LED Confidential

In this guest episode, David and Mike are joined by Dr Adrian Johnston MBE, Innovation Commissioner for Innovation City Belfast, to explore whether inclusive innovation can be measured in practice. Adrian explains how Innovation City Belfast, a partnership of seven anchor institutions built around the £1bn Belfast Region City Deal, moved beyond GVA and patents toward a broader "inclusion capital" framework covering economic, human, cultural and social capital, using proxies like "social graphs" and self-efficacy to track whether prosperity is genuinely shared. The conversation covers the Belfast Inclusive Futures visioning process, the city's ambition to be the UK's healthiest and most productive city by 2035, the spatial equity challenge of city-centre-led innovation, and how devolved regions outside London and Greater Manchester might frame policy differently.

In this Espresso Shot, David and Mike  unpack the UK Government's new capital risk framework for local authorities — a consultation launched on 28 May 2026 proposing powers to monitor debt, investment, and revenue sustainability across every council, with intervention triggers where thresholds are breached.
 At the time of recording six councils remained under Section 114 intervention; 37 others were in receipt of around £1.9bn in Exceptional Financial Support. Mike asks whether this represents proportionate governance or Whitehall micromanaging the financial distress it helped create. David argues the real problem is the local government finance system itself: designing a compliance framework around Woking and Thurrock while the majority of councils face structural distress from rising adult social care and SEN costs is a category error. For LED and placemaking professionals, the central question is whether tighter borrowing rules will constrain the regeneration finance that makes growth possible in the places that most need it — and whether the consultation is an opportunity to shape the outcome.

In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike unpack Alan Milburn's interim review findings into young people and work  — a diagnosis that names nearly 1 million 16–24 year-olds as not in employment, education or training ("NEET"), at an estimated economic cost of £125bn annually, and describes a "generational fault line" in the UK labour market.
They explore the structural drivers behind the crisis: why ill health is a major cause of NEET status; how remote working and national living wage policy have reshaped entry-level opportunities; and why this problem clusters in particular places. David asks whether the Milburn Review risks reproducing a youth-employment-focused intervention without addressing underlying place-based system failures in coordination, while Mike explores the demographic pressures on recruitment in foundational economy sectors, and what this could mean for demand for young workers.

The UK’s latest healthy life expectancy figures published in Spring 2026 have been described as a watershed moment, and for local economic development they raise uncomfortable questions.
In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike explore what falling healthy life expectancy, widening spatial gaps and changing population dynamics mean for the growth assumptions embedded in many local strategies. They ask whether places should still be planning primarily for growth or whether resilience and the prevention economy now need to sit at the heart of LED and placemaking.

In this episode, David and Mike are joined by Dr Glenn Athey to discuss the state of professional practice in local and regional economic development. Using Glenn’s new handbook as a springboard, they explore why delivery capability has become such a binding constraint on place based change, how years of austerity and institutional churn have hollowed out professional capacity, and what today’s practitioners need in order to do the job well. From evidence and judgment to curiosity, stakeholder engagement and getting out from behind the screen, this is a practical conversation about how to build stronger individual and organisational capability for the work ahead.
Access the handbook: https://lredhandbook.com/