LED Confidential

In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike ask whether, after four decades of institutional churn in English regeneration, mayors have finally found a delivery vehicle that sticks. Mayoral Development Corporations (MDCs) have grown from a London device to nine across England. They include Birmingham East, an £11bn programme targeting 50,000 jobs and 20,000 homes, and the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act now lets every mayor set one up. Yet Greater Cambridge’s development corporation is centrally led, and Teesworks still casts a long shadow. David and Mike discuss the “new toy in the toolbox” temptation, a sub-regional landscape crowded with overlapping zones, and competition for scarce delivery talent. They also explore why inclusive growth and community ownership must be built in from day one.

In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike ask whether every major infrastructure project should have to show not just what it will build, but who it will employ. They unpack Heathrow’s new Infrastructure Skills Council, co-chaired by Lord Blunkett and Robert Halfon and endorsed by Alan Milburn, and its plan for 5,000 apprenticeships, traineeships and entry-level opportunities. They set this against a runway timetable now slipping to 2039, the 2014 pledge of 10,000 apprenticeships by 2030, and a new statutory consultation launched this Autumn. They discuss why a three-year delay is so consequential in skills planning, the lessons from HS2, and competition for scarce civil engineering and construction workers.

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.

In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike ask if the new National Planning Policy Framework, published on 17 August 2026, offers an approach that is optimised for local economic development and placemaking or remains primarily a framework for building more homes. They unpack what has changed: a default yes for homes near well-connected stations, a new medium development category, easier approval for employment and clean energy schemes, and stronger support for AI growth zones and data centres;  and why that last change collides with hard limits on energy and water, with individual data centres requesting up to 3 million litres of water a day. They also explore new mayoral call-in powers and Spatial Development Strategies, the case for appraising uses on GVA per megawatt or megalitre, and whether councils have enough planners to make it work.

In this guest episode David and Mike are joined by David Waite, Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow, to ask what Andy Burnham's "Manchesterism" means for a nation whose devolution architecture is tripartite - involving the UK and Scottish governments and local authorities. They examine Glasgow City Region's bid for a £400 million integrated settlement as Scotland's clearest test case yet, and discuss why David Waite's research counsels caution on importing the mayoral model wholesale. For LED and placemaking professionals across the UK, it's an exploration of what regional empowerment can look like outside the mayoral template.

In this Espresso Shot episode, David and Mike use World Cup 2026's chaotic build-up and predictable result as a provocation about devolution and place-based funding. If a 48-nation, multi-billion-pound tournament still produced exactly the semi-finalists the rankings predicted, what makes anyone confident that Integrated Settlements and Mayoral Strategic Authorities will dislodge the pre-existing hierarchy of UK places? They debate whether the analogy holds once you widen the lens beyond football and why Cape Verde's run to the knockout stages raises a genuine question: would any UK place be brave enough to define its own economic specialism rather than chase the same national growth story as everyone else?