possible with fewer resources. Here are four government strategic plan examples you can learn from:

Germantown, TN

What’s special about the City of Germantown’s strategic planning process is its corporate-style approach. This Tennessee city views citizens as customers and city services as “goods” provided to their customers, which keeps the focus on citizen priorities. For example, instead of saying, “We need a new park,” the city takes the attitude of, “The citizens need a place to connect, exercise, and enjoy the outdoors.” Using outcomes as a starting point, Germantown creates its priorities and shapes its strategy.

City leaders did an excellent job organizing citizen focus groups as part of the “Germantown Forward 2030” vision plan. They formed an internal, 30-person steering committee (consisting of staff from across departments) to gather citizen input, assembled a citizen task force, and made sure planning stayed on track.

Their dedication to strategy execution paid off. Not only did it benefit the citizens of Germantown, but the municipality won an Excellence Award from the esteemed Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence in 2017. In 2019, the city of Germantown also won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, an honor reserved for U.S. organizations that demonstrate unceasing drive for “radical innovation, thoughtful leadership, and administrative improvement.”

Continue Reading: City of Germantown: Building, Implementing, and Executing a Strategic Plan

Fort Collins, CO

The City of Fort Collins, Colorado, provides a great example of how to perfect the strategic planning process for your government over time. The city started with a large number of measures that were reviewed by an equally large group of staff. It then refined the planning process until only the most important key metrics were reviewed by the right stakeholders. From there, the focus shifted toward examining the key outcomes, strategic objectives , and initiatives that drove progress on the key metrics. City leaders went through several iterations to get the plan just right, realizing the process was an evolution.

One particularly successful tactic Fort Collins used was to incorporate their departments into the planning process. Core strategic planning team members met regularly with department heads to get feedback and make adjustments to the plan, ensuring it worked for everyone involved. The result? The city has strong buy-in across the organization and everyone understands how their departments contribute to Fort Collins’ long-term goals. This high-touch, personal approach of involving every department in the process was integral to Fort Collins’ success.

If you’re working through your own local government strategic planning process, here’s an inside look at how Fort Collins put together their internal team:

First, they put together a steering committee for the strategy that included the:

• Chief finance officer
• Director of financial planning and analysis
• Director of budgeting
• Performance excellence manager
• City manager
• Deputy city manager
• City manager’s intern

This steering committee then decided on seven focus areas for the city to include in their strategic plan . They selected a chairperson for each of their focus areas and then integrated a cross-sectional self-nomination process to fill each focus area team. For example, anyone in the municipality could nominate themselves to serve on the team for the focus area titled “Safe Community.” This is a unique approach, as other municipalities may only take individuals who serve in police or fire departments. Letting anyone participate ensures that the groups are focused and experienced but also helps individuals from other departments get a sense of what is going on across the municipality.

When budgeting is linked to strategy, the budgeting process runs much more smoothly. The individuals in Fort Collins create their municipal budgets every other year, on even years, and structure their reporting calendar therein. At the end of non-budgeting years, those involved send out a citizen survey and set up events to gather feedback from the community. This information is brought back to the steering committee and the chairs of the focus areas, who disseminate the feedback throughout the organization.

They also hold city council elections on odd years and host a city council retreat directly following the elections. This retreat is used as a time to discuss issues facing the municipality and how resources in the next budgeting cycle may be allocated . This information is passed along to the steering committee. Then at the beginning of the budgeting year, the steering committee presents the strategic plan to the council, who then approves the plan so the city can budget accordingly.

Continue Reading: Achieving the Fort Collins Vision Through Effective Performance Review

Fort Lauderdale, FL

To activate its ambitious, community-driven vision plan, the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida has embarked on a sweeping new program of strategy management. In the process, the city has embraced performance measurement with equal parts discipline, dedication, and passion.

One of the biggest takeaways from Fort Lauderdale is how the city prioritized gathering citizen input. The vision plan, two and a half years in the making, was systematically developed through extensive community outreach: interviews, open houses, telephone town halls, and a social website. In total, the city collected 1,562 ideas from highly invested neighbors. The outreach efforts and feedback helped create a very citizen-centric vision plan. Fort Lauderdale is now confident that its priorities are based on what’s important to its citizens.

Fort Lauderdale tackled the issues and challenges of getting citizen input and engagement head-on with three innovative ideas:

• They did a great job marketing and branding their strategic plan outside the organization so it became recognizable in the community.
• Over the course of several months, Fort Lauderdale held several “telephone town halls.” The mayor, the city manager, and various other municipal leaders were on a conference line, and anyone who wished to do so could call in, participate, listen to others, and ask any questions they had. That way people with busy schedules (who doesn’t have one of those?) could still be active in the community while they, for example, made dinner.
• The city also created a city council meeting “in a box.” Interested citizens could sign up to host a community meeting and would be sent a box filled with detailed questions to ask and information to disseminate. Meetings could be held anywhere—a park, someone’s home, a church, a school—and the meeting host would capture information from the attendees and then ship it back to the municipal offices. Using this method, Fort Lauderdale gained 40,000 touch points with citizens. (In a city of just over 260,000, that is an incredible amount!) The ideas—which ranged from hosting the Olympics to creating more park space—gave the leadership an idea of what the community was interested in. Furthermore, those involved took more pride and ownership in the projects because they felt involved and knew their voices were being heard.

Continue Reading: From Vision To Action: Fort Lauderdale’s Strategy Management Journey

The City of Durham, North Carolina, engaged in two rounds of their performance management execution program. The first focused on developing a strategic plan that emphasized data-driven decision-making and advanced the city’s goal of transparent, civic-minded government. Durham’s fervent attention to performance measurement and monitoring helped the city align its spending and activities with strategic priorities. This alignment helped them partner in unprecedented ways with Durham County.

Yet, there was no central ownership or organized way to hold users accountable for keeping strategic performance data up to date, necessitating another round of performance management execution. For this second phase, Durham was very deliberate about assigning roles and responsibilities. The city also formed an Office of Performance and Innovation to spearhead the strategic planning process and help employees understand why performance is so important to the government’s success.

Continue Reading: City of Durham: Strategy Refresh & Organization Buy-In

8 Strategic Planning Tips For Government Organizations

Based on our experience as strategy management experts and our work with local governments, here are some strategic planning tips that will help you make the most of your efforts.

1. Involve your stakeholders in your local government strategic plan

This could be your staff and/or your citizens. If you go through the whole process without their input and then your staff or citizens don’t agree, you’ve created a headache for yourself. Being open and inclusive during the strategic planning process for your government is vital to its success.

2. Be bold, but realistic

Feel free to set aggressive goals, but keep a realistic mindset. Again, if one of your citizens suggests hosting the Olympics in ten years, you should be thrilled with their enthusiasm—but still aware that this may not be something that will actually happen.

3. Don’t be afraid of your weaknesses

Sometimes organizations are tempted to create comfortable strategic plans, so they don’t fall short of their goals—but this is a mistake. Great strategic plans have a mix of things the municipality does really well and things it doesn’t do well. This is also important, so your citizens can see you have a good perspective on what is going well and what isn’t going well within the community.

4. Don’t neglect your strengths

On the other side of the coin, you should be sure to include several things that your organization does well in your strategic plan! Even if your municipality excels in a particular area already, there’s always room for improvement.

5. Don’t go in alone; seek out help when needed

One of the great things about the municipal space is that most cities will share a lot of information. If you see a municipality with a really great local government strategic plan, don’t be afraid to reach out to them and learn from what they’re doing. Putting yourself on an island will only hurt your municipality.

6. Keep your focus on the long term

There will be times that are both difficult and frustrating when you’re leading and implementing something this large. But once you get things up and running, it will pay off—so just keep going!

As part of that focus, don’t be afraid to make changes to your planning process when you need to. If something isn’t working, adjust it and keep going. (Remember how Fort Collins executed multiple iterations of its process.) Don’t abandon your strategy—focus on changing it for the better.

7. Avoid scope creep

Don’t lose sight of your long-term goals by letting your strategic plan slide into operational tasks. Scope creep can infect the strategic plan for your department or entire organization—you might notice that you’re tracking certain measures just because it’s easy or someone has asked you to...but with no tie to strategy. Avoid the creep by periodically reviewing your strategic plan to be sure the right goals are in place and all the projects you’re undertaking and measures you’re tracking directly align to those goals.

8. Don’t let your local government strategic plan sit on a shelf

Once you’ve created your strategic plan, you can’t leave it alone to gather dust. Set expectations for what information needs to be updated, and how often you will report on your progress, in addition to getting that all-important buy-in and making sure everyone understands why strategic planning in government organizations is so important.

Keep In Mind... The Most Important Thing Is to Just Get Started!

Remember, you don’t have to be a master at strategic planning, and the process will never be entirely perfect. Even cities that win awards for their strategic management weren’t always winning awards. They were simply consistent in their processes and were flexible to adapt and learn.

