Professor Talbot has extensive experience as both a practitioner and academic. He started work in 1969 and formally retired from in 2017. He remains actively engaged with a variety of social issues.

Phil Swann The urgency of Sonia Busso’s call for councils to develop participatory governance arrangements is evident in her recent INLOGOV policy paper[1], The Participatory Council. Bussu recogni…

Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the ...

We are calling on parish and town councillors to take part in a major national event examining what it means to be a 21st-century councillor

The newly-released Irish state papers chart the Good Friday Agreement and the Patten Report.

McSweeney says he takes

In the space of a few hours, Mandelson’s future has now shifted from the certainty of ignominy to the possibility of prison.

There has long been a perception of local government as a stepping stone or training ground for national office, writes Phil Swann, a PhD student at Inlogov at the University of Birmingham.

Leaders don’t need to write every word themselves, but they do need to make sure it clearly represents their vision

Distorted attacks by the populist right are really about demography

Exclusive: Planners behind postwar new towns hit out at government over lack of ambition and commitment to social housing

We have not learnt much that is new from the inquiry’s Module Two report.

Up to 1,000 women globally await execution in prison, with mitigating factors such as child abuse and coercion ignored

The PM tells the BBC he has made

Reform UK has lost more than 5 per cent of the councillors it had elected six months ago, an analysis by PoliticsHome has found.

Other lives: GLC director of highways and transport who hoped to curb car use and promote public services

Appleby Blue Almshouse in London wins the Royal Institute of British Architects' Stirling Prize.

Exclusive: Impact of austerity cannot be undone by end of parliament despite above-inflation funding, analysis finds

It’s far from perfect, but the UK’s spending is broadly controlled and employment is high

A leadership battle could hand No 10 to Nigel Farage

The first major museum exhibition dedicated to the work of one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists, Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting will bring together 50 works made throughout Saville’s e...

A councillor suspended by Reform UK has appeared in court accused of making threats to kill his wife.

British voters are moving away from the two-party system, but their electoral system hasn’t kept up.

Philip Swann The extent to which the Blair government’s delivery unit became the focus of tension between No 10 and the Treasury is a key theme in Michelle Clement’s fascinating history[1] of the u…

New guidance will damage the quality of government and public discourse.

The Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham

Examining the care gap in England.

LA was once a conservative stronghold; now the military is occupying it. Liberal cities have become targets for politicians looking to stir up their voters elsewhere, says Guardian columnist Andy Beck...

With the NHS in triage mode, business and society need to shift to prevention of ill health

Angela Rayner is to announce plans for a radical overhaul of the tax to stop residents in poorer areas ‘unfairly being asked to pay more for worse services’

Exclusive: Politicians including Andy Burnham call for councils to be given powers to stop new sites opening Slot machine companies are targeting Britain’s poorest neighbourhoods and channelling the proceeds to billionaire-owned overseas corporations and a Wall Street fund that uses an offshore lending structure, the Guardian can reveal. The number of slot machine shops has risen by 7% since 2022, as companies -friendly planning and licensing laws to flood Britain’s high streets with new “adult gaming centres” (AGCs), most of which are open 24 hours a day. Continue reading...

As barometers of political opinion, local elections have long had a special place in British politics, offering useful (though not necessarily accurate) guides to national trends. The link between …