Neighbourhoods and Public Services

This Government are determined to build a new relationship of respect, trust and shared responsibility between the state and its citizens. On 21 May, I announced this Government’s ambitious new programme to reform local services, building more integrated, place-based and user-centred models of delivery, and restoring people’s pride in their areas and communities. I can now set out further details of this agenda and new reforms to put communities first.

Building on the measures announced in May, I can today confirm:

Our new programme of community power pilots, designed to support councils to work with community groups and residents to deliver community-led and locally responsive services in areas such as youth provision, community safety, housing and green spaces. The pilots will cover 25 places in England to accelerate change and will be backed by £15 million of new funding.

We are determined to drive out profiteering from public services. In May, I made it clear that the Government would not flinch from using new powers to cap the profits of private providers in children’s social care if our assessment and consultation showed this to be necessary. But we recognise that profiteering is not limited to children’s social care. Therefore, we are also working with the Home Office and with London councils signed up to the London accommodation management agreement to bring consistency and value for money to the procurement of temporary accommodation and to prevent profiteering.

In addition to the new powers for mayors, I announced under the new right-to-request process in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 that we will establish a task and finish group to jointly define the role of mayors and strategic authorities in public service reform more widely. This will include specific consideration of how strategic authorities could play a role in driving better procurement, commissioning and delivery of local public services. We believe local authorities should retain autonomy in their procurement of the services they are accountable for and should remain responsive to local need and community concerns. However, we want to build a system where they can benefit from increased market power and the knowledge that pooling resources at regional level can provide, in order to crack down on profiteering.

We have concluded our review of the right to manage and will be taking forward a series of reforms to the regulatory and policy framework to make it as easy as possible for more social housing residents to come together to take control of their own homes and estates, and to make housing managers directly accountable to the people who live in them. Currently, the majority of social housing residents live in homes run by housing associations and are excluded from the right to manage. We will explore whether there is a case for extending the statutory right to these tenants, and will consult with residents and social housing providers on the detail ahead of any change. We will make sure there is better support and oversight built into the right-to-manage system, including stronger enforcement action in the event of serious mismanagement where residents’ safety is put at risk. We want social landlords to do more to support tenants to take up right to manage, in line with existing regulatory requirements.