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2025 Cohort – session one – Translating global trends into local place leadership: opportunities and challenges 

The third year of ADEPT and Amey’s innovative Pioneering, Action-orientated, Creative and Entrepreneurial (PACE) programme began in April 2025, with the theme of ‘Looking up and out – designing for the future’]. The initial session explored the global megatrends that are reshaping place outcomes and how place directors can respond. Matt O'Neill, Executive Director – Growth & Sustainability at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, reflects on the first session of the programme.

What attracted you to the PACE programme?

The PACE programme is a great opportunity to get some thinking time and space outside of the day job and to get ahead of the significant challenges that are placed upon us as place directors. 

What attracted me to PACE was the chance to work with a group of like-minded individuals from up and down the country, listening to excellent thought leaders from different worlds – public, private and voluntary sectors. It also gives a chance to contribute to something that could be useful for the sector more broadly as a finished product, once we've concluded the sessions.

What were your personal expectations for the first PACE session?

The purpose of the first session was to explore key global megatrends that are affecting place outcomes, looking at how they intersect with our work as place leaders. 

The idea is that we can reflect on the readiness of our departments and teams to respond to these global trends, then understand how we identify the leadership levers. I wanted to get a better understanding of the four key areas from a future-looking perspective. Not just the here and now in the next three to five years, but where are we going over the next 10, 50, and even 100 years. This provides a much better understanding of the context that we're working within and how to plan accordingly, even if the impacts will outlive us all! 

Tell me more about the theme of the first PACE session. 

The session identified four overlapping trends that are fundamentally challenging systems:

• Climate volatility – the increasing frequency and severity of climate-related challenges.
• Spatial inequality – growing disparities between different places and communities.
• Erosion of trust – declining confidence in institutions and traditional politics.
• Demographic and digital shifts – changing population patterns and technological transformation.

What struck me was how all four trends are overlapping at once against systems that were designed 150 years ago. As the EY speaker noted, we're not really leading the future, we're bracing for it. The question is, how do we actually start to change the systems and do justice to those levels of overlapping trends?

What discussions took place in the first session?

The day kicked off with a powerful set of thought leadership sessions that set the tone for everything that followed.

We heard from Marcus Richards and Sali Miftari from EY, who gave us a view on the intersecting global trends and how place leaders might respond from a future facing, systems level perspective. Their session really helped us think about how we stop bracing for the future and, instead, start leading it.

Sara Fasey from Microsoft, who leads on social value, gave a fascinating talk about the rapid pace of technological change, particularly around AI and machine learning. She talked about tools and how these innovations are reshaping the way we design and deliver services. One of her more thought-provoking points was about trust: she raised important questions about where we draw the line between efficiency and losing core human skills.

Rachel Brisley from Ipsos UK finished with a deep dive into public trust and sentiment. She highlighted how widespread disaffection is fuelling a shift towards populism. Her analysis showed that people want strong leadership, but they also want genuine consultation - and right now, they don’t feel they’re getting either. She highlighted the extraordinary situation where five parties (Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems, Reform, and the Greens) are now polling above 10% nationally, reflecting a fragmented electorate and a broader loss of trust in long-established political narratives. 

What were your key moments and important takeaways from the event?

The setting itself was incredible – the Gherkin building in London provided an absolutely fantastic, inspirational environment. Having that space out of the day job is such a privilege because as all place directors will know, there's a million and one things coming at you at 100 miles an hour.

For me, the big takeaway is that the professional role of being a place director has never been more important – to actually lead into the future in a world of populism, loss of trust, accelerated technological development and define new systems for our places. To accomplish this will show what good delivery means to impact communities and residents, but also to attract a new generation of younger people into our organisations. If you knit that together properly, you're doing both things: getting a new generation of people bought into values-driven agendas, but doing it in a way that isn't seen as traditional local authority ways of working, as those days as we all know don’t exist anymore. 

If you want to make a difference in your community, you could do highways engineering, you could be a surveyor, you could be in social media communications. We provide 433 services, but we're not really selling that effectively.

Another key insight was around the role of technology. We've been an early adopter in Barnsley in terms of AI and had some notable success in part of the organisation, but I felt that we're scratching the surface of the potential. It's not just about having the most Co-Pilot licenses; it's about using the technology to inform service delivery and reform how public services can be delivered. This I feel, will define the next decade for local government, those who can embrace and lead the technological change, will increase productivity, save revenue and deliver better outcomes for staff, residents and businesses. 

Have you already begun to apply new ways of thinking about place in your day-to-day work?

Absolutely. We've been giving some serious reflection to where we can start to pick interventions that will have the biggest impact. For us, it's getting a better grip on the AI and Microsoft work we're doing within the council and my own Directorate, particularly in service delivery and redesign. I have started a process to understand how we can use this across the various teams and services within the directorate, what the current experience is and where we can change based on opportunities. This will be a big focus for my leadership team over the next 12 months, that and preparing for all our elections! 

The leadership role from the place director has never been more important against all of those four big trends. The place role is massive in driving each of those in a way that enables trust, ensures people understand the overlapping issues that are happening and makes sense of that in a local context. We are uniquely placed to help other colleagues in our SMT and advise our new and existing political administrations. 

What are you looking forward to about the next session?

By that time, I will have had chance to reflect on some of the key learnings and test them with my own directors and colleagues in the council. That will give us a great line of sight – if each one of us does that across the cohort, we can then build together a really good overall set of experiences across the country. PACE brings together a valuable mix of perspectives and experiences and I’m looking forward to the rest of the programme.

You can read the full session summary document here or watch the video from the session here.

Further information

• This joint venture between ADEPT and Amey is designed to provide thought leaders with the space to find strategic solutions that are Pioneering, Action-orientated, Creative and Entrepreneurial (PACE). Designed exclusively for place directors and senior leadership, two of the fundamental principles behind PACE is to influence the future of place-focused strategies and support place leaders in driving change. 
• Session summary - read the full document from session one.
• Video - watch the video from the first session.

Other resources 

• PACE - The Place Leaders Programme: www.adeptnet.org.uk/pace
• Amey: www.amey.co.uk
• You can find summaries from previous cohorts of the PACE programme here

Author

Matt O'Neill is Executive Director – Growth & Sustainability at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council.