Hearing that we had achieved 98% overall satisfaction was probably the first time in my professional career where I have had an emotional response.

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

Together with independent thinktank Localis, we hosted a roundtable to consider the challenges and opportunities for local growth and regional development in line with government agendas such as ‘Build Back Better’ and ‘Levelling up’.

Together with independent thinktank Localis we hosted ‘Going long’, a roundtable discussion which brought together national and local experts to discuss the implications of the 2021 spending review in respect to the local government’s ability to deliver for people and place.

Why should we care about productivity in the public sector? Of course, productivity can raise efficiency, lower prices and make it possible to do more with less.

On Thursday 8 July, Andy Start, CEO of Capita Public Service took part in a roundtable hosted by cross-party think tank DEMOS and chaired by DEMOS CEO Polly McKenzie on the theme of ‘Relational Public Services’.

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.

Despite heavy investment into tech firms, the country has been one of the poorest performing G7 nations in the decade or so since the global financial crisis of 2008-09, when what had been a steady rise in productivity began to flatline.

As the UK starts to look for ways to boost the economy and kick-start recovery from Covid-19, could part of the answer lie in unlocking the untapped value of public sector knowledge assets?

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.