Remember, too, to communicate with your citizens, internal organization, and peer organizations. Share your successes and your failures. Most citizens won’t fault their local government for putting forth an honest effort to be better than they currently are.

If you're ready to improve execution on your plan, our team would love to help! With ClearPoint, you can better organize your plan, ensure your KPIs and initiatives align, and improve communication. On top of all that, you can find the data you need when you need it, and share it all through reports and dashboards.

Reach out to us to schedule a demo —we’d be happy to show you around.

Book your FREE 1-on-1 DEMO with ClearPoint Strategy

Can local government levy taxes.

Yes, local governments can levy taxes. Local governments typically have the authority to impose various types of taxes, such as property taxes, sales taxes, and income taxes, to generate revenue for public services and infrastructure projects. The specific types of taxes and the extent of this authority can vary based on state laws and local regulations.

Are local government salaries public information?

Yes, local government salaries are generally public information. Salaries of public employees, including those working for local governments, are typically considered public records. This transparency ensures accountability and allows citizens to see how public funds are being spent. Information about salaries can usually be accessed through public records requests or published reports.

Why is local government important?

Local government is important because:

- Proximity to Citizens: Local governments are closest to the people and can address community-specific needs and concerns more effectively. - Public Services: They provide essential public services such as police, fire protection, public health, education, and infrastructure maintenance. - Community Development: Local governments play a crucial role in zoning, land use planning, and economic development to enhance community growth and sustainability. - Civic Engagement: They offer opportunities for citizen participation in government through public meetings, consultations, and local elections. Regulation and Enforcement: Local governments enforce local laws and ordinances, ensuring community safety and quality of life.

Can local government use eminent domain?

Yes, local governments can use eminent domain. Eminent domain is the power to seize private property for public use, with compensation to the property owner. Local governments may exercise this authority for various public projects, such as building roads, schools, or parks. The use of eminent domain is subject to legal requirements and must serve a legitimate public purpose.

How does local government work?

Local government works through a structured system that typically includes:

- Elected Officials: Local government is often led by elected officials, such as mayors, city council members, and county commissioners, who make policy decisions and represent the interests of the community. - Departments and Agencies: Various departments and agencies handle specific functions such as public safety, health, education, and public works. - Public Services: Local governments provide essential services like law enforcement, fire protection, sanitation, and public transportation. - Regulation and Enforcement: They regulate land use, building codes, and local ordinances to maintain community standards. - Budget and Finance: Local governments create and manage budgets, levying taxes and allocating funds to different services and projects. - Public Participation: Citizens can participate in local government through public meetings, hearings, and elections, influencing decisions and policies that affect their community.

Latest posts

The ClearPoint Strategy Success Framework: Aligning Organizations

The ClearPoint Strategy Success Framework: Organizing Strategy

Streamlining Strategic Planning with AI

Creating a better local business environment (Part 1): The role of local government

How local governments create better business environments for smes.

In this post, I look at how local government can create better business environments.

How local government can influence the decisions of businesspeople to invest and create jobs

Local government is often overlooked as a critical arena for microeconomic reforms. Local councils can influence the decisions of private businesspeople to invest in the local economy and generate the jobs. This is essential for a vibrant, sustainable community.

While the private sector creates jobs and drives economic growth, governments set the conditions in which this can occur.

This is the first entry in a three-part series on improving the conditions for local businesses.

Across three posts I explore the roles of local government in supporting local businesses as a way of fostering economic growth. I look at how local councils can create better conditions for local business growth.

See Part 2 – What to Measure – and Part 3 – Options for Reform .

These posts are a general introduction into what is an increasingly important field of work and one with further plans for investigation and reform.

Importance of the local business community

Local businesses are essential for the growth and development of the economy. While many economic development strategies focus on gaps in the local economy and how to fill these––for example, by attracting new investments––they often overlook the considerable resource contained in the local business community. This is resource is literally at council’s doorstep.

While many local governments give a passing nod to the importance of the business community, most are unaware of how their actions affect local business and the impact this has on the economy. Sadly, local government engagement in this field has often sought to protect existing businesses and not create the conditions for competition and further investment. It is not unusual to find local councillors who are also businesspeople with an interest in protecting their own interests and keeping outside competition at bay. Often inadvertently, councils make decisions that reduce local competition and hamper business growth.

Furthermore, when local governments do acknowledge the role of local business in economic development, they often overlook the importance of micro, small and medium enterprises, in favour of large firms. Many councils are eager to attract large businesses to town, in the belief these firms will create the jobs and economic opportunities the area requires. While larger lead firms have an important role to play in the local economy, the small business sector, including micro and very small enterprises , are the backbone to most local economies.

Incidentally, the problems with state and local governments in America seeking to attract outside business is being dramatically illustrated with the current competition between cities bidding to be the home for the second Amazon headquarters, or ‘Amazon HQ2’, as it is called. As Politico recently described it: ‘more than a hundred would-be hosts have assembled generous packages with everything from multibillion-dollar tax breaks to free utilities to an offer to build Amazon its own city (also named Amazon) in the hope of enticing the online retail giant and up to 50,000 of its handsomely paid employees’. This has led to an online petition by 50 prominent economists, appealing to city administrators to stop these ‘rent-seeking and anticompetitive’ behaviours. Similar behaviour is well documented in Greg LeRoy’s The Great American Jobs Scam , in which it is shown how corporations play states and cities against each other to win hefty taxpayer subsidies that routinely exceed US$100,000 per job.

In recent times, driven by a growing interest in innovation and entrepreneurship, governments are eager to encourage the growth of new business start-ups. This has led to the support for special local initiatives, such as business incubators, business management training and accelerator programs. As useful as these initiatives can be, they overlook the bulk of the local investor community. Before developing programs to support new businesses, governments should examine the ways they can create better conditions for all.

In the last decade, increasing attention has been given to the role of national business environments and their influence on private investment and economic growth. As the global economy becomes more integrated, nations compete for investors. National governments improve their policies, laws and regulations to make it easier for businesses to invest. While maintaining, and in some cases strengthening, standards and protections, national governments create more competitive conditions for private firms. They help firms reduce compliance costs and encourage competitive investments into new jobs, technologies and skills.

These national reforms contribute to economic growth. However, on their own, national reforms are not enough. Sub-national governments––at the state and local levels––also need to consider the impact their laws and regulations have on business, employment and incomes.

Local government authorities have significant influence over the wellbeing of the local business sector. They can stimulate innovation, productivity and competitiveness or they can make it more difficult for firms to operate and grow.

Local business environments affect investment decisions

There are a range of factors that affect business and its potential to grow. The most important are of these are markets. Businesses grow based on their ability to compete in the marketplace. However, there are other factors that shape the decisions of private investors.

The investment climate contains locally defined factors that affect private investment decisions. This includes the access firms have to markets, as well as infrastructure, facilities, business networks and utilities. Key ingredients to a good investment climate are the policies, laws and regulations that govern business activity.

In Australia, national and state laws and regulations play a major role in setting the business environment. Examples include the procedures associated with business registration, labour and industrial relations, and taxation. However, the local business environment also affects the decisions of private investors and business owners.

From a local government perspective, local business environments encompass: (1) policies and strategies for economic and business development; (2) local laws and regulations that govern business activities; and (3) the institutional arrangements for dialogue between council and the business sector and other relevant actors. See the table below.

Poor business environments can reduce the ability of firms to compete and expand. While governments often design economic or business development strategies, getting the local conditions right for business is an important, if often overlooked, first step.

The Productivity Commission in Australia noted in its 2011 Productivity Review that the while the quality of local government decision-making is often criticised, ‘this level of government is responsible––in principle, at least––for one of the most important decisions that can generate employment nationwide: the investment by a myriad of small and medium sized business in land or building developments and service improvements’. ‘Poor capability’ in these areas, says the Commission, ‘will be reflected in poorer investment outcomes’.

Creating better local business environments

Local governments can create better, more dynamic and competitive business environments in which local businesses thrive. They do this by better understanding the challenges, constraints and opportunities facing local businesses and by taking a ‘whole of the economy’ perspective that is not dominated by the voice or interests of one or two large, noisy or politically connected businesses. Governments should see the local business community as the engine for inclusive growth , providing jobs, services, products, and a quality of life for local residents and visitors.

