Over the past 12 months, the 31ten team have had the privilege of speaking with some of the most inspiring finance leaders working in local government today. Through our Future of Finance interview series, we’ve listened carefully as Section 151 officers, their deputies, and finance directors shared their experiences, their challenges, and — perhaps most importantly — their hopes for the future.

These conversations have been honest, thought-provoking, and while concerning issues have come up time and again, they have been encouraging and energising in their optimism. What was clear throughout these conversations is that despite facing some of the toughest financial conditions in decades, the sector and those working within it are brimming with innovation, resilience, and a deep commitment to delivering better outcomes for communities.

Across these discussions, four headline themes emerged:

01: People and Skills: The Changing Face of Finance

Finance leaders were clear that the profession has fundamentally changed. Modern finance teams are no longer simply about numbers — they are strategic partners, storytellers, and agents of change. Success now relies as much on communication, influencing and political acumen as it does on technical skill.

Yet the pipeline of talent to meet these demands is under strain. Cuts to graduate and trainee schemes have left a gap in routes into the sector, reducing opportunities to build “homegrown” talent with the breadth of experience councils need. At the same time, the traditional accounting qualification is increasingly seen as inadequate — failing to cover areas such as digital, green finance, financial modelling, and data analytics that are now core to the role.

The result is a profession under pressure. Specialist roles like those in corporate finance can be hard to recruit to, creating costly reliance on agency staff and competition between councils. Our interviewees spoke candidly about the low level of resilience within teams, the absence of succession planning for critical posts, and the perception that the Section 151 role is becoming unattractive — high-risk, isolated, and under-supported.

For the sector to thrive, investment in people is critical: developing new pathways into finance, rethinking professional training, and building leadership capacity that can handle not just numbers, but influence, innovation, and change.

02: Pressure Points: Demand, Costs and Risk

If workforce shortages represent the “who”, then financial pressures are the “what” — and here the picture is stark. Councils are caught between rising demand for statutory services and continued increases in cost. Children’s and adults’ social care, homelessness, and home-to-school transport were consistently cited as the most pressing budget areas, with complexity and demand rising faster than funding.

Resilience is thin. Reserves are depleted, borrowing levels are stretching the limits of what is sustainable, and the Housing Revenue Account is under strain as rent caps and construction inflation collide. This leaves little room for investment and transformation in areas like prevention, or IT — the very things needed to reduce costs in the long term.

Interviewees described the frustration of often having to prioritise reactive firefighting. While the case for prevention and long-term planning is clear, many authorities simply cannot afford the upfront investment. Without change, councils risk being locked in a cycle of short-term fixes, undermining both financial stability and improved outcomes for residents.

03: Reform and Resilience: The Role of Devolution and LGR

Against this backdrop, devolution and local government reform (LGR) were seen as both a challenge and a genuine opportunity. Leaders recognised the potential to achieve efficiencies through greater buying power, shared assets, and streamlined governance. Done well, these reforms could provide the scale and resilience needed to unlock savings and deliver more strategic, place-based approaches.

But the message was clear: the opportunity must be grasped carefully. Unrealistic savings targets, or an overly narrow focus on cost-cutting, could risk destabilising already fragile systems. Instead, devolution and LGR should be framed as platforms for redesign — enabling collaboration, smarter service delivery, and financial sustainability that goes beyond headline efficiencies.

For finance leaders, this LGR and devolution provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the future architecture of local government, ensuring these reforms are used to strengthen resilience and unlock value, not to chase short-term savings.

04: Innovation and Collaboration: Seizing the Opportunity

Despite the pressures, our conversations revealed a real sense of optimism. Leaders see technology, data, and collaboration as the tools that could transform local government finance.

AI and data analytics, in particular, were seen as game-changers. They offer the chance to automate transactional tasks, identify patterns in demand or resident behaviour, and support preventative approaches that reduce long-term costs. But progress requires vision and investment. Councils must be willing to innovate, and national government must provide the space and resources for them to do so.

Equally important is collaboration. Whether through shared services, joint strategies with neighbouring councils, or system-wide partnerships with the NHS, leaders stressed that working together is the only sustainable way to meet growing demand. Collaboration can enable smarter use of resources, build resilience, and help shift focus from crisis management to prevention.

