Centre for Thriving Places

09/01/2026

CALLING ALL LOCAL LEADERS >>> Question. Can 2026, a year that has started like no other, be a year in which we build thriving places and communities? 🌱 🌍 Absolutely, YES - and we are here to help you deliver it.

People everywhere right now can hear and see old systems around them cranking and failing - yet we all still hold onto visions of a better, fairer and more equitable world. Of healthier and happier futures. If you, as a local leader can see this vision: we Centre for Thriving Places are the people to support you in your efforts to build it.

In 2025 we worked closely with the teams of 6 pioneering combined authorities, 22 local authorities and 15 VCSE organisations in precisely this way. We are delighted to have helped improve the potential for wellbeing with place-makers who take the notion of serving their communities to the next level. Read about our incredible work with the Mid Essex Alliance, including Essex County Council, by way of example: https://www.centreforthrivingplaces.org/thriving-places-index/case-studies/two-years-into-a-thriving-places-approach/

Working together in 2026 and beyond, we can help you re-wire local economies to ensure every village, town, city in your region becomes a vibrant and welcoming place to live in.

Every place is different. But everywhere people are working flat out to deliver...

🤝 More local, decent jobs
🌬️ Cleaner air
🌳 More access to green spaces
🤗 Creating more cohesive, harmonious communities
