Local policymakers and practitioners are used to operating in uncertain times. In the last 15 years, local government in the UK has faced the Global Financial Crisis, the implementation of austerity and its dramatic effect on local authority budgets, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and now the highest level of inflation in 30 years.

Economist Adam Tooze has popularised the term ‘polycrisis’ to describe the connected web of challenges facing policymakers. What differentiates our age from earlier eras of crisis, he suggests, is the diversity of problems. States across the world, but particularly in the west, are dealing with rapid technological change combined with increasingly unfavourable demographics, political instability and the alarming impact of climate change.