Author: Andy Reed OBE

The evidence is overwhelming: health and wellbeing are not just desirable outcomes in and of themselves, but essential components of a programme for growth, productivity, national renewal and opportunity for all.

The local election results are now finalised, the analysis and commentators are poring over all the data and guess what – the Tories have fared really badly. I think we can all agree on that. It is something when you brief about losing 1000 seats as part of your expectation management and then achieve a worse result. There will be a lot of angry ex-tory councillors today who know they lost because of the national picture not necessarily their own local councils performance. Labour has now become the largest party in local government, which hasn’t happened since our days in government in 2002. And these losses need to set against one of the worst results in 2019 as a rather low base from which to fall.

It is early on Friday morning the day after the local elections and the political nerd in me is buzzing. It is the one time each year I enjoy spreadsheets.

So far the results for Labour look encouraging. It is early in the day so there isn’t a complete picture, but it does look as though the Labour double digit opinion poll lead is translating into changes on the ground, at the level, or near the level you would expect.

Across parts of the country voters will be heading to the polls tomorrow to elect their local councillors.

However, most of you won’t be. The turnout for local elections is historically poor and there is little indication it will be different tomorrow. Listen to people moan about their neighbourhood on social media and you will know there is plenty of interest in ‘local issues’ and especially almost anything to do with planning! So why is there such a disconnect?