Discover why creating a City of Culture is more than a year of events, it’s a long-term strategy for economic growth, social cohesion, and public health. Learn critical success factors, how to balance ambition with sustainability, and why inclusivity matters. Explore lessons from Europe, evidence-based planning, and the role of arts in improving well-being. Culture isn’t a luxury, it’s a catalyst for transformation.

Discover why horizon scanning is essential for UK local authorities. Learn what it is, explore methods like the Three Horizons Framework, PESTLE and SWOT analysis, and understand how councils can anticipate future trends, risks, and opportunities. Includes practical steps, common pitfalls, real-world examples, and a checklist to embed foresight into governance for proactive, future-ready leadership.

Optimise local government culture with Barrett Values Centre tools. Truth About Local Government helps councils measure culture, identify leadership gaps, and embed values into recruitment and systems. Our 12-month programme builds engagement, retention, and performance, with annual diagnostics for sustainable change. Transform culture into a strategic advantage and deliver better outcomes for staff and residents.

Employee engagement surveys alone don’t change culture. UK councils face unique challenges, financial pressures, policy shifts, and collaboration demands, that require more than sentiment checks. Discover why values assessments uncover the real drivers of behaviour, reduce resistance to change, and build trust. Learn practical steps for HR leaders to embed values, monitor cultural health, and transform local government workplaces.

Barrett Culture Score: A Powerful Metric for Cultural Health. Move beyond Gross Margin, NPS, and Market Share, now leaders can measure culture with the Barrett Culture Score. This comprehensive metric combines key cultural drivers to reveal organisational health, track evolution, and benchmark across industries. It’s actionable, insightful, and a proxy for strong leadership, engaged employees, satisfied customers, and community care.

Default cultures emerge unconsciously from past leadership, lacking intentional values management. In contrast, a values-driven culture is consciously shaped by leaders who align systems, policies, and incentives with desired values. By actively managing cultural capital and removing outdated influences through structural realignment, organizations create a thriving, purpose-led environment that reflects their vision.

The Barrett Model is a globally recognised framework for unlocking human potential and transforming organisational culture. Used by thousands of organisations across 94 countries, Barrett Analytics helps leaders build healthy cultures that drive performance and stakeholder success. At its core, the model addresses fundamental human needs and creates environments where people and organisations thrive.

To build a high-performing, values-driven organisation with strong Cultural Health, engagement and low Cultural Entropy, you need an ongoing cultural transformation process, not a one-off project. Using Barrett Values Centre’s Cultural and Leadership Values Assessments annually helps monitor alignment, mission focus and employee needs, driving engagement and sustainable success.

Explore how cultural capital impacts financial performance. This paper reviews research showing that while cultural capital isn’t directly measurable, proxies such as cultural alignment and Cultural Entropy® reveal a strong link to sustained revenue growth. Is your organisation’s culture driving business success? If not, discover why it should be central to your performance strategy.

Discover the Seven Levels of Ethical Business Practice, a values-based framework for creating cultures where ethics is everyone’s responsibility. Learn how organisations can move beyond compliance to foster integrity, transparency, and sustainability. Explore strategies for building trust, empowering employees, and aligning purpose with social responsibility to achieve long-term success and positive impact.

Discover 7 science-backed strategies for building trust in local authority teams. Explore proven frameworks like the Trust Equation, Lencioni’s Five Behaviours, Radical Candor, SCARF, Covey’s Five Waves, Psychological Safety, and the Neuroscience of Trust. Learn how councils can boost collaboration, reduce stress, and improve outcomes through evidence-based practices that create resilient, high-performing teams.

Culture is the missing metric in local government. While 92% of leaders rank culture as a top priority, only 18% have a robust way to measure it. Staff surveys track climate, not values, the foundation of culture. Our Barrett Values Centre program offers a data-led approach to measure, track, and embed values-driven strategies, helping councils build positive, resilient cultures that improve recruitment, retention, and service delivery.

Culture in local government isn’t a “soft” issue, it’s a performance driver that shapes decisions, behaviours, and outcomes. The Organisational Culture Inventory (OCI) provides evidence-based insights into the norms that influence success. By moving beyond measurement to action engaging leaders, aligning culture with strategy, and investing in coaching, councils can create environments where staff thrive, innovation flourishes, and strategic goals become reality.

Edgar Schein’s Three Levels of Organisational Culture: artefacts, espoused values, and underlying assumptions reveal how culture truly shapes behaviour and performance. Artefacts are visible but superficial, espoused values show intent yet may not match reality, and assumptions form the hidden core. Successful cultural change starts by diagnosing and challenging these deep beliefs, not just redesigning offices or rewriting mission statements.

Discover how Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions can transform UK local government leadership. Explore Power Distance, Individualism, and other cultural factors shaping council mergers, partnerships, and service delivery. Learn why diagnosing culture before designing change is critical, and gain practical insights for embedding cultural awareness into transformation programmes. Avoid conflict, make culture your strategic advantage.

The Competing Values Framework (CVF) by Cameron and Quinn is a leading model for assessing organisational culture, widely used across public and private sectors. Supported by the Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI), CVF helps local authorities identify cultural strengths and gaps, enabling better change management and strategic alignment. By balancing Clan, Adhocracy, Market, and Hierarchy values, councils can foster innovation, accountability, and resilience

Local government in England faces its biggest transformation in 50 years. By 2028, district and county councils will be replaced by consolidated structures, impacting £100bn budgets and 1.3m employees. Culture, not just structure, will determine success. Research shows 70% of change initiatives fail due to cultural resistance. Strong, values-driven cultures boost engagement, performance, and resilience, making culture the ultimate catalyst for sustainable change.

Jonathan Stephenson, Chief Executive of Brentwood and Rochford Councils, shares key lessons on transformation in local government. From values-led leadership and strategic digital reform to evidence-based reorganisation and sector-wide collaboration, his approach offers a blueprint for change. As councils face rising agency costs and structural reform, Stephenson reminds us: transformation is cultural, not just structural. “We’re not just building councils. We’re building com

In local government, we are rightly focused on seismic shifts reorganisation, devolution, funding formula changes, housing targets, and...

Recruitment in local government is too often treated as a reactive, transactional process fill the vacancy, tick the box, move on. But...