We’ve had half a decade (some would argue longer) of strategic drift in local government policy, says Dr Jonathan Carr-West. The effect is that working in the sector ‘can feel like a particularly cruel Sisyphean punishment’ – but what can we do about it?

No matter how many years have passed since I left school (it’s a lot), September always feels like the real beginning of the year. You emerge from the doldrums of the late summer, people return to work and the kids are back at school, pencils sharpened.

At the same time, this month can have a Groundhog Day quality: here we go again, another year. We may be more susceptible to that feeling right now after 18 months of the pandemic; whereas in 2020 it felt like we were constantly dealing with new and unprecedented crises, the mood in 2021 is more a weary ‘Oh, we’re still doing this…’