Increasing attention is now been given to the leadership of place role for councillors. Sir Michael Lyons refers to ‘place shaping’ as the core strategic role of an authority: acting as primus inter pares among a range of public sector providers; community leadership at a more local level and actively bringing local people into local decision-making.

We are working with political groups to help them to start to plan a distinctive view of a place so that in time it would be possible to spot a Liberal Democrat place, for instance, from a Conservative or Labour one and vice versa.

Instead of the traditional perspective of place based on such things as types and scale of local authority services provided or budget available, we are working directly with the three mainstream political groups to establish how their ‘places’ might look different to each others.