Using the three elements of the business environment described above, local governments can create business environments that are conducive to inclusive growth by pursuing:

• Policies and strategies for economic and business development that identify local challenges, problems and opportunities and help economic actors to respond to these. They set the framework for council to act within and provide a vision for how government can foster business development that leads to better economic, social and environmental outcomes. They create a basis for working with other tiers of government, business, academia, and the local community to share information and facilitate local partnerships and innovative approaches.
• Local laws and regulations that govern business activities in an efficient and effective manner, ensuring they are a realistic and proportionate response to the problems they are designed to address. It is important to stress that a good business environment does not mean the de-regulation of business activities, but rather the use of effective and proportionate regulation. Good regulation is essential––not only for the protection of residents, consumers and the environment, but also for markets to function properly. Bad regulation, which is poorly targeted, costly, bureaucratic, and cumbersome, can undermine business growth and good governance.
• Institutional arrangements for dialogue between council and the local business sector so that the business community is able to talk with a government that listens, and where government can consult with business on its own plans and proposals. These mechanisms open up dialogue, so that it goes beyond a cosy club of those who are ‘in the know’ and accommodates the diverse views and experiences of local business. Moreover, councils need to engage with a wide range of diverse stakeholders and facilitate links between local businesses and teaching institutions, research organisations and other civil society organisations.

These approaches help define better business environments and improve the understanding of how local governments can influence economic growth. They show how local governments can influence the conditions under which private firms operate setting the conditions for business growth and stimulating innovation and competitiveness.

Reducing costs and risks, while increasing local competition

Local business environments seek to achieve three things.

First, they reduce the cost of compliance as much as possible. Making it easier, less time-consuming and generally cheaper allows private investors to focus on business. While all regulatory functions impose some cost, this cost may be reduced. For example, the use of digital technology has shown how processing times can be reduced saving money for business and governments alike. As discussed in Part 3 of this series, this is not about deregulating business activity. It is about smart regulation.

Second, they reduce risk as much as possible. By improving rules, making them more transparent and removing discretionary decision-making, councils help investors to know where they stand. When special deals are required or where the processes are unclear, investors get nervous and wonder if their investments are at risk. Councils should create conditions that reduce risk and build confidence among private investors.

Third, they increase local competition by making it easier for new businesses to start-up and enter the market. While local businesses that have been established for years may be threatened by new entrants, there is clear evidence that the broader economy and community benefit from a competitive business environment. It is important for councils to take a economy-wide perspective on these matters.

Pivotal role of local government

Working with the local business community, local government can create better business environments.

While there is tremendous variation in the mandates and powers given to local governments, international literature, including OECD research , classifies the broad roles of local government into four main categories: (1) representation (activing on behalf of the community); (2) services (the delivery of activities, amenities and infrastructure); (3) regulation (the provision and enforcement of guidelines and rules); and (4) development and investment (the stimulation and management of sustainable economic growth and social and environmental well-being). Within this fourth role, local government is required to work with different markets, geographies, timeframes, partners, financing, stakeholders, tools and audiences.

In Australia, state governments prescribe the roles and powers of local government authorities. While all local governments have expanded their role beyond the traditional rates, roads and rubbish, there is some variation in the attention given to their role in supporting economic development.

Despite this, local governments have a significant impact on the investment decisions made by local business and these decisions directly affect the local economy. From a business and economic perspective, local governments perform a number of interlinked roles when it comes to business growth:

• Planning and regulating : ensuring the liveability of an area by regulating where, when and how business activities can occur, while protecting consumers, residents, and the environment, and ensuring a level playing field for all. This includes decisions associated with planning and development approvals and the administration of building services.
• Developing and attracting: supporting the development of the local economy and its business base through programs and services that help firms do better and facilitating investments into the local area. This may include support for business development advisory and management training services, incubator facilities and information on the local economy and business sector. It also includes the development of business-related infrastructure and facilities, including the new challenges associated with digital transformation and the integration of digital technology into all areas of business––see the Australian Local Government Association .
• Mediating local interests: councils are often required to mediate between competing interests, where, for example, a property developer wants to develop a new tourist resort or a national franchise wants to set-up in the main street. Local governments intervene and represent local interests for the wellbeing of the community and its economy.
• Facilitating and partnering: addressing the development challenges of many local communities is often beyond the scope of a single council. Many development challenges today are complex and require more than one actor. Increasing, local councils realise that they must work with other public and private partners to facilitate economic growth and provide the services and products the community needs. For example, in Tasmania, the role of local government has been described as facilitating economic development ‘by working with the business community to attract and retain investment and support sustainable economic growth’.

Where do we begin with local business environment reform?

At this point, I hope you can see how local government can create better business environments. In my next post, I examine the ways to assess the local business environment. There are many tools that can be used to do this. These need to be tailored to address the practical concerns of private investors, while responding to the local government context.

Get in touch!

If this post deals with issues of interest to you or you want to talk more about how to make your business environment more conducive to local business and economic growth, then feel free to get in touch .

Also, check out the MyPlaceMatters website.

Simon White

Economic Growth | Business Development | Job Creation 

How local government councillors can support economic development

Creating a better local business environment (part 3): options for reform, creating a better local business environment (part 2): what to measure.

Align your business plan with local council policies and objectives

Andrew Overton, of Overton Creative Consulting, discusses how to integrate a strategic plan into the broader planning process and connect with the priorities of local and state governments. Andrew has worked extensively in local government cultural service delivery and now actively assists organisations in their planning processes.

At a recent seminar held in conjunction with the Regional Public Galleries Association, Andrew offered tips and insider information to help navigate the process of business planning.

• Meet and talk with colleagues and peers and share that information.
• Use a mind map or visual process to chart and connect these strategic links, issues and key trends.
• Assess both the internal and external environments.
• Identify your strengths, weakness, challenges and opportunities.
• Detail your markets, key community stakeholders and strategically important partners.
• Strategic planning is a process that is not fixed and should always be ongoing.
• Go beyond operational and day-to-day concerns.
• Build a narrative to describe your overall strategic approach.
• Distil the research that underpins your artistic rational and goals by formulating guiding principles.
• Use language that is consistent to council vision and ways of working.
• Synthesise your priorities into five or six top goals.
• Detail those strategies that will satisfy a number of goals.
• Above all prioritise.

Presented by Museums & Galleries of NSW in partnership with the Regional Public Galleries Association of NSW with support by Arts NSW.

Corporate Business Plan

The Corporate Business Plan is an internal business planning tool that translates council priorities into operations within the resources available.

The plan details the services, operations and projects a local government will deliver within a defined period. It also includes the processes for delivering these and the costs associated. 

What do I have to gather?

The following information is gathered prior to commencing the review of the Corporate Business Plan. It is important that the initial planning aspect occurs to ensure alignment and resource capability before a budget is determined:

• The Corporate Business Plan is used to drive development of the Annual Budget. Each year of the Corporate Business Plan is intended to drive the Annual Budget.
• Any external trends or key issues that would impact on the objectives in the Corporate Business Plan for the ensuing financial year.
• Performance data to assess where improvement is required over the ensuing financial year.
• Any internal operational issues or requirements that could impact on objectives need to be sourced.
• Reviews of the Strategic Community Plan or reviews of Council priorities which activate short, medium or long term community aspirations.

What do I do with it?

During the review of the Corporate Business Plan and Reprioritisation, the following key processes may be used:

• External analysis - examine and manage external trends and issues that could impact on the local government's operations over the ensuing financial year.
• Internal analysis - examine performance data, assess operational issues and identify the improvement strategies to be deployed throughout the duration of the Corporate Business Plan.
• Service/project evaluation - significant changes in community aspirations, expectations, priorities or external factors may require a method for re-evaluating services and projects to ensure alignment, cost-benefit and resource capability.
• Capability analysis – micro testing of resource capability ensures that the local government responds to changes in the community and business environment by prioritising its operations within its available resources. The long term (10 year) financial projections are updated and utilised during this analysis. They also drive the development of the Annual Budget.

What do I end up with?

The following are outputs of the Corporate Business Plan review and Reprioritisation processes:

• Annual budget - The financial representation of "Year 1" of the Corporate Business Plan, including detailed statutory financial requirements.
• Reprioritised/roll forward Corporate Business Plan - Outlining all of the local government's operations (including services, assets, Council priorities and projects), with detailed financial estimates, administrative responsibility and linkage to the Strategic Community Plan. The interdependent relationship with the Informing Strategies means that the level of resource capability over the extended life of the Corporate Business Plan is reviewed, assessed and updated as required.

Related resources

• pdf Integrated Planning and Reporting Strategic Planning Framework Short Guide Integrated Planning and Reporting Strategic Planning Framework Short Guide (pdf) (483 KB)
• docx Integrated Planning and Reporting Advisory Standard September 2016 Integrated Planning and Reporting Advisory Standard September 2016 (docx) (312 KB)
• pdf Integrated Planning and Reporting Advisory Standard September 2016 Integrated Planning and Reporting Advisory Standard September 2016 (pdf) (163 KB)

Do not submit enquiries with this form.

Salford City Council uses cookies which are essential for this site to work. We also use non-essential cookies to help us improve our digital services.

Help and support with cost of living

Our business plans

To make sure that we achieve our vision to 'create a fairer, greener and healthier Salford' and deliver our key This is our Salford priorities , we develop annual Service Group business plans.

