LGA Corporate Peer Challenge – Progress review: London Borough of Islington

The council undertook an LGA Corporate Peer Challenge (CPC) between 3 to 6 February 2025 and promptly published the full report with an action plan. 

The Progress Review is an integral part of the Corporate Peer Challenge process. Taking place approximately ten months after the CPC, it is designed to provide space for the council’s senior leadership to:

• Receive feedback from peers on the early progress made by the council against the CPC recommendations and the council’s RAG rated CPC Action Plan.
• Consider peers’ reflections on any new opportunities or challenges that may have arisen since the peer team were ‘on-site’ including any further support needs.
• Discuss any early impact or learning from the progress made to date. 

The LGA would like to thank London Borough of Islington (Islington / the council) for their commitment to sector led improvement. This Progress Review was the next step in an ongoing, open and close relationship that the council has with LGA sector support.

The Progress Review at Islington took place (onsite) on Wednesday 3 December 2025. It focussed on each of the recommendations from the Corporate Peer Challenge, under the following theme headings: 

• Finance
• Governance
• Change and Transformation.

For this Progress Review, the following members of the original CPC team were involved: 

• Robin Tuddenham, Chief Executive, Calderdale Council​
• Cllr Shantanu Rajawat, Leader, London Borough of Hounslow​
• Jess Crowe, Corporate Director of Culture, Strategy and Communities, London Borough of Haringey​
• Michael Hudson, Executive Director of Finance and Resources, Cambridgeshire County Council​
• Elaine Jackson, Interim Chief Executive, London Borough of Croydon​
• Ellie Greenwood, Peer Challenge Manager, Local Government Association. 

It is evident that Islington has fully leant into the peer challenge process, using the peer team’s findings and recommendations to help drive improvement and change across the organisation. The council prepared a detailed action plan in response to the CPC’s ten recommendations; the RAG rated update for the progress review reported that 100 per cent of actions are completed or on track, albeit a number have timescales running to Autumn 2026.

It is very positive to see the progress that has been made and the attention paid to the CPC’s findings. However, with significant work undertaken since the CPC, the council should ensure it occasionally takes time to take stock and ensure that it is taking staff and partners with it on a broad and fast paced agenda.

The leader and chief executive are settled into their roles and providing strong leadership of the organisation; their good working relationship is reflected in a strengthened sense of collective decision making across the wider Executive and Corporate Management Team (CMT). The peer team felt a greater sense of confidence and energy across the organisation since their last visit.

On all three themes – finance, governance and change and transformation – Islington can demonstrate good progress. Despite the challenge of fair funding changes, the council expects to set a balanced budget for 2026-27, following early work in Spring, including joint work with the Executive, and initiatives such as the Budget Fortnight. There is evidence of the council taking some tough decisions, such as cancelling the Finsbury Leisure scheme, closing two schools and reworking initial savings plans. The focus is now turning to 2027-28; work in the coming months, building on plans identified during Budget Fortnight, will enable the new administration to move quickly on the budget after the election in May 2026.

On governance, significant work has been undertaken but with more to do. The ‘golden triangle’ structure has been revised and strengthened, phase one of a scrutiny review completed, and recommendations from the Constitution Working Group agreed by Full Council. The council should ensure that good governance is seen as everyone’s business and focus on embedding updated protocols and processes as part of the organisational culture; staff training and the post-election member development training will be critical to achieving this.

Similarly, on change and transformation, progress has been made, but the council’s change programme is still emerging, with several key milestones due in September 2026. The new structure, change network and identified change programmes, alongside a clear culture of pride and connectedness to place within the council provide strong foundations to build on, as does the council’s new place narrative. Partners recognise the work the council is doing and have confidence in its leadership.

Alongside this activity, the council has continued to deliver good services, with a CQC ‘good’ outcome in June, following the Ofsted ‘outstanding’ judgement announced shortly before the CPC. Preparations are underway for a Regulator of Social Housing inspection in January 2026. The council has also adapted learning from other councils in the work it has undertaken, for example on complaints and community cohesion. The peer team welcomed the recognition that Islington can benefit from the experience of other councils, given the similar challenges it faces – it should continue to do so.

3.1 Finance

• Recommendation 1: The council should urgently set a business and budget planning timetable which enables challenge, clear prioritisation of delivery and sufficient time to identify costed savings and address the budget gap. 

The council rapidly progressed budget planning for 2026/27, with good engagement with the Executive beginning in a budget away day shortly after the CPC. Despite the additional challenge created by the fair funding formula changes, the council has informally set a balanced budget by early October. While 2026/27 budget savings are predominantly derived from management action and central provision, there is evidence of the emerging change programme and the development of preventative measures to challenge demand growth: both will be necessary to deliver further savings in future. The council is on track to deliver 85 per cent of its 2025/26 savings (with mitigations for the remainder) and plans to underspend by £5m, with a forecast £0.5m underspend at the end of quarter two.

