This week has been a great week for us at LCRIG, planning and preparing for 2025 events, expanding our sector insights, and launching new action groups. Meeting in person allowed us to really focus on discussing delivering the best member benefits, creating high-quality events with new features, and reviewing feedback from this past year to inform our new additions. We have so many new things planned for 2025 as we continue to grow and support all our members – It is all incredibly exciting!
LCRIG members may have seen in their recent member-only update that our new Sector Insights Team has conducted preliminary analysis on the biggest and most detailed survey we’ve ever undertaken around Innovation (and its adoption) in the sector. Dan recently presented preliminary findings to some of our board members, sparking a lot of debate, especially around the adoption of innovation, types of innovation, and confidence to innovate. We plan to release a comprehensive report early in 2025, covering both Local Authority responses and those from supply chain members. I think one snippet that’s been on my mind is the contrast between the transformational innovation people aspire to versus the incremental innovation that’s often delivered. Of course, the survey results also highlighted the usual thorny issues that block innovation adoption.
In addition to planning with the team, we’ve been building on insights Dan has gathered over the last couple of months from events, groups, and member feedback. This has led us to develop thematic groups that we’ll use to guide our sector intelligence work. Our goal is to produce useful resources – such as factsheets, reports, toolkits, and best practices – to support councils and suppliers alike. A lot to do, but it’s long been an area I’ve wanted to develop at LCRIG, and we’re committed to delivering value without duplicating the excellent work of our partner organisations. I appreciate I’m slightly teasing you as a reader on what we’re up to, but I want to get our outputs right!
Next week I’ll be at the TTF Autumn Update, where we’ll have a day of working group meetings before the Autumn update and conference with DfT policy updates. I’m looking forward to hearing from some great speakers and to the following day with the STREETWISE group of road operators. I’ll have lots to share with you next week, and I’m also looking forward to a week off the week after to recharge my creative batteries!
Paula Claytonsmith, CEO