What Must Be True? The Six Conditions for Sustained Change in Local Government

Local government leaders are being asked to achieve something unprecedented: maintain frontline services under intense financial and workforce pressures whilst simultaneously redesigning organisations for a rapidly changing future. In this episode of The Truth About Local Government, Matt Masters is joined by Paul Knight, Co-Founder of RPNA and author of What Must Be True?, alongside Adam Hill, Chief Executive of Rushcliffe Borough Council. Together, they explore the six conditions that RPNA argues must be present for meaningful and lasting organisational change: collective leadership authority, strategic and financial reality, decision-making and governance, organisational capability and capacity, change and delivery discipline, and trust, narrative and communication. Drawing on Adam's experience leading a local authority, the discussion examines whether these themes resonate in practice, why change programmes so often struggle to deliver their intended outcomes, and what local government leaders can do differently to build organisations capable of sustaining change in an era of financial constraint, workforce pressures, technological transformation and local government reorganisation.