As the first major local government gathering of the year, the NLGN Annual Conference sets the tone for the challenges and opportunities ahead. This time we also kicked off the year of our 20th birthday and our theme ‘power, prosperity, place' reflected on the change in the role of local government. In the future, councils will increasingly need to focus on the twin aims of driving inclusive growth and wellbeing amongst local populations - financial sustainability by 2020 will be reliant upon this.

It was notable that the audience was more mixed than in previous years, with good representation from the third sector and a real appetite to work together. The sparkiest session was on the theme of partnership.