As promised, we’d love to show you around a few more of the Si Team’s neighbourhoods. Everyone lives in a neighbourhood - those small local places where much of daily life unfolds and where people can feel most connected. At Si, neighbourhoods sit right at...
The LSE Internship Fund Scheme made it possible for me, Emma, a second year International Social and Public Policy student, to take up a role at Shared Intelligence. As a young person, I am acutely aware of what it’s like to navigate the pathways into...
Here at Si, lots of our work revolves around neighbourhoods. These are the small, local areas in which we live out much of our lives. Throughout our work, we have shown that so many of the factors which most influence people’s outcomes, whether health, employment,...
Most health and care services are designed around ‘typical’ residents. Our lived experience research shows where that model breaks down and how small, practical changes can remove barriers for people with the greatest needs. The importance of pets to people who sleep rough is well understood...
Creative and participatory approaches are becoming increasingly valued in policy research. But can fun lead to better policy? Our recent futures literacy role-playing boardgame for Arts Council England (ACE) suggests it can. At Shared Intelligence, we often seek to bring these approaches into our research and...
As 2025-26 draws to a close we’ve been reflecting on our achievements over these past 12 months. One of the most significant achievements was our 25th birthday as a company. Over a period of a quarter of a century(!) our worked has evolved in many ways...
Leadership is constantly changing. Across many organisations and public services the traditional hero leader model (an authoritative decision‑maker at the top of a clear hierarchy) no longer fits the world we work in. Today’s challenges are more interconnected, relational, and uncertain. They require leaders who...
The Get Britain Working (GBW) White Paper provides a clear national framework and a set of targeted metrics to tackle economic inactivity and uneven access to employment across the UK. Its focus is not only on driving up the employment rate but also on addressing...
From Joan of Arc to James Dean we romanticise short lives. They represent clarity and purity of purpose, never witnessing decline. Likewise, we respect those who take on large singular tasks in limited time – from a sports team trying to clinch victory with minutes...
At Shared Intelligence, we are proud to have developed the Our Community, Our Covenant and Beyond report, produced in collaboration with RAND Europe and Meri Mayhew Consulting. This is the latest in a series of four reports that we have authored or co-authored. Separately, we...
Building on our previous community engagement and co-production blog posts, we have undertaken further extensive engagement with people with lived experience from vulnerable populations. This work underscores that engagement is not merely a research method, it is central to ethical, inclusive and effective service design....
Digital badges are quietly tackling one of the UK’s biggest challenges: youth exclusion from opportunities in the creative industries. In the context of high levels of economic inactivity, much has been made of the UK’s inefficient skills system where employers can’t find the talent they...
Our recent report for the Local Government Association (LGA) (Employment and skills: The evolving role of local government) captures the vital work that local and combined authorities are already doing on employment and skills, and how this links to the current government’s growth agenda. This...
Transformation is about positively reshaping organisations, so they operate more efficiently whilst delivering services that are more effective and impactful. But achieving such significant change comes with its challenges. Transformation is complex. Changing processes alone does not lead to successful transformation; it requires a change...
Our new research for Local Trust, in collaboration with OCSI (Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion), provides some of the strongest evidence to date about the specific effects of neighbourhood-based programmes compared to places with no history of neighbourhood initiatives. We hope these findings will inform...
Sharing ideas is vital, especially when confronted by difficult problems. It sounds corny given our company name but we experience this truth often, especially at NEXT Library 2025 in Aarhus. We were there sharing our toolkit for building skills to think about the future –...
At the core of our work is the understanding that those with lived experience offer valuable insight into the challenges they face. Engaging directly with communities allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the obstacles and barriers they encounter, leading to more effective solutions...
Hospital discharge for older patients is often described as a system that isn’t working. Our research reveals it is not just a system problem but a human one, demanding human-driven solutions. We explored this by interviewing patients in hospital on their day of discharge and...
Creative health – arts and creative activities which deliver physical or mental health benefits - are now seen across academia, public health and local government as a viable method for health improvement and demand management. But creative health is still a tiny part of the...
