By Bernie Lally, Principal Consultant, 31ten

Through your work on Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) you will have done much of the thinking needed to shape the future of your place. Strategic priorities and ambitions for growth, regeneration, housing and placeshaping have been identified. The pause to LGR doesn’t change the importance of that work. 

You can continue to make progress, regardless of what happens next, with your approach to assets. Bernie Lally, our Principal Consultant sets out her advice in this blog.

Use the pause to understand your assets

The current uncertainty about future structures and boundaries can make it tempting to defer decisions. But experience of previous reorganisations tells us that uncertainty can slow investment, infrastructure and regeneration, with consequences for investor and partner confidence.

The pause provides an opportunity to identify and progress capital projects, to ensure when LGR does advance, you have oven-ready projects and have not lost valuable time.

Start by making sure you have a clear understanding of the assets available to you, and the role they could play in the future of your place.

That means looking beyond your property portfolio. Your assets might be physical, economic, environmental, cultural or institutional. Understanding these assets, and how they contribute to your place’s competitive advantage, can help you make more deliberate choices about where to focus investment and create growth.

From asset register to investment opportunity

An asset review shouldn’t simply tell you what you own. It should help you answer a more important question: what could your assets help you achieve?

Which assets could unlock housing and regeneration? Where could you create an investable proposition to improve outcomes for people in your communities? Which assets are underused, creating costs or preventing you from delivering your wider ambitions?

And where could better use of your assets contribute to your financial sustainability as well as the wider prosperity of your place?

This is about connecting your assets to your growth priorities, rather than considering them in isolation.

Our recent LGR roundtable highlighted the importance of moving beyond broad aspirations towards a clearly prioritised pipeline of projects and propositions and maintaining momentum behind the investments that matter most.

Your asset strategy should do the same: move you from understanding what you have to making choices about what you do with it.

Don’t wait for the new structure

The temptation during LGR is to think that some decisions are better left until you know what the future authority will look like.

But your place cannot stand still while the structures around it change.

Even if the eventual geography, governance or timetable for LGR changes, the underlying assets and opportunities in your place remain. Understanding them now gives you a stronger evidence base for whatever happens next – and means you are better placed to act at pace when the direction of travel becomes clearer.

Use the breathing space to understand your assets, identify where they can make the greatest contribution, and start turning them into opportunities for growth, regeneration, investment and financial sustainability.

Because when the next phase of reform comes, being ready to act will be much more valuable than having waited to see what happens.

If you would like to talk through what an asset review could look like in your place, get in touch using my contact details below.