Taken together, these opportunities represent not just incremental improvement but the chance to reimagine what finance means in local government. With the right skills, reforms, and investment, the finance function can lead the way in building more resilient councils and better outcomes for communities.

Our conversations have shown not just the scale of the challenge, but also the creativity, determination, and passion finance leaders are bringing to reimagine what local government finance can be. We are grateful to everyone who contributed their time, insights, and energy to this series to paint a picture of a sector that, while under pressure, is full of opportunity, resilience and ambition. We are excited to continue working alongside our interviewees and other finance leaders to shape the future — building and supporting finance functions that are resilient, strategic, and deeply connected to the places and people they serve.

If you would like to talk to us about any of the themes raised or explore how we can help you take your Local Authority finance ambitions forward, please get in touch. We believe that this conversation is an important one and one that we’d love to continue.

From Insights to Action: How 31ten Can Help 

At 31ten, we are already working with councils to address many of the themes and opportunities raised in the Future of Finance series. We can support you to: 

Strengthen your finance workforce and leadership pipeline
➔ We worked with Surrey County Council to design and deliver a leadership programme to support the council’s ambitions to become a more agile organisation and develop the capabilities of its leaders.  

Drive financial resilience and long-term sustainability
➔ We worked with the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority (WEMCA)  to provide advice on commercialising investment opportunities and in determining how it might implement a broader approach to local investment, by investing and generating returns that can be recycled to meet strategic aspirations and core priorities. 
➔We worked with the London Borough of Camden to establish a Community Wealth Fund to bring benefit to local people and to keep some of the economic value created in the borough within the borough.
➔We worked with Surrey County Council to review commercialism and commercial practices across the organisation to determine how the Council could enable a more coherent and strategic approach to commercialism, to support strategic objectives and financial sustainability in the context of ongoing fiscal pressures.  
➔We have worked with councils such as Newham and Kingston to prepare capital strategies and forecast future capital needs, and with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the London Borough of Hounslow, to develop more efficient and structured governance around capital decision-making and review its capital programme.  

Redesign and future-proof your finance function
➔ We have supported councils like Brent, Peterborough, Brighton and Haringey with financial strategy refreshes for EFS and their MTFS to help manage financial pressures:
➔We worked with Haringey to complete a rapid, cross-departmental review and identified £20–39m in potential savings, focusing on Adult Social Care, Temporary Accommodation, and Children’s Social Care, and are now supporting delivery of key programmes.
➔We worked with Peterborough to transform their business support services, implementing a centralised ‘hub and spoke’ model with automation and digital technology, delivering c.£3m in savings.
➔We worked with Brent Council to analyse services, identify cost drivers, and develop evidence-based recommendations that identified £12m savings for the next financial year across digital, resident experience, reviewing third-party spend, income generation and workforce transformation to achieve sustainable financial savings. 

Harness digital and data to transform finance operations
➔We help our clients understand the true customer service costs, enabling more efficient and effective service delivery, insight to prioritise investment where it is most needed, and a better experience for customers.
➔ We worked with Surrey County Council to design a Business Operations Transformation programme and to create a business change approach to develop a new operating model with savings proposals to reduce significant budget pressures.
➔We worked with Thurrock Council on a digital transformation programme review that identified £5.7m of benefits and enabled 22% of transactions to shift to digital channels. The programme covered a comprehensive transformation, including: customer contact management, digital services and website, platform and infrastructure, automation and innovation, data and analytics and digital inclusion.  

Enable strategic collaboration across councils and regions
➔ We’ve facilitated shared service explorations, joint strategy development, and regional investment planning to strengthen financial sustainability across areas.
➔We are working with Cardiff Capital Region as a commercial investment advisor to help unblock Growth Deal funding and support effective decision-making to support the CCR City Deal programme between the UK and Welsh Governments, and the ten local authorities in South East Wales.  This aims to bring about significant economic growth in the region through investment, upskilling, and improved physical and digital connectivity. 

You can read all the interviews from our Future of Finance series here.