The Association for Public Service Excellence's (APSE) recent publication Two Tribes? Exploring the future role of elected members, has proven timely given some of the recent governance challenges that have been thrown at local government.

A decade on from modernisation of political management structures, which replaced the existing committee system with a formal cabinet, overview and scrutiny system, a key issue emerging from the research is the feeling of disillusionment among non-executive elected members, who feel marginalised from real decision- making with little influence over issues that affect their local areas.