In May, the council ran ‘Budget Fortnight’, an intensive two-week programme bringing together the Leadership Network and CMT to work collaboratively to identify opportunities for savings and efficiencies. £122m worth of ideas (including HRA and Capital as well as core revenue) were generated against a £60m core revenue savings target: the council will now need to ensure it maintains the momentum on this, allowing time that enables service leaders to follow through and deliver savings.

With the 2026/27 budget informally agreed, officers are already starting to think ahead to 2027/28, with a budget timetable agreed: there is an opportunity now to lay the foundations for work that can be rapidly developed following the election of a new administration in May 2026. The good engagement with the Executive on the 2026/27 budget, including through a new approach to strategic leadership meetings, should continue as the focus shifts to later years and to the link with the change programme and workforce strategy.

CMT should carry out a lessons learnt from the Budget Fortnight to build on this for the planned approach in 2026 for 2027/28 onwards budget setting. This should include looking at how Heads of Service and the organisation are kept informed of and further own the changes arising from the budget challenge sessions.

The council has agreed a £3m budget for the change programme over four years, with a need to identify targeted returns to comply with MHCLG’s rules on the flexible use of capital receipts. It has successfully achieved the workforce savings for year one and two of the MTFS through a Voluntary Business Efficiency & Redundancy Scheme (VBEARS) which will generate a £9.075m reduction in workforce spend and a reduction in agency staff (from 17.5 per cent in Q4 2023/24 to nine per cent in Q2 2025/26) following the introduction of a Workforce Controls Panel.

Good progress has been made to grip capital strategy and planning, overseen by the Capital and Assets Strategic Board, with a log of gateway assessments for the New Homes Programme, new governance and board pathways in place for the Programme, standardised business case templates being developed and the creation of a capital programme management office as part of a restructure of the New Homes Team. Alongside this strengthened governance, the council should ensure the Executive’s strategic intent is factored into how planning for the programme and assessing the future decision making is undertaken, to ensure it supports delivery of corporate ambitions.

3.2 Governance

• Recommendation 2: Maintain the focus on the ‘golden triangle’ of the governance statutory officers and ensure a clear line of sight from the CEX to the MO.
• Recommendation 3: Strengthen the role of the whole Executive, in conjunction with CMT, to act as the strategic leadership of the council, drive the business plan and budget with collective accountability. Ensure Executive / CMT have sufficient time together to do this. 
• Recommendation 4: As part of the review of the constitution, ensure clarity on the respective roles and responsibilities of members / officers, scrutiny and audit committees to avoid overlap.
• Recommendation 5: Improve and embed the new corporate approach to complaints and member enquiries. Clarify the structures in place to support different political groups. 

Since the peer challenge, Islington has worked hard to strengthen its governance, including bringing in external advisers and additional capacity. This should remain an ongoing priority, with more still to do.

The council has restructured roles so that the monitoring officer reports to the chief executive, rather than the section 151 officer; the peer team heard that this has strengthened the ‘golden triangle.’ The three officers meet monthly, with a six-monthly meeting of all statutory officers. The council self-assessed itself against the CIPFA / Solace Code of practice on good governance for local authority statutory officers. 

More time is now devoted to joint Executive / CMT discussions on strategic issues through monthly (and often more regular) Strategic Joint Board meetings; a separate Executive Member Report Board focuses specifically on upcoming meeting papers and decisions. A series of CMT / Executive away days for 2026/27 have already been mapped out. The council reported that this has strengthened strategic leadership, and the peer team heard feedback that the new approach is helping to drive key council initiatives.

The review of the constitution by the Constitution Working Group (CWG), established before the CPC, has made good progress. Proposals on the call in process, Member-Officer Protocol, Audit and Risk Committee terms of reference and Full Council procedures – some of which have previously created some challenges for the council - were considered and approved shortly after the progress review. Phase one of a scrutiny review led to scrutiny structures being reconfigured; a second phase of the review, intended to look at the culture and resourcing of scrutiny in Islington, will begin soon. 

These initiatives are clearly having an effect, but there is a need to maintain momentum and ensure now that the new protocols are understood, lived and embedded. All members and officers have a responsibility for this: good governance is everyone’s business, with leadership required across the whole of the Executive / CMT. The 2026 election provides an opportunity to reset governance in line with the changes identified by the CWG – the post-election member induction programme, as well as staff training, will be critical in helping to embed this.

The council has recently recruited a new assistant director of audit, having withdrawn from a shared internal audit service hosted by the London Borough of Camden. The peer team considered the new in-house service a good step but concerns were expressed in relation to capacity to meet organisational requirements, and this will need a further review in twelve months’ time. The council could also assess how the internal audit function should be positioned within the organisation and whether its focus is best steered towards governance or valued added focus. Recruitment is also underway to new roles to support the council leader and opposition group, following a review of support to the council’s different political groups: this is expected to be complete in January 2026.

