Ensuring that public services, and the deployment of public resources, are evidence-led, or at least evidence-informed, is important, and even more so in these days of permanent austerity, deepening unsolved issues afflicting society and the emergence of public sector policy being driven by fake news and alternative facts.

Given this, on behalf of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, I have been working with the Centre for Public Scrutiny and The Alliance for Useful Evidence (supported by Nesta) to produce new guidance – Using evidence in scrutiny: A practice guide for local government scrutiny – on evidence based decision-making in local government.