The High Streets Task Force has released a new report, ‘Place Leadership in English Local Authorities: a critical success factor in vital and viable high streets’, drawing on the experience of successful place leaders.
… successful leaders of town centre transformation share common traits…
The High Street Task Force writes:
A significant new research study has found that successful leaders of town centre transformation share common traits and that new approaches are needed to recruit and train place leaders.
‘Place Leadership in English Local Authorities’ also finds that nurturing collaboration and collective action has been critical to places and councils that have delivered successful high streets, while overcoming organisational barriers such as cultures that are not conducive to partnership working, or an over-reliance on commissioning masterplans and consultants.
The report by the High Streets Task Force examines the role of local authority leaders in locations with successful track records of high street regeneration. Lead author and Task Force Director, Matthew Colledge FIPM, interviewed senior figures including former Chief Executive of Stockton Council, Neil Schneider, Cllr Mike Jones of Cheshire West and Chester Council, and, Michelle Sacks, Deputy Chief Executive of South and East Lincolnshire Councils Partnership.
Raising awareness of place leadership
The first of three recommendations from the new report states that the profile of place leadership needs to be raised within local authorities.
The report’s authors say:
“Place leadership is not just desirable for local authority leaders, it is essential. Place leadership must be recognised as a key part of the council leadership function.”
“Ideally, council leaders or CEOs should also be place leaders, but the study shows that place leaders can operate at any senior level of council. When they are not the leader or CEO, it is important that they are recognised and supported from these offices.”
The High Streets Task Force has shared its findings with its own expert body and within government to its commissioners within the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
The report’s authors recognise the current resource challenges across local authorities but also highlight leaders’ roles as conveners and developers of local partnerships that must work across institutional boundaries, bringing in external resources, expertise and perspectives that can transform the vitality and viability of any given place.
A ’collaborative cycle’ of place leadership
In addition to interviews with place leaders, the study proposes a new model of place leadership by local authority leaders – a ‘collaborative cycle’ – that combines their formal powers and responsibilities with their informal power to convene effective place based partnerships. Interestingly, the research highlights that such leaders aren’t only driven by their civic and professional duty to place, but also to their inherent characteristics of belief, passion and resilance to make change happen in their places.
Whilst some traditional council approaches are adopted in order to provide systematic and structured partnership development, place leaders exhibit encouragement for fresh and creative thinking to drive transformation by more informed means, building trust and relationships with stakeholders aside of the council.
You can download the research report, including the collaborative cycle of place leadership model via the High Streets Task Force resource library.
Barriers to place leadership
Place leaders must also work proactively to overcome barriers to transformation and impact, and the research study identifies six key barriers:
Reticence towards adopting of/ignorance of a place leadership role
Senior officers and/or elected portfolio holders responsible for place often do not see collaborative working and place leadership as their responsibility.
Lazy paternalism and institutional statutory/regulatory/operational drag
An organisational culture of ‘council knows best’ can combine with rehearsed bureaucratic or statutory excuses, blaming regulations or inflexible council processes for inactivity.
Overreliance on masterplans and external consultants
A common response to declining town centres is to commission a master plan or engage consultants rather than develop and support internal place leadership and management capacity and expertise.
Lack of capacity, resource and expertise in place management
Linked to the point above. Place leaders need the support of a professional place management function – they can’t do everything on their own!
Politics
Place decision making can be ‘weaponised’ by politics making a very dysfunctional environment for potential place leaders to operate in.
Negativity/apathy
The barriers for place leadership in local authorities do not just originate from within councils. In some places there is a lot of negativity or just apathy – from traders, or the community, as well as within the local authority.
The authors suggest that where these barriers cannot be overcome, places often default to working within traditional activities and guidelines that are less transformative and centre around process rather than outcomes, such as commissioned plans or even development unconnected to a town or city’s vision.
“If the barriers are too strong and the Collaborative Cycle of Place Leadership too weak, then places do not transform. And if leaders only focus on a part of the cycle, as is often the case where a formal process is the usual way of operating, the cycle is broken, and place-based transformation is not achieved. Instead, we may see more traditional ‘place’ activities being undertaken such as a new masterplan being commissioned, or even a new development built – but often this, by itself, maybe suboptimal compared to what could have been achieved through collaborative working.”
The High Streets Task Force is working with over 150 local authorities across England, providing support and advice to help transform local high streets. It will be reporting impact and case studies from this work throughout 2023 and 2024, when the programme will end.
DOWNLOAD ‘Place Leadership in English Local Authorities’