Tackling issues with the council’s handling of complaints and member enquiries remains a priority for the council. The council has restructured its approach to these, with responsibility moving to the director of digital services in the resources directorate to ensure join up with responsibility for resident experience. There is evidence of improved performance in complaints handling, with a greater proportion responded to within target timescales; CMT are receiving fortnightly reports of performance data from new reporting dashboards for both complaints and member enquiries. Further work is ongoing to design a new target operating model for complaints handling, intended not just to deal with complaints but drive service improvement and tackle the underlying issues prompting them, too. This work will need to be owned and led by CMT, with the support of the whole organisation, to help resolve previous challenges in this area.

The CPC heard that member enquiries had been a source of tension within the council, with members unhappy about how these are managed. The council has been reviewing how other London Boroughs manage this process, with more work to do to get members on board as a new approach is developed.

3.3 Change and transformation

• Recommendation 6: Led corporately, develop a clearer narrative, stronger culture and a more collaborative approach to working with local businesses, HFE, cultural and sporting institutions and the VCS. Build on the real opportunities Islington has. 
• Recommendation 7: Develop a clearer gateway / assessment criteria for capital investment, supported by Executive and CMT. 
• Recommendation 8: Undertake an externally supported review and risk assessment of the Finsbury Leisure scheme to assure and inform decision making. 
• Recommendation 9: Develop and define a coherent organisation-wide change programme underpinned by clear plans and savings and a narrative that helps prepare members and the workforce. 
• Recommendation 10: Implement a new target operating model in the context of recent external recommendations made to support the wider change programme. 

A restructure since the CPC has seen the functions of the Communities, Strategy and Change directorate absorbed into others and the appointment of a dedicated strategy and change lead officer. Islington has opted for a hybrid approach with change ‘delivered by directorates, supported by strategic coordination and shared capabilities.’

A cross-organisational change network has been established; this has helped to identify a portfolio of cross-council and directorate led change programmes. Progress has been made in mapping out the ‘Islington Together’ change programme, with eight component programmes collectively shaping the target operating model for the organisation: this was approved by the Executive in November. Each programme is supported by programme boards including enabling functions such as digital, data / insights, finance, policy and equalities, HR, public health and communications, with a CMT co-sponsor identified for the largest cross-organisational programmes. A £3m budget over four years (supported through the flexible use of capital receipts) has been allocated to deliver the Islington Together approach.

While there is now greater clarity about the council’s change programme, it remains emergent, with much to do to meet the CPC action plan’s September 2026 target for clear savings plans, an enabling core change model and implementation of the recommendations from the external Leapwise review of the council’s change approach.

As it focuses on developing delivery capability, organisational capacity, managing risks and collating learning, the council should link its change work to the business and budget planning cycle. It could also agree a governance framework giving permission for heads of service to lead work / change within prescribed parameters if it means services can be improved or savings generated. 

With successful work on the recent voluntary redundancy programme, there will need to be a shift in HR focus to the forthcoming workforce strategy (due in 2026) and organisational development to help deliver change. The council’s strong focus and commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion could now develop into sustained impact, given the strong intent to do this from all leaders in Islington.

Externally, the council has now completed work to develop a single coherent narrative for Islington, with the intention to convert the narrative to a place identity through place leadership. Over the next twelve months, the council’s Thriving Places programme will pilot an approach to place leadership based on people, place and prevention-first services. A Celebrating Islington programme is also being launched in 2026 to help connect communities and residents to what happens in the borough and to the work of partner organisations.

A new partnership framework is being developed to support strategic engagement across council services and partners, as well as a refreshed VCS strategy, investment plan and compact. The Islington Anchor Institutions Network recently marked its third anniversary. The peer team heard positive feedback from the council’s partners, who are confident in and supportive of the council’s leadership. Partners recognise the challenges the council faces and want to continue to collaborate and co-produce with it. The council should maintain efforts to ensure that strategic collaboration and co-production is consistently matched at operational level.

Finally, the peer team noted that within a few months of the peer challenge, the council had taken the decision to cancel the Finsbury Leisure project. Given the high risks and cost associated with the project, the peer team commends the council for reaching a brave and speedy resolution to a politically difficult decision.

The LGA would like to thank Islington for undertaking an LGA CPC Progress Review. 

We appreciate that senior managerial and political leadership will want to reflect on these findings and suggestions in order to determine how the organisation wishes to take things forward.

Under the umbrella of LGA sector-led improvement, there is an on-going offer of support to councils. The LGA is well placed to provide additional support, advice and guidance on a number of the areas identified for development and improvement and we would be happy to discuss this. 

Mona Sehgal, Principal Adviser ([email protected]) is the main point of contact between the authority and the Local Government Association (LGA).