On Monday this week the Local Government Association celebrated its 25th anniversary at its conference in Harrogate which ends today. Arguably the main event in terms of key note speeches was that of the levelling up secretary Michael Gove MP.

Mr Gove was effusive in his thanks to the LGA for all the hard work local councillors and local government generally had put in on behalf of the public during the covid pandemic but, opening niceties over, the secretary of state had some interesting things to say about the (near) future of local government.

Firstly he announced that, so councils could have more certainty in planning their budgets and thus their service provision going forward, the financial settlement whereby central govt funds local govt would move to a 2 year settlement from 2023.

He then went on to say that the role of local govt was at the heart of our national political debate and that [successfully] facing every one of the challenges (including the provision of safe, affordable, warm decent homes) that the country is currently experiencing depended on the part played by local govt: "without local government playing a leading role, we cannot meet those challenges."

Referencing several examples of success on the part of local govt and its leadership, from Tees Valley to Manchester, he said that more needed to be done in order to irreversibly overcome deep inequality across the country as well as achieve success with the "additional expectations we have in planning and housing.".

Whilst he said there was no one solution that would be the silver bullet, the gist of his argument - using key words such as "local delivery", "local mandates", "local performance" and "local communities" - was that successful and accountable levelling up during these difficult and uncertain times would be driven by innovation and use of transparent data. To this end he said that "the answer lies in the better marshalling of data and the consequent ability to make meaningful comparisons" and confirmed that "We're creating a new body - the Office for Local Government - to shine a light on how local authorities are performing and delivering.".

So it looks like, if there is to be an Ofsted for councils, performance league tables are, well, ..... on the table. If so then this will (must?) include enforcement performance - something that both the social and the private rented sector will need to take into account.