LED Confidential

In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike ask whether the Civil Service secondments to Mayoral Strategic Authorities announced in August 2026 represent real capacity building or an under-powered initiative at a time of intense pressure. Eighteen MSAs will each receive five to ten Whitehall civil servants for six to nine months, alongside access to the Future Leaders Scheme, a Yorkshire and the Humber fast stream pilot and a digital devolution programme. They compare this with longer-term, externally funded efforts such as Bloomberg Philanthropies' programme with LSE and the Health Foundation's three-year mayoral regions programme, and ask whether Whitehall really holds a pool of skills that strategic authorities can't find locally. They consider whose capacity the scheme is really building, the potential for culture change in Whitehall, and why a flat allocation lands very differently in large, mature authorities than in smaller, newer ones.

In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike ask who stands to gain as onshore wind returns to England after a decade under a de facto ban. With around 45 applications in the year to March , the highest in ten years, and capacity entering the planning system roughly quadrupling, they look at what England can learn from Scotland, which has more than 10 GW installed, a 20 GW target and a long-standing community wealth-building ambition. They weigh the gap between Scottish ambition and delivery highlighted in CLES's Blown Away report, the choice between community compensation and community ownership, where the boundary of 'community' should be drawn, and whether Local Growth Plans and Spatial Development Strategies should set onshore wind targets of their own.

In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike ask if the new National Planning Policy Framework, published on 17 August 2026, offers an approach that is optimised for local economic development and placemaking or remains primarily a framework for building more homes. They unpack what has changed: a default yes for homes near well-connected stations, a new medium development category, easier approval for employment and clean energy schemes, and stronger support for AI growth zones and data centres;  and why that last change collides with hard limits on energy and water, with individual data centres requesting up to 3 million litres of water a day. They also explore new mayoral call-in powers and Spatial Development Strategies, the case for appraising uses on GVA per megawatt or megalitre, and whether councils have enough planners to make it work.

In this guest episode David and Mike are joined by David Waite, Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow, to ask what Andy Burnham's "Manchesterism" means for a nation whose devolution architecture is tripartite - involving the UK and Scottish governments and local authorities. They examine Glasgow City Region's bid for a £400 million integrated settlement as Scotland's clearest test case yet, and discuss why David Waite's research counsels caution on importing the mayoral model wholesale. For LED and placemaking professionals across the UK, it's an exploration of what regional empowerment can look like outside the mayoral template.

In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike use World Cup 2026's chaotic build-up and predictable result as a provocation about devolution and place-based funding. If a 48-nation, multi-billion-pound tournament still produced exactly the semi-finalists the rankings predicted, what makes anyone confident that Integrated Settlements and Mayoral Strategic Authorities will dislodge the pre-existing hierarchy of UK places? They debate whether the analogy holds once you widen the lens beyond football and why Cape Verde's run to the knockout stages raises a genuine question: would any UK place be brave enough to define its own economic specialism rather than chase the same national growth story as everyone else?