The business plans contain actions to deliver on our priorities, risks that may prevent us achieving our objectives and performance indicators that will measure our success. Our 2023-2024 Service Group business plans are available below.

Reports on how we are doing are available on our performance page.

Downloadable documents

• 2023-2024 Adult Services Business Plan (Adobe PDF format, 332kb)
• 2023-2024 Children’s Services Business Plan (Adobe PDF format, 338kb)
• 2023-2024 Place Business Plan (Adobe PDF format, 322kb)
• 2023-2024 Public Health Business Plan (Adobe PDF format, 329kb)
• 2023-2024 Service Reform Business plan (Adobe PDF format, 490kb)

If you are unable to view documents of these types, our downloads page provides links to viewing software.

This page was last updated on 8 July 2024

How the council is performing

How do you rate the quality and content of this page (required).

Your comments This form allows you to give us your opinion on the quality of the content on this page . If you'd like to comment or complain about a council service, please use our complaints, comments and compliments form.

Your comments will not be published on this website and are subject to our privacy statement .

Do not type in this box

Your page rating has been successfully submitted.

• Rosters & E-Bidding

Have a Research Question?

• Research Tools
• Explore Topics
• Stay Informed
• Publications

Strategic Planning

This page provides basic information about strategic planning for local governments in Washington State, including examples of local strategic plans, vision statements, and mission statements.

What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is the process by which leaders of an organization, such as a local government, determine what it intends to be in the future and how it will get there. It involves developing a vision for the organization's future and determining the necessary goals, priorities, and action strategies to achieve that vision.

As Yogi Berra would say:

"If you don't know where you are going - you might end up someplace else."

A strategic plan serves as a community's roadmap and is used to prioritize initiatives, resources, goals, and department operations and projects. The strategic plan is a big-picture document directing efforts and resources toward a clearly defined vision.

Vision Statements

Community visioning is the process of developing consensus about what future the community wants, and then deciding what is necessary to achieve it. A vision statement captures what community members most value about their community, and the shared image of what they want their community to become. It inspires community members to work together to achieve the vision.

A thoughtful vision statement is one of the elements needed to form a forward looking strategic framework that gives councils or boards the long-term-comprehensive perspective necessary to make rational and disciplined tactical/incremental decisions on community issues as they arise. Community vision statements are typically crafted through a collaborative process that involves a wide variety of community residents, stakeholders and elected officials.

Mission Statements

Mission statements are directly connected to vision statements. While a vision statement describes the desired future state of the organization, the mission statement describes how that vision will be achieved. Ideally, mission and vision statements are crafted through a collaborative process that involves a wide array of community stakeholders and elected officials, usually as part of an overall strategic plan.

A well-crafted mission statement should capture in a short, concise paragraph the purpose of the organization's existence and what actions it takes to fulfill this purpose.

Examples of Strategic Plans

Below are a few examples of strategic plans adopted by local governments in Washington State.

Cities/Towns

• Camas Strategic Plan 2018-2020
• Issaquah  Citywide Strategic Plan webpage  – Allows viewers to access parts of the plan via related webpages or download the entire document
• Richland 2018 Strategic Leadership Plan
• Shoreline City Council Goals and Workplan, 2022-2024
• Snohomish Strategic Plan 2014-2018
• Spokane  Strategic Plan webpage  – Allows viewers to access measures/goals built into the 6-year strategic plan, including a  1-page summary
• Tacoma 2025 Strategic Plan
• Cowlitz County Strategic Plan 2016-2020
• Thurston County Strategic Plan 2019-2020

Special Purpose Districts

• Franklin Public Utility District Excellence in Governance & Strategic Plan
• Lakehaven Utility District Water System Plan Update 2016  – Water-sewer district
• Olympic Medical Center Strategic Plan 2021-2024
• Port of Vancouver 2018 Strategic Plan
• South King Fire & Rescue  Strategic Leadership Plan 2017-2021

Examples of Vision and/or Mission Statements

Below are a few examples of mission statements and/or vision statements adopted by local governments in Washington State.

• Bothell Road Map 2017-2018  – Includes vision, strategies, values, and city council goals
• Lakewood Resolution No. 2015-30 (2015) – Adopting vision statement
• Pullman City Council Mission
• Renton Business Plan  – Includes vision, mission, and goals
• Seattle City Clerk Vision, Mission, and Values  – Specific to clerk's office
• Shoreline Vision 2029
• Snoqualmie Fire Department Mission & Goals
• Stanwood Public Works Mission Statement  – Specific to public works department
• Tacoma The Principles that Guide Us  – Includes vision and mission statements
• Walla Walla Statement of Mission, Vision & Values
• Clallam County Mission Statement and Statement of Values
• Spokane County  2018 Strategic Framework  – One-page overview connecting mission to core values, objectives, and vision
• Lacey Fire District No. 3 Mission, Vision & Values
• Port of Kalama What is Our Mission?
• Woodinville Water District Mission Statement

Recommended Resources

Below are some resources that local governments can use to help develop their strategic planning processes, visions, and mission statements.

• Balanced Scorecard Institute: Is There Any Strategy In Your Strategic Plan? (2008)
• Boston Consulting Group: Four Steps to High Impact Strategic Planning in Government  (2018)
• Center for Rural Pennsylvania: Planning for the Future: A Handbook on Community Visioning  (2006) – Well-organized guide outlines a suggested process, elements of success, and lessons learned. Also provides sample workshop agendas, announcements, checklists and other materials.
• Community Tool Box:  Chapter 8: Developing a Strategic Plan  – Part of the "Community Tool Box" provided by the University of Kansas Center for Community Health and Development
• Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA): Building a Financially Resilient Government through Long-Term Financial Planning (2011)
• Strategic Planning for Local Government  – For-purchase ICMA publication
• Maine State Planning Office: Community Visioning Handbook: How to Imagine - and Create - a Better Future  (2003) – Particularly thoughtful visioning guide. Nice explanation of "why vision?" useful "how to" steps and public workshop instructions, tips and exercises.
• Mosaica: Strategic Planning: A Ten-Step Guide  (2001) – Useful general guide to strategic planning for all types of organizations.
• National Civic League: Community Visioning and Strategic Planning Handbook (2000) – Still useful guide lays out the framework of the successful community planning processes used by the National Civic League and others across the country

Weekly E-News

Get the latest local government news, analysis, and training opportunities in Washington State with MRSC’s Weekly Insights .

Related Materials

The Hidden Power of the Government Form Letter

3 Steps to a More Meaningful Mission Statement

Embracing conflict: Honing your conflict management skills

With the rise of AI, workforce planning is critical. But many governments don’t do it.

Money blog: Oasis resale U-turn as official reseller lowers fee amid criticism

The Money blog is your place for consumer and personal finance news and tips. Today's posts include Twickets lowering fees for Oasis tickets, the extension of the Household Support Fund and O2 Priority axing free Greggs. Listen to a Daily podcast on the Oasis ticket troubles as you scroll.

Monday 2 September 2024 20:11, UK

• Oasis resale U-turn as Twickets lowers fee after criticism
• Millions to get cost of living payments this winter as scheme extended
• O2 Priority customers fume as Greggs perk scaled back
• Listen to the Daily above and tap here to follow wherever you get your podcasts

Essential reads

• 'This job has saved lives': What's it like selling the Big Issue?
• Eyewatering rate hike awaiting anyone coming off a five-year fixed

Tips and advice

• Money Problem : 'My dog died but my insurance is still demanding whole year's policy payment'
• Treat savings like monthly bill, says savings guru
• Young people doing 'big no-no' with holiday money - here are the golden rules

Twickets has announced it is lowering its charges after some Oasis fans had to pay more than £100 in extra fees to buy official resale tickets.

The site is where the band themselves is directing people to buy second-hand tickets for face value - having warned people against unofficial third party sellers like StubHub and Viagogo.

One person branded the extra fees "ridiculous" (see more in 10.10 post), after many people had already been left disappointed at the weekend when Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing pushed tickets up by three times the original advertised fee.

Twickets said earlier that it typically charged a fee of 10-15% of the face value of the tickets.

But it has since said it will lower the charge due to "exceptional demand" from Oasis fans - taking ownership of an issue in a way fans will hope others follow. 

Richard Davies, Twickets founder, told the Money blog: "Due to the exceptional demand for the Oasis tour in 2025, Twickets have taken the decision to lower our booking fee to 10% and a 1% transactional fee (to cover bank charges) for all buyers of their tickets on our platform. In addition we have introduced a fee cap of £25 per ticket for these shows. Sellers of tickets already sell free of any Twickets charge.

"This ensures that Twickets remains hugely competitive against the secondary market, including sites such as Viagogo, Gigsberg and StubHub.

"Not only do these platforms inflate ticket prices way beyond their original face value but they also charge excessive booking fees, usually in the region of 30-40%. Twickets by comparison charges an average fee of around 12.5%"

The fee cap, which the Money blog understands is being implemented today, will apply to anyone who has already bought resale tickets through the site.

