Since 2005 we have completed work with over 130 authorities. The significant majority of these authorities are ‘top tier’ with a fairly uniform geographic spread and predominance among the better performing councils.

The leadership Centre works exclusively with the senior political and managerial groups in England’s local authorities because we believe it is only by increasing the effectiveness of member-officer interaction at the top level that authority chiefs can become successful leaders of their communities.

The sensitive nature of our work renders it confidential. We will only reveal aspects of our work with authorities with their explicit agreement.

We will only work with an authority as long as the leader and senior councillors are on board and take part.

A local leadership project normally starts with us identifying a ‘tricky’ issue within an authority. The council will then select one of our Leadership Centre advisers (who are all top leadership development professionals), to work with the authority or group of authorities or LSPs. Working with the top officer and political teams, the adviser will focus on the real-life tricky issue in situ.

By exploring this issue the teams discover the practical impact of their leadership on their organisation/place. The process, simultaneously, injects some momentum into the difficult issue, offering a handle on how to deal with it. This inevitably leads to a commitment to developing the long-term capacity for leadership.

Recently the ‘tricky’ issue that authorities have asked the Leadership Centre for support with our advisers to assess has been 'place' based.

John Atkinson, director of operations and the Leadership Centre and lead for our work with authorities said:

“Since we were first established, four years ago, the issues that we’ve been asked to work on have changed from internally focussed such as handling underperforming heads of services to those that are external to the authority, concentrating on leadership of place and partnership working.

“So now we’re working with other partners in the LSP and also their relations with other Whitehall departments.