A review commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister from TIHR, Local Government Information Unit and Solon Consultants.

Effective community leadership; a step change in the degree of collaboration between all the key players in a locality; and a deeper engagement between local people and the state – these are the most important functions that must be delivered at a local level if government is to meet the challenges it is likely to face in 2015.

This is the key conclusion of our review of what society is likely to be like in 2015 and its implications for local government and local governance. The review was commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister from the Tavistock Institute, Local Government Information Unit and Solon Consultants. We have not identified a single preferred model for how these functions should be delivered, either individually or collectively. But we have concluded that there are two sets of factors which must be central to any debate about what framework should be created at a local level to deliver them. They are: a spectrum from “decentralised” to “devolved” government; and a spectrum from “universal” to “variable” service delivery.

As this report will show, the interaction between these two sets of factors is extremely important.