For those areas where April marked a significant milestone in LEP integration, the focus will be on merging teams and activity from a governance, delivery and cultural perspective. Once the dust has settled, it will be essential to plan for regular progress reviews to ensure...
On 15 March 2023, the Chancellor announced that the central government support (core funding) for Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in England would be withdrawn from April 2024 with functions carried out by LEPs including business representation and local economic planning transitioning to local government. All residual funding, resources and assets previously allocated and utilised by the LEPs are also to...
Economic inactivity is a key issue affecting the UK’s economy. Around 9 million people are currently estimated to be economically inactive (defined as people of working age not currently looking for work or unable to start work in the next two week period). Tackling economic...
LEPs have long been responsible for regional business representation and local economic planning. First, we saw strategic economic plans drive investment into local areas which provided solid infrastructure in support of the local economy, bringing in billions of pounds of investment from both public and...
Government guidance and local leaders recognise the need to retain a local, independent, business voice in the transfer of Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) functions to local and combined authorities. However, LEPs worked hard to secure diversity of business voice and there is more than one...
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, co-production and meaningful collaboration between the voluntary and community sector (VCS) and local government has been in the spotlight. As local government increasingly faces financial challenges of high inflation and increased pressures on statutory services, co-production should be considered even more...
Achieving equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) within local government is vital to the future success and sustainability of the sector. In our work, we have identified best practice examples where local government has begun to improve representation. But has it gone far enough and is...
Enabling parish and town councils to play a stronger role in local place-shaping must start with creating the conditions for constructive dialogue, writes Tony Blake. A new framework to help local authorities develop their relationships with parish and town (local) councils has been published by the...
“Come to us with a plan for strong accountable leadership and we will give you the tools to change your area for the better”. That was prime minister Boris Johnson’s offer to councils outside the current combined authority areas in his levelling up speech last month. In...
We need to de-mystify foresight skills and make them everyday writes Ben Lee. The RSA’s new report A stitch in time? offers a blueprint for improving how we think about the future and foresight. Developing our ‘futures literacy’ means incorporatinig more of what we know and don’t know...
At Shared Intelligence we are convinced the time is ripe for Total Place #2 write Phil Swann and Tony Blake. Local councils and their partners face a combination of challenges that require close collaboration and engagement with local communities and businesses: responding to coronavirus; supporting economic recovery;...
What's the local vision and what structures will get us there writes Phil Swann. The government’s much anticipated devolution and recovery white paper looks set to be delayed. According to some reports ministers’ apparent enthusiasm for the creation of more unitary councils is rapidly waning. All of...
What is the daily cost of local authority social care, and how does that compare to one NHS hospital bed-day? What is the return on investment of each £1 spent on interventions to reduce drug and alcohol dependency? How much is spent on children’s...
Plans for unitary local government need to support wider public service reform – and this needs time writes Tony Blake. The government has reignited the unitary council debate but is local government reorganisation a guilty pleasure? We all know that the discussions distract from business as usual...
From 1st September 2020 Phil Swann who has led the company since 2015 steps down as Executive Chair of Shared Intelligence as the start of a 2-year phased retirement. Lisa McCance who joined the company as a director 5 years ago takes over as Chair...
Council action on devolution must be as much about talking as options appraisal writes Phil Swann. Ministers look set to present councils in two tier areas with a stark choice: establish mayoral combined authorities and introduce unitary local government or in effect opt out of the possibility...
The idea of one ‘new normal’ is a dangerous blind alley writes Ben Lee. It seems increasingly likely the COVID-19 pandemic is already leaving a permanent legacy. Had the crisis lasted only a few days or weeks then perhaps a ‘return to normal’ might have been possible. However,...
Economic recovery planning must start at the local level writes Lisa McCance. COVID-19 is expected to deliver one of the greatest economic shocks of our lifetime, with unprecedented levels of unemployment, business closure and a contraction of our economy not experienced in recorded history. It does however,...
