Planned for or planned around? Mayoral Strategic Authorities and the rural development gap

In this special guest episode, David and Mike hand over the conversation to three early career economists on three different paths. William Hamilton is a former ODI Fellow in Fiji who has just joined the Asian Development Bank. Luke Green is an economic geographer with Insights North East at Newcastle University. Megan Smith is a consultant at AMION and an IED Rising Star nominee. They compare how deliberate their routes really were and why so few graduates know LED careers exist. They also discuss what support has actually mattered, from the IED mentorship scheme to the “invisible” mentoring that teaches researchers that rigorous and useful aren’t the same thing. Looking ten years ahead, they ask what AI means for a profession whose early-career groundwork is how people learn, and why judgement, interpretation and stakeholder work will matter more.

In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike look at local government reform on both sides of the border. On 7 September England withdrew reorganisation decisions for Essex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Norfolk and Suffolk, and paused 14 more. Two weeks later, Scotland proposed replacing its 32 councils with six to ten regional authorities and 120–160 community authorities. Drawing on LEDC’s reform manifesto, they challenge the “unitary myth” and the “savings myth” and ask whether either the UK or Scottish governments passes the David Waite test: start with what you want to achieve, then design the structures. They also discuss the funding cliff edges that running reorganisation and devolution at the same time can create, and whether UK Ministers will now cherry-pick the easy wins on LGR rather than launch a full re-start.

In this guest episode, David and Mike are joined by Professor Andrew Jones, economic geographer and Vice Chancellor and President of Brunel University London, to ask whether universities can keep playing their anchor and civic roles as their finances come under strain. They explore what being an anchor means in the Heathrow functional economic area, an economy roughly equal in size to that of Wales. They cover why long-term industry partnerships outlast grant-by-grant projects, and why Andrew sees economic development as "art and curation" rather than a simple science. They also discuss what a research-intensive technical university looks like, how FE and HE can build better pathways for NEET learners as AI reshapes jobs, and whether universities are becoming more or less rooted in place.

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.