Mr Davies said Twickets was a "fan first" resale site and a "safe and affordable place" for people to trade unwanted tickets.

"The face value of a ticket is the total amount it was first purchased for, including any booking fee. Twickets does not set the face value price, that is determined by the event and the original ticketing company. The price listed on our platform is set by the seller, however no one is permitted to sell above the face-value on Twickets, and every ticket is checked before listing that it complies with this policy," he said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people have complained to the regulator about how Oasis tickets were advertised ahead of going on sale. 

The Advertising Standards Authority said it had received 450 complaints about Ticketmaster adverts for the gigs.

Some  expressed their anger on social media , as tickets worth £148 were being sold for £355 on the site within hours of release, due to the "dynamic pricing" systems.

A spokesperson from ASA said the complainants argue that the adverts made "misleading claims about availability and pricing".

They added: "We're carefully assessing these complaints and, as such, can't comment any further at this time.

"To emphasise, we are not currently investigating these ads."

Ticketmaster said it does not set prices and its website says this is down to the "event organiser" who "has priced these tickets according to their market value".

Despite traditionally being an affordable staple of British cuisine, the average price for a portion of fish and chips has risen by more than 50% in the past five years to nearly £10, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Sonny and Shane "the codfather" Lee told Sky News of the challenges that owning J-Henry's Fish and Chip Shop brings and why prices have skyrocketed. 

"Potatoes, fish, utilities, cooking oil - so many things [are going up]," he said. 

Shane also said that he is used to one thing at a time increasing in price, but the outlook today sees multiple costs going up all at once.  

"Potatoes [were] priced right up to about £25 a bag - the previous year it was about £10 a bag," Sonny said, noting a bad harvest last year. 

He said the business had tried hake as a cheaper fish option, but that consumers continued to prefer the more traditional, but expensive, cod and haddock. 

"It's hard and we can we can absorb the cost to a certain extent, but some of it has to be passed on," Shane added. 

After a long Saturday for millions of Oasis fans in online queues, the culture secretary says surge pricing - which pushed the price of some tickets up by three times their original advertised value to nearly £400 - will be part of the government's review of the ticket market. 

On today's episode of the Daily podcast, host Niall Paterson speaks to secondary ticketing site Viagogo. While it wasn’t part of dynamic pricing, it has offered resale tickets for thousands of pounds since Saturday. 

Matt Drew from the company accepts the industry needs a full review, while Adam Webb, from the campaign group FanFair Alliance, explains the changes it would like to see.

We've covered the fallout of the Oasis sale extensively in the Money blog today - see the culture secretary's comments on the "utterly depressing" inflated pricing in our post at 6.37am, and Twickets, the official Oasis resale site, slammed by angry fans for its "ridiculous" added fees at 10.10am.

The growing backlash culminated in action from Twickets - the company said it would lower its charges after some fans had to pay more than £100 in extra fees for resale tickets (see post at 15.47).

Tap here to follow the Daily podcast - 20 minutes on the biggest stories every day

Last week we reported that employers will have to offer flexible working hours - including a four-day week - to all workers under new government plans.

To receive their full pay, employees would still have to work their full hours but compressed into a shorter working week - something some workplaces already do.

Currently, employees can request flexible hours as soon as they start at a company but employers are not legally obliged to agree.

The Labour government now wants to make it so employers have to offer flexible hours from day one, except where it is "not reasonably feasible".

You can read more of the details in this report by our politics team:

But what does the public think about this? We asked our followers on LinkedIn to give their thoughts in an unofficial poll.

It revealed that the overwhelming majority of people support the idea to compress the normal week's hours into fewer days - some 83% of followers said they'd choose this option over a standard five-day week.

But despite the poll showing a clear preference for a compressed week, our followers appeared divided in the comments.

"There's going to be a huge brain-drain as people move away from companies who refuse to adapt with the times and implement a 4 working week. This will be a HUGE carrot for many orgs," said Paul Burrows, principal software solutions manager at Reality Capture.

Louise McCudden, head of external affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices, said she wasn't surprised at the amount of people choosing longer hours over fewer days as "a lot of people" are working extra hours on a regular basis anyway.

But illustrator and administrative professional Leslie McGregor noted the plan wouldn't be possible in "quite a few industries and quite a few roles, especially jobs that are customer centric and require 'round the clock service' and are heavily reliant upon people in trades, maintenance, supply and transport". 

"Very wishful thinking," she said.

Paul Williamson had a similar view. He said: "I'd love to know how any customer first service business is going to manage this."

We reported earlier that anyone with O2 Priority will have their free weekly Greggs treats replaced by £1 monthly Greggs treats - see 6.21am post.

But did you know there are loads of other ways to get food from the nation's most popular takeaway for free or at a discount?

Downloading the Greggs app is a good place to start - as the bakery lists freebies, discounts and special offers there regularly. 

New users also get rewards just for signing up, so it's worth checking out. 

And there's a digital loyalty card which you can add virtual "stamps" to with each purchase to unlock discounts or other freebies.  

Vodafone rewards

Seriously begrudged Virgin Media O2 customers may want to consider switching providers. 

The Vodafone Rewards app, VeryMe, sometimes gives away free Greggs coffees, sausage rolls, sweet treats and more to customers.

Monzo bank account holders can grab a sausage roll (regular or vegan), regular sized hot drink, doughnut or muffin every week. 

Birthday cake

Again, you'll need the Greggs award app for this one - which will allow you to claim one free cupcake, cream cake or doughnut for your birthday each year.

Octopus customers

Octopus Energy customers with smart meters can claim one free drink each week, in-store from Greggs (or Caffè Nero).

The Greggs freebie must be a regular size hot drink.

Make new friends

If you're outgoing (and hungry), it may be worth befriending a Greggs staff member.

The staff discount at Greggs is 50% on own-produced goods and 25% off branded products. 

If you aren't already aware, Iceland offers four Greggs sausage rolls in a multi-pack for £3. 

That means, if you're happy to bake it yourself, you'll only be paying 74p per sausage roll. 

Millions of Britons could receive extra cash to help with the cost of living this winter after the government extended the Household Support Fund.

A £421m pot will be given to local councils in England to distribute, while £79m will go to the devolved administrations.

The fund will now be available until April 2025 having been due to run out this autumn.

Councils decide how to dish out their share of the fund but it's often via cash grants or vouchers.

Many councils also use the cash to work with local charities and community groups to provide residents with key appliances, school uniforms, cookery classes and items to improve energy efficiency in the home.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: "The £22bn blackhole inherited from the previous governments means we have to take tough decisions to fix the foundations of our economy.

"But extending the Household Support Fund is the right thing to do - provide targeted support for those who need it most as we head into the winter months."

The government has been criticised for withdrawing universal winter fuel payments for pensioners of up to £300 this winter - with people now needing to be in receipt of certain means-tested benefits to qualify.

People should contact their local council for details on how to apply for the Household Support Fund - they can find their council  here .

Lloyds Bank app appears to have gone down for many, with users unable to see their transactions. 

Down Detector, which monitors site outages, has seen more than 600 reports this morning.

It appears to be affecting online banking as well as the app.

There have been some suggestions the apparent issue could be due to an update.

Another disgruntled user said: "Absolutely disgusting!! I have an important payment to make and my banking is down. There was no warning given prior to this? Is it a regular maintenance? Impossible to get hold of someone to find out."

A Lloyds Bank spokesperson told Sky News: "We know some of our customers are having issues viewing their recent transactions and our app may be running slower than usual.

"We're sorry about this and we're working to have everything back to normal soon."

We had anger of unofficial resale prices, then Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing - and now fees on the official resale website are causing consternation among Oasis fans.

The band has encouraged anyone wanting resale tickets to buy them at face value from Ticketmaster or Twickets - after some appeared for £6,000 or more on other sites.

"Tickets appearing on other secondary ticketing sites are either counterfeit or will be cancelled by the promoters," Oasis said.

With that in mind, fans flocked to buy resale tickets from the sites mentioned above - only to find further fees are being added on. 

Mainly Oasis, a fan page, shared one image showing a Twickets fee for two tickets as high as £138.74. 

"Selling the in demand tickets completely goes against the whole point of their company too… never mind adding a ridiculous fee on top of that," the page shared. 

Fan Brad Mains shared a photo showing two tickets priced at £337.50 each (face value of around £150, but increased due to dynamic pricing on Saturday) - supplemented by a £101.24 Twickets fee. 

That left him with a grand total of £776.24 to pay for two tickets.

"Actually ridiculous this," he  said on X .

"Ticketmaster inflated price then sold for 'face value' on Twickets with a £100 fee. 2 x £150 face value tickets for £776, [this] should be illegal," he added. 

