Local Government Matters Newsletter April 2021

01 April 2021

The 12 month anniversary of the first UK Covid lockdown provided the opportunity for all of us to reflect on the events of the last year. There is so much to reflect on.

In our April 2020 edition of Local Government Matters we said how proud we were as a firm to work in the Local Government sector because of the extraordinary effort put in (in all parts of local government) to help communities deal with the effects of the pandemic. We had no idea for how long Councils would be required to maintain those efforts. The resilience and resolve of local authorities remains remarkable and we are prouder than ever to be associated with the local government community.

In this edition of LGM we lead off with our contribution to one of the topics of the moment – "to vax or not to vax" and in particular the employment implication of compelling employees to be vaccinated. We also have articles about lessons learned from the "over exposure" of local authorities to commercial property investments, the new proactive regulation of local housing authorities by the Regulatory of Social Housing (and how best to prepare yourself) and much more. We have included a link to the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny's risk and resilience toolkit which we are very proud sponsors off. In the light of the recent inspector's report into the governance (and other) failures at Liverpool City Council, this toolkit is going to be one of the key resource materials for officers and members to use to help identify potential issues and address them before wrong behaviours become embedded.

Click the links below to access the full articles.