We cannot plan local routes to recovery without clear local visions and strategies writes Phil Swann. In May 2020 councils and their partners are focussed on their response to coronavirus, particularly in relation to the people, communities and businesses most severely affected. We are aware, however, that...
What we are learning right now is priceless, but are we capturing it? writes Ben Lee. Local public services have been operating at (or even beyond) the limits of their tolerance for more than 80 days, revealing strength points and weak points in ways we rarely see....
Employment and skills outcomes agreements are intended to provide a framework to align skills provision to better address the skills needs of local employers and residents. They provide a valuable opportunity for key players in a skills system to develop a joint understanding of these...
In just one year since the first local authority in the UK (Bristol CC) declared a climate emergency, two-thirds of all local authorities have followed suit. But how, in practice, do local authorities move quickly from a declaration of climate emergency, into practical action? In 2019...
By Phil Swann When I first heard about Betty she was in her mid-80s and lived in rural Dorset. Her husband had died a few years ago. She often got nervous at night, sometimes because of a urinary infection. She got in the habit of dialling...
We are seeking to grow our economic development team in response to client demand and are therefore seeking applications for a senior economic consultant. We expect applicants to demonstrate good knowledge of economic development in the UK. Whilst the majority of work would be expected...
Over the last three years Shared Intelligence has established an area of expertise around the delivery of the Armed Forces Covenant and action to meet the needs of members of the armed forces community and ensure they do not suffer disadvantage as a result of...
The transfer of public health to counties is having the impact the architects of the change envisaged it would. That is the core conclusion of our latest research, commissioned by the County Councils Network...
Several of our projects have been getting attention from other countries keen to learn from our work. In November we were invited by Kulturtanken the Norwegian youth and children’s cultural agency, to present at their national conference on ‘quality’ in publicly funded youth arts and...
We recently had the privilege of presenting the results of our action-research into library-based rhyme times and maternal mental health, to an international audience of library professionals. Having been invited to present at the Next Library conference in Berlin, we and colleagues from Essex Libraries...
Advent facts day 25 - MERRY CHRISTMAS! No White Christmas this year. We thought we remembered way more snowy Yuletides in the 60s and 70s. But turns out there have been more since 1981 than in the preceding 20 years ...
On 20 July we invited our clients to a Shared Intelligence summer party at which Ben Lee presented 17 trends for 2017. My colleagues challenged me to blog about 17 things I learned at the party. So here goes. In our seventeen years we have gathered...
From 6 September 2016 The Armed Forces Covenant is a pledge that, in return for their service, society will “acknowledge and understand that those who serve or have served in the Armed Forces, and their families, should be treated with fairness and respect”. It is a...
Last September Ben shared 21 trends with us to provoke some thought in a year that had was proving to be very uncertain. As uncertainty persists we are about to release an update to the 21 trends - giving us a chance to reflect on the...
This weeks blog is brought to you by our Executive Chairman Phil Swann This mashup of the titles of four initiatives that Shared Intelligence has been involved in over the last few months gives a flavour of just how important the concept of place has become. These...
A guest blog by @EthanOhs on starting an online community of practice I remember first coming across the 90:9:1 rule around 2008. At the time the organisation I was working for was building their own online community. As the recession of 2008 took its toll and...
Matthew Kaye, Consultant writes… Si is currently doing a piece of work for Marie Curie evaluating their Information and Support service. Part of this has involved focus groups with those found to be the least likely to access Marie Curie support. One of these demographics is...
In 2014, Shared Intelligence worked with Local Government Association (LGA) to undertake research into the funding landscape of the coalition government. The report was written in light of the LGA’s Rewiring Public Services: Rejuvenating Democracy campaign in which ambitious proposals were presented to give local...
As we travelled the country researching Our Place, from Knowsley on Merseyside, via Bradford, and Leicester, down to Torquay in Devon, a familiar picture emerged. A certain type of community-led organisation was using this Government funded programme as a catalyst for developing innovative, user-focused ways...