Twickets typically charges between 10-15% of the ticket value as its own fee. 

We have approached the company for comment.

Separately, the government is now looking at the practice of dynamic pricing - and we've had a response to that from the Competition and Markets Authority this morning.

It said: "We want fans to get a fair deal when they go to buy tickets on the secondary market and have already taken action against major resale websites to ensure consumer law is being followed properly. 

"But we think more protections are needed for consumers here, so it is positive that the government wants to address this. We now look forward to working with them to get the best outcomes for fans and fair-playing businesses."

Consumer protection law does not ban dynamic pricing and it is a widely used practice. However, the law also states that businesses should not mislead consumers about the price they must pay for a product, either by providing false or deceptive information or by leaving out important information or providing it too late.

By James Sillars , business reporter

It's a false start to the end of the summer holidays in the City.

While London is mostly back at work, trading is fairly subdued due to the US Labor (that's labour, as in work) Day holiday.

US markets will not open again until Tuesday.

There's little direction across Europe with the FTSE 100 trading nine points down at 8,365.

Leading the gainers was Rightmove - up 24%. The property search website is the subject of a possible cash and shares takeover offer by Australian rival REA.

The company is a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

One other point to note is the continuing fluctuation in oil prices.

Brent crude is 0.7% down at the start of the week at $76.

Dragging the cost lower is further evidence of weaker demand in China.

Australia's REA Group is considering a takeover of Rightmove, in a deal which could be worth about £4.36bn.

REA Group said in a statement this morning there are "clear similarities" between the companies, which have "highly aligned cultural values".

Rightmove is the UK's largest online property portal, while REA is Australia's largest property website. 

It employs more than 2,800 people and is majority-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp,.

REA Group said: "REA sees a transformational opportunity to apply its globally leading capabilities and expertise to enhance customer and consumer value across the combined portfolio, and to create a global and diversified digital property company, with number one positions in Australia and the UK.

"There can be no certainty that an offer will be made, nor as to the terms on which any offer may be made."

Rightmove has been approached for comment.

Be the first to get Breaking News

Install the Sky News app for free

Resetting the relationship between local and national government. Read our Local Government White Paper

Supporting councils with business engagement

Introduction

Relationships between local government and businesses have always been essential to securing and sustaining a business voice to inform local policies and place-based decisions and guide action to enable businesses to thrive. The pandemic has accelerated and emphasised the importance of that relationship and has become even more central to maintaining quality place-shaping and vibrant local economies.

Councils work with businesses in a variety of guises. Pre-pandemic there were two core dimensions to this relationship and the pandemic brought about a third. The first role is through statutory functions such as trading standards, environmental health, business rate collections and planning. These are all essential to keeping places and businesses running smoothly and safely. The second is through a set of non-statutory functions including inward investment, developing local skills and jobs as well as business support. The third, which emerged as part of the pandemic, was a new set of functions – distributing COVID-19 recovery funding to businesses as well as discretionary grants and advising on PPE and social distancing requirements to protect and safeguard the public. Local authorities became a vital single point of public sector contact with businesses, building on their economic development and public protection roles.

The scale and nature of business engagement during this time has been more significant than ever before. Councils stepped up to ensure they could support their local business base, in many cases, beyond the distribution of government grants. Businesses also came to realise the strength of what the local authorities could do to support them. Where in the past they have sometimes criticised councils for being a bit slow and difficult to navigate, during the pandemic they found the offer was streamlined and responsive. Councils now have more contact with businesses than ever before and maintaining this relationship will deliver more benefits for the future.

How councils capitalise on this positive action will be essential to cementing relationships with businesses going forward. Uncertainties around changing work and travel patterns will remain in the short to medium term and this will undoubtedly impact on wider regeneration and place-shaping ambitions. Key to navigating this uncertainty will be the coordination of effort and a closer working relationship with businesses locally to inform and influence the “what next”. 

Policy and partnership landscape

The long-term policy landscape has almost been on hold during the pandemic as the issues of the day have been addressed as a priority. However, this has strengthened relationships across the public and private sector. There are both challenges and opportunities as a result of this and the relationship between central and local government and business has become ever more important.  

During the pandemic, many councils relied on local business support organisations to help to identify where funding from central government should be channelled. Not all places, however, have a business support network, and, in some cases, the existing network isn’t strong enough to deal with the volume or range of business need.  

Adding to this is the changing policy landscape. The Levelling Up white paper and recently published Net Zero Strategy are two key pieces of policy which will require careful engagement between local government, Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) and businesses.  

The White Paper, Skills for Jobs , identifies chambers of commerce as the main vehicles for articulating the business voice. This in itself is a challenge as not all places are represented by an active chamber offer so, in many cases, councils are taking on a leadership and convening role. Also, in many places where there is a chamber presence, the relationship with the their council needs to be strengthened. There is also a commitment to build on the work delivered by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) through, for example, Skills Advisory Panels (SAP). Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCA) and LEPs have created 36 SAPs which bring together employers, skills providers and local government to resolve mismatches between skills supply and employer demand at a local level. There is a potential role for councils in supporting this partnership to enable the business voice to influence education and training provision.

The outcome of the LEP review will also have an impact on the future role of councils with regards to business relationships. We have already witnessed a changing role of LEPs across funding and skills programmes and a more central role for councils to coordinate activity. The role that continues to be played across LEPs in relation to ensuring a business voice is present through decision making will continue to be vital to local governance and decision-making.

There are also opportunities at a county-level to work closely with business to understand the benefits of county devolution. Having a strong business input into future plans and strategies can only strengthen place-based thinking. 

A further consideration is the relationship with business when bidding or accessing funding. Councils have had to build capacity to prepare and craft funding bids for large scale projects, and the local intelligence gathered  through the pandemic has made this process somewhat easier. Preparing evidence bases for funding opportunities such as the Levelling Up Fund as well as the Community Renewal Fund has encouraged an open dialogue around local needs. This has been supported by more dialogue with businesses than before at a local government level.

This shifting policy and funding landscape is both a challenge and an opportunity. On the one hand, it allows councils to reset the relationship with businesses and use new local intelligence gathered over the past 18 months of engagement. It also allows a more substantial use of local business intelligence in local decisions and future strategy development. We have heard through our research that the views of businesses are becoming more important in setting policy at a local level and the evidence gathered during the pandemic is being used well to inform funding bids and emerging strategies. This high-quality business intelligence is critically important in the future of local decision-making and could bring benefits in areas by promoting economic success to drive inward investment and develop new supply chains bringing forward jobs.

Whatever the outcome of these emerging policy and funding opportunities, securing and sustaining a business voice to inform local policies and decisions will continue to be central to maintaining quality place-shaping and vibrant local economies.

The research into relationships between councils and businesses

The purpose of this report is to identify and capture the learning from councils’ extensive contact with businesses over the last 18 months in the context of COVID-19. It is also to identify how councils can engage more effectively with businesses in the future to support economic recovery. This firm foundation built through the pandemic gives an opportunity to bring a strong business voice into local action and policy making.

The rest of this report highlights some of the challenges faced during the pandemic but focuses on the positive practices put in place by councils and their partners. It shares a number of case studies that illustrate proactive action taken by councils and draws on some aspects which, as we emerge from the pandemic, should continue to be front and centre of local engagement with businesses. Finally, it gives thought to what action can be taken to build on this positive impact and provides a checklist for areas to consider in addressing the needs of their own localities.

Themes emerging from the research

The pandemic has had an adverse impact on local economies, particularly on businesses within certain sectors such as hospitality and leisure where businesses closed for long periods of time. Also within particular communities, especially across more deprived areas, which has contributed to raising the level of need. Subsequently, this has put more pressure on local authorities to support their local businesses and has led to marked changes in councils’ approach to business engagement.

The actions that individual authorities have taken to improve engagement with their local businesses varies depending on the make-up of their local business base; resource and capacity; location and many other factors. However, in our research we have distilled the themes which have emerged via our scoping interviews and roundtable discussions. This explores how councils engaged with business in the urgency of the pandemic, offering messages for more extensive and fruitful engagement during recovery and future strategic activity.

Strengthening the evidence base and better use of data

As the pandemic moved from stage to stage and restrictions started loosening, councils were able to engage more with their businesses. With challenges of out-of-date information around business dynamics nationally, many used this as an opportunity to get to know their local business base better, document changes and ensure that they had clean data going forward. This guided councils to move away what had often been transactional relationships previously, and to shift focus to providing targeted support to their most affected sectors and industries. The core of an economic strategy involves knowing which businesses have the potential to grow or prosper, where they are, what challenges and opportunities they face and how the local authority and other bodies can support them. The key to this is good business intelligence and contacts.

