The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the decline of our high streets and town centres.

Long tail strategy is also about corporate responsibility, the SME agenda, supply chain risk and social value.

The climate change crisis, caused mainly by emission of greenhouse gases and burning fossil fuels for energy use, is accelerating at a rapid rate and having catastrophic impacts on our weather, environment and the future of our planet.

Energy Day at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) was dominated by the message: ‘consign coal to history’.

At a recent roundtable in partnership with Wired, Doug Brown, Head of Data, Cyber and AI Guild and Chief Data Scientist of Capita Consulting, was joined by Lisa Talia Moretti, a digital sociologist at the Ministry of Justice; Reid Darby, innovation lead at Golden Valley Development in Cheltenham; Carly Kind, Director at the Ada Lovelace Institute and Tavi Kotka, an engineer/entrepreneur and former Chief Information Officer for the Estonian government to discuss data, identity and the digital citizen.

Capita and the Local Government Chronicle hosted a webinar to bring together local government experts and discuss how to secure funding to help revitalise our high streets.

Back in the Thatcher years of the 1980s, the explosion of out-of-town shopping centres arguably presented the biggest threat to our traditional town centres.

At Cop 26 in Glasgow last October, world leaders pledged to end deforestation, move away from coal and curb methane emissions, amongst many other revised targets.

Town centres and high streets have traditionally been the focus of urban life, whether this is somewhere like London - often described as ‘a collection of villages’ - or a market or regional town.

Local government exists to serve local people, businesses and those who visit, either to work or for recreation.