We'd like to thank everyone who has visited us at the LGA and hope you found the conference as good as we did. Nice things people have said about us: 

"All local authorities should have access to this sort of analysis." Bob Neill, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, CLG, responsible for planning
"This is the best thing I have seen at the LGA Conference" Nick Bell, Chief Executive, Staffordshire CC
"Every local authority should have Place Profiles" Dame Margaret Eaton, chairman LGA

SOLACE Conference 2010
12-14 October, Cardiff International Arena

Local Futures will be exhibiting at this year's annual conference.  Come and visit us at stand 38 for your free Place Profile.

New Barometer: the geography of public sector cuts

The Government at the end of June announced that most departments will see their budgets reduced by at least a quarter over the next four years. In an effort to tackle the substantial structural deficit and reduce public spending, Chancellor George Osborne in his first Budget speech, announced the deepest and fastest public sector cuts in recent memory. As a result, the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast over 600,000 job losses in the public sector nationally. But what does this mean for the geography of public sector employment in Britain? And where will the cuts be felt the hardest? This barometer charts the rise in public sector employment over the last decade, highlights the local economies that are most dependent on public services as a source of employment, and identifies the areas that are most vulnerable to job losses.

You can dowload the full barometer here

"Data are widely available; what is scarce is the ability to extract wisdom from them"

(Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google, in: the Economist February 2010)