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Welcome to the latest edition of IMPOWER’s annual impact report. The market remains demanding: public sector consultancy spend is under scrutiny, competition is intensifying, particularly around local government reorganisation, and NHS procurement continues to be complex. Yet this environment also creates opportunity.

Recently, IMPOWER joined the County Councils Network (CCN) for a discussion with Directors of Children’s Services from authorities across England going through local government reorganisation. Between them, the Directors represented services supporting millions of residents across the country.

Last Thursday I joined a roundtable with senior officers from the East of England focused on the challenges and opportunities of local government reorganisation (LGR) for children’s services. Presentations from local authorities with previous experience of reorganisation shared practical advice and learning, and I shared some reflections on the wider context and priorities for children’s services impacted.

Written by Tom Berry & Jennifer Collins Public Finance Live is always a welcome opportunity to step away from the day job, catch up with finance colleagues from across the country and take stock of what’s happening in local government. This year certainly didn’t disappoint. With our eye-catching stand stocked full of merch and cold drinks, and a roaming band welcoming delegates to Olympia with Get Lucky at 9am, there was plenty to get people talking before the first session had even begun.

In February, IMPOWER and CIPFA brought together senior leaders from local government, finance and the NHS to explore a pressing question: what does it really take to deliver transformation in increasingly complex public sector systems? The discussion’s write-up, which can be found here, reinforced a theme that many leaders will recognise – successful transformation is rarely about finding a perfect plan. It’s about building the confidence and capability to navigate complexity.

“We have reform everywhere all at once,” said Adrian Smith, Chief Executive of Nottinghamshire County Council, opening our recent Shared Learning Event. The scale and pace of change facing councils present significant challenges, but it also creates a rare opportunity to embed prevention at scale. Realising that opportunity will require councils to think differently about service design, workforce models, local intelligence, and leadership.

As discussed in my last article, across health and care, we are not short of evidence-based models for improving discharge and flow. Frailty models, Home First, Discharge to Assess, virtual wards, transfer of care hubs and neighbourhoods all point in broadly the same direction: support people in the least restrictive setting, avoid unnecessary hospital stays, and focus on recovery and independence. The recent NHS England Model Discharge Pathway reinforces these principles.

“What if rather than trying to organise an optimal response to current operating conditions, what we did was to optimise our capacity to respond to the changing nature of the world?” This is a question posed by a participant of IMPOWER’s Complex Transformation Academy, capturing one of the biggest challenges facing local government today. It struck a chord; leaders learn how to work in complicated environments focused on improving performance against KPIs within established service structures.

Michael Wyatt recently returned to IMPOWER after a spell as Associate Director of Clinical Pathways and Deputy Divisional Director for Medicines at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust. Closing the gap between knowing and doing Most systems already know what needs to change. What they lack is the time, capacity, and delivery support to make it happen.

Working from December 2025 – May 2026 Nottingham University Hospital Trust (NUH) delivered a length of stay reduction of two days across six geriatric wards, with the support of IMPOWER. IMPOWER were initially commissioned by NUH in July 2025 for a brief proof of concept project, to test the impact of a strengths-based approach to discharge. This work identified opportunities that could be directly taken forward by the Trust, together with wider possibilities across the place partnership.