This stimulated councils to explore new data collection techniques during the pandemic and multiple councils did this via surveys, experimental data and through door knocking. For example, Essex County Council (ECC) undertook a survey to help understand the needs of their business base better. This included questions to help identify the impact that the pandemic has had; impact of the furlough scheme; identifying who businesses go to for support; and identifying what support businesses needed to help them recover. Using information collected, ECC was able to host a series of roundtables events for businesses most impacted by the pandemic to support them with their individual and sector needs.

Likewise, Lambeth Council established a Business Taskforce during the pandemic to collect more local data but also to allow them to tackle live issues. They were able to collect data on footfall; business closure rates; mobility data via 02; and consumer spend data via Mastercard. All of these channels contributed to a greater understanding of their local business base.

Using data collected, councils were able to target resources more efficiently and provide focused support to sectors or specific business communities which were particularly struggling. This in turn enabled many councils to draw on this local knowledge to develop robust funding proposals and target their support much earlier. The pandemic has shown an increased appetite from councils to try to understand the needs of their local business base better and set up bespoke groups to support targeted communities and sub-sectors to help improve survival rates of those groups. 

Division of labour

Since the pandemic, relationships with businesses have also been spread more widely among officers, members and across different council departments which has acted as a key contributor to giving councils a greater understanding of the needs of their businesses. We heard from a number of councils that cross-council engagement fora were established, ranging from licensing to planning to business rate collections. This helped to establish a one-voice one-approach across the borough and ensured a consistent message could be shared between officers and members. It also encouraged a holistic understanding of local need and encouraged councils to focus more activity on engaging with businesses in most need to ensure, for example, they were able to access funding or be part of future support programmes.

The role of local councillors, given many of them are themselves business owners, can also provide a unique perspective. Their links with businesses in their wards bring an additional place dimension to the dynamic and councils could do more to capture and use this.  

In the longer-term, there is a question about sustainability of the wider business engagement. In many areas, council officers were seconded from their substantive roles to support businesses during the pandemic and will, if they have not already, return to their regular roles. Therefore, there is a need for councils to consider their proposed future focus and balance of resource for business engagement.

Improvement to reach and communications

The pandemic has helped expand councils’ reach into business communities – especially via the use of webinars and roundtables which have allowed councils to reach out to and engage with businesses from all parts of their locality. Using online platforms rather than face-to-face meetings has helped councils to engage with more businesses and has helped provide a granular level of local business intelligence. Many councils reported that business engagement events saw a significant increase in attendee numbers than they did at regular “town hall” events. This was particularly beneficial where new and important information needed to be shared quickly as businesses closed and reopened.

Some councils identified a lack of contact and engagement with certain groups of businesses, such as those from BAME communities.  Taking time to understand the cultural dynamic and challenges and opportunities facing business owners from different communities was essential to ensuring what was on offer was accessible to all. Having built those links and a better comprehension of need, work must continue to ensure equity of offer.

Councils also reported a shift in their channels of communications. Predominantly focused on communications to residents and communities, many councils reported a large increase in the delivery of messages directly targeted to employers. This included sectioning off messages to business audiences through newsletters, social media, and forums. There were examples cited of newsletters providing information to smaller businesses, big business leaders’ groups to discuss issues specific to their businesses. These were:

• structured around key business audiences, talking to individual businesses in a more structured way, and tailoring support services to businesses to specific types of businesses, e.g. by size of firm, sector of firm, etc
• flexible in delivery – with councils accommodating flexible hours when hosting business meetings/events
• designed to improve council social media profiles and platforms as a medium to engage with businesses and share information with them.

We heard in our research that communication of the support offer with businesses was at times fragmented and unclear, especially where there were multiple organisations providing various levels of support. Many councils have focused on improving their communication with businesses to ensure that there is clarity in the offer and businesses are clear on what their local council can assist with. Likewise, our research found there is a shift in behaviour to a more open and honest dialogue about what councils can do and how they can help businesses to develop and also a shift in communications from being resident focussed to having elements which are businesses focussed.   

Understanding where strengths lie and taking advantage of them

While a challenge in the short-term as resources became stretched, the deepening of engagement has provided a better basis for building or rebuilding relationships and encouraging further dialogue with business support providers. Using locally generated evidence gives a prime opportunity to councils and business support partners to identify what and how they need to support businesses going forward. Lessons raised in the research include:

• the need to coordinate activity across business support partners and ensure information filters across to enable contributions to shaping growth and strategy
• that councils must work more closely with partners to develop an ecosystem of business support, bringing together all business support outlets for the benefit of the wider business community and smaller businesses.

Challenges of council engagement with businesses in the future

A number of concerns and challenges were raised in relation to the way councils will engage with businesses in the future. Some more practical issues arose, such as:

• the continuing short-term funding opportunities and pressure to allocate support grants
• the difficulty for councils in maintaining engagement in areas with a high number of SMEs. This is more challenging than engaging with a relatively small number of corporates
• capacity gap within councils – the preparation of bids by councils in order to carry out business support has highlighted the capacity gap of some councils and has required them to contract consultants. This is not considered to be a sustainable approach
• difficulty in joining up internal council services – e.g. many departments such as trading standards, business rate teams etc. all have routine contact with a business audience but do not always connect internally with economy teams.

Case studies

Examples from the research.

In the research, we heard from councils that are connecting with businesses in new and creative ways using hyper-local evidence to create a plan to support businesses in the short and medium-term. In this section of the report, a number of illustrations of the innovations delivered by councils have been identified as well as four case studies from councils across the country.

Some innovations include:

• convening a Net Zero business group to ensure employers are at the forefront of carbon reduction ambitions (Lambeth Council)
• identifying and using the exact issues facing businesses through bids to the Community Renewal Fund (Norfolk County Council)
• developing sector profiles and inviting sector leads to present at statutory committees to encourage a better understanding by elected members of the issues facing industry (Gloucestershire County Council)
• information campaigns to engage black and minority ethnic (BAME) business leaders (Lewisham Council)
• task and finish groups to identify future perspectives of young entrepreneurs (Hull City Council).

All of these examples are encouraging a healthy conversation intended to collectively solve some of the issues of the day.

Case Studies

Case study – maldon district council.

Maldon District is a small rural coastal district in Essex with around 3500 businesses, of which a very high proportion is micro-sized.

Pre-pandemic

Pre-pandemic the council’s relationship with businesses was limited and tended to focus on the provision of statutory services. The area also did not have any formal structures in place, such as Business Improvement Districts, due to the nature of the local business characteristics. However, the small and localised nature of businesses within the district led to the natural creation of multiple small business groups – these groups represented a sub-sector or a particular area of interest. These groups were self-created and coordinated by businesses themselves and were used to identify common issues and requirements which were occasionally bought forward to the council.

During the pandemic

The pandemic had a very adverse impact in the district, with high streets and a large hospitality and tourism sector particularly affected. Acknowledging the importance of the high street, the council, as part of its Sense of Place initiative facilitated the creation of the Maldon Business Board – which acted as a “ network of networks ”. This board helped bring together representatives from each of the local business groups to identify where support needed to be focused within the town and which areas were most resilient. It also proved vital in helping both the council and businesses understand COVID-19 restrictions; business support; and the grants programme but also for the council to share that information with business groups who may have been unaware. The council undertook webinars and assigned volunteer high-street stewards to ensure that the dissemination of information and guidance during the pandemic was communicated well with all businesses within the area.

Moving forward

Looking ahead, the council would like to move towards a place-based and asset-based community development model enabling businesses to work together, with the council acting as a partner and stakeholder in economic prosperity and community cohesion. With Sense of Place, they are working to establish a second town focused business board in Burnham-on-Crouch and further sector-based networks as part of the Maldon District Business Network. The council appreciates that the pandemic has shown the importance of local businesses in their communities and would like to act as facilitators and enablers, rather than being ‘sovereign’.

An example of this is the Totally Locally Fiver Fest which businesses coordinated and ran themselves in the high street. This proved to be a highly successful campaign to get people back to the high streets. However, the council understands that it has a key role to play in signposting businesses to the correct information but also to other business services. Thus, it intends to continue providing its monthly newsletter to businesses - which helps signpost them to external support services (i.e. BEST Growth Hub, SELEP); and inform them about local campaigns and initiatives.

Maldon District Council via its grassroots approach has been able to reach out to more businesses, especially the small independent high-street businesses and hopes to bring together more via the Sense of Place initiative, supported by the Magnox Socio-economic Scheme.

Case study – Gloucestershire County Council

Gloucestershire County Council established a statutory joint committee in 2014 to ensure that the seven constituent members could co-ordinate action to deliver the strategic economic plan (SEP) and the growth deal. Partners include Cheltenham Borough Council, Cotswold District Council, Forest of Dean District Council, Gloucester City Council, Gloucestershire County Council, Stroud District Council, Tewkesbury Borough Council and the GFirst Local Enterprise Partnership.

The county council took a strategic leadership role in establishing a committee across district, borough and city council partners. The Gloucestershire Economic Growth Joint Committee (GEGJC) also has responsibility for the monitoring and scrutiny function for the recently produced economic recovery plans, to support the local economy in its recovery from the pandemic.

