Sustainable finance for local government must mean freedom to invest in commercial property to secure a financial return. Whether that investment is in area or outside is another matter. Either way, the National Audit Office’s forthcoming review is not going to seal the fate of what is an essential revenue stream for many councils.

In the summer 2019 edition of The Terrier, Brian reported in the findings of his survey into the increasingly controversial topic of local authority investment in commercial property. The research was triggered by an article he wrote in 2018 for the RICS Property Journal.

The concept of productivity in the workplace is attracting great interest and quite rightly so. No longer is it solely in the domain of the academics, HR function or the architects and workplace strategists – we now find experts in real estate, facilities management, furniture supply, air conditioning systems and many more taking an active interest in what has become a major issue for business.

The days when public sector service providers worked alone or, worse, in competition with other providers, are thankfully no more. Whether this is because of a genuine collaborative spirit or because they recognise their survival depends on working with partners, the result is that shared services have increased across the public sector.

New legislative freedoms are also partly responsible for the rise of this model of service delivery, which encompasses joint ventures and corporate entities.