Pre-pandemic, there was limited direct input from business on the topics considered at the GEGJC although there was strong representation from and through the local enterprise partnership, GFirst LEP.

During the pandemic, direct contact between the county council and its partners identified a series of issues across different sectors. Tourism businesses struggled, and continue to struggle, to recruit the workforce needed to operate hotels, restaurants and bars to satisfy the visitor economy; the agriculture sector is facing uncertainty around the reduction in the Basic Payments Scheme and climate change priorities are encouraging a review of the potential for green jobs across the county.

In 2021, the county council adopted a new approach to engage with businesses to better understand the issues impacting the county. This also coincided with a number of newly elected members joining the joint committee and a desire to inform them of the local issues and opportunities. This approach involved:

• theming individual meetings by sector based on the key employment generators in the county
• conducting a deep dive into that sector to highlight the size, value and employment across the sector as well as setting out the challenges and opportunities facing those businesses locally
• inviting sector leaders to present their particular perspective, drawing on the reality of operating a business in Gloucestershire
• stimulating debate with elected members to explore how businesses can be supported with their key challenges and making links with wider activity across the county to support their growth and sustainability
• continuing to work with sector groups to ensure that actions identified can be followed through with economic development officers from the districts and the county.

Over the year, the sectors that have presented to GEGJC include cyber, tourism and hospitality, and farming and agriculture. The next sectors in the programme are green jobs and manufacturing and engineering.

Case Study – Hull City Council

Kingston upon Hull is a small city in East Yorkshire with around 6,335 enterprises, of which the majority are from either the science, retail or construction sector.

Pre-pandemic, the Kingston upon Hull City Council relationship with businesses was at a strategic level with membership-based organisations and centred on business support via Humber Growth Hub and product related programmes as well as on statutory services, such as collecting business rates. Communication between the council and business community was limited, with discussions mainly taking place between council representatives and business owners at chamber meetings. Though for the Top 50 businesses there was a key account system in place. Many micro businesses in particular found the local authority difficult to navigate and as a result, many businesses were reluctant to engage with the council.

During the pandemic however, there was a shift in this relationship as engagement increased. Businesses came to realise the strength of the support offered by the local authority as council services became more focused on their needs. The council began to understand more about the different types of businesses and their working patterns, the particular challenges of micro and small businesses struggling to keep solvent, and ineligibility issues for the pandemic support funding.

Overall, the council has come to understand more about the key role business owners play in the economic wellbeing of local communities and by providing jobs for local people. The enterprise panel, which existed before the pandemic, gained heightened engagement during the pandemic. The panel, split between big businesses, smaller businesses and support organisations, acted as a route to consultation. This enabled the council to gather general information on the local economy, information on how particular sectors were performing, and local intelligence from the chamber of commerce. Kingston upon Hull City Council is now building on this and has set up a business group under the young people’s enterprise champion which aims to produce a better relationship between businesses and the council.

The pandemic highlighted how business support is often delivered in competition between support partners and the council, and to overcome this, the council aims to create a support network that directs businesses towards the most appropriate type of support. Kingston upon Hull City Council also aims to develop links between the council and businesses so the council can refer businesses to the public for services that the council itself cannot offer. It also intends to make business support more flexible, by delivering activities online outside of standard 9-5 Monday to Friday hours, in particular for enterprising young people.

The pandemic has shown the ease and practicality of digital communication, and the council seeks to capitalise on this by engaging more through online means with businesses and business support partners and look at more effective use of its linkages via its key account model.

Looking ahead, the council aims to further develop a culture of understanding and support of businesses, by triangulating information through local knowledge built during the pandemic by business support partners and the council and in terms of young entrepreneurs has established a Business Engagement group chaired by a young entrepreneur and involving elected members.

Case study – Walsall Council

Walsall is a metropolitan district situated in the West Midlands with 8,000 registered businesses. The local economy is comprised of manufacturing, human health and social care activities, wholesale and retail trade repair of motor vehicles, and transport & logistics. Walsall Council’s Business Growth Team deal with mostly SME manufacturers, transport & logistics firms, skills & training providers and start-ups.

Pre-pandemic, Walsall Council’s capacity to engage with local businesses related directly to European Regional Development Funding (ERDF). Due to the associated eligibility criteria, Walsall Council’s Business Growth Team largely focused efforts on local SMEs who were eligible for such support. The government’s COVID-19 Support Grants meant that the council had to act quickly to put processes in place to administer grants and rate relief. This was a particular challenge as pre-pandemic, the local business base engaged with the council in a limited capacity, for statutory services.

The pandemic changed the relationship between Walsall council and its businesses on a strategic, operational, and technical level. The council strengthened its internal communications to address businesses, with the public health, business rates, and environmental health teams all collaborating to deliver on a targeted and local level. This involved distributing both COVID-19 related guidance to businesses and items such as testing kits and PPE. On a broader level, to deliver grants Walsall council brought in an IT company to set up a portal which enabled them to address the high volume and complexity of business queries, which led to increased engagement with businesses and better long-standing relationships with businesses.

The council utilised its social media profiles and its newsletter, as well as contacting businesses personally through council members, to pass information from the office level to local businesses. The Black Country Economic Group was set up during the pandemic which brought together the key local stakeholders of business support, such as the Growth Hubs, Chambers of Commerce, and Universities, with the council for monthly virtual meetings and allowed for the learning and information to be shared on business support.

Already collaborating well across the Black Country, the pandemic strengthened collaboration, both within the council and among the council and business support organisations. This has been underlined in the ongoing review by the West Midlands Combined Authority which aims to identify and cultivate a business support eco system involving LEPs, enterprise agencies, universities and councils together.

As a result of the pandemic, Walsall council has interacted and supported more businesses than it would have previously, and such businesses have gained greater understanding of what the council can do to support them. As membership organisations bring membership fees and some businesses cannot afford them, it is thought that businesses will look to engage more with councils for support without cost. Moreover, as the economy transitions post-Brexit and while moving from EU funds to the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, Walsall Council recognises the opportunity to build local packages for the targeted needs of local businesses. To maintain this increased level of engagement, communication is imperative, and the council as well as elected members aim to engage more regularly with its business base whether that be speaking at events or quarterly visits.

Future considerations and practical recommendations

A core challenge emerging from both within and outside the sector beyond the short-term is one of sustainability. Engaging with businesses in a time of need is different to continuing to do so in the long-term. Understanding growth ambitions, the conditions required to employ people locally and investing in hard and soft infrastructure for the future is a growing part of regeneration and place-shaping.

Adding to this complex perspective is the uncertain future of local enterprise partnerships as well as government policy and funding for business support programmes. However, there are also opportunities for reshaping or resetting this business dynamic. Social value for example provides opportunities for understanding the local market and building capabilities within the local business base. This should be treated not just as a legal duty through the Social Value Act but also as a chance to build capacity and growth in local markets. 

In considering what steps need to be taken to understand how individual councils can continue to engage with businesses in a way which complements the existing eco-system, this research has developed a series of questions against which councils can consider their role. This is set out below in the form of a checklist which has been developed to strengthen relationships between councils and businesses at an individual and collective position.

• Are they fit for purpose? Do they include representatives from a range of business audiences including for example, size of business, priority sectors locally, geographical range and are they representative of the local demographic?

Strategy formation

• How is this built in? Does it include a range of businesses and business representative organisations? Does that voice include representation from key sectors and all communities?
• How does this relate to social value and the considerable buying power of each council? Is this more than just a legal requirement providing opportunities and stimulating the local market?

Partnership working

• Is it appropriate to have an internal council officers’ forum across departments? Are members involved or is it clear when members need to be involved? Does this involve other councils locally?
• Is the council involved in helping to develop links between business and education and training providers?
• How does this dynamic work at different spatial levels, for example hyper-local to sub-regional?
• Is there regular dialogue with businesses to maintain a continual flow of information on skills needs and employment opportunities?
• Is this clearly communicated with Further Education and Higher Education partners?
• Is there an opportunity for businesses to help make sense of the evidence and ensure that the statistics can be interpreted locally?
• What is the evidence saying about each phase of business – from pre-start through to start-up and growing micro businesses to the corporate market? What does this tell you about how each place needs to channel business support?
• Consider if data sharing protocols can be put in place with other business support organisations and anchor organisations.
• What does this tell you about the gaps in the offer? How can you work together with these agencies to ensure there is a streamlined offer? Is it appropriate to have a single point of contact?

Communications

• How accessible is this? Does it allow businesses to engage at a point that suits them? Is there sufficient content across platforms to draw interest of local businesses?
• What other messages need to be delivered to the local business base? Can messages around “good work” standards, offering a living wage etc. be passed on through these channels? What else is important to the economic vision of the locality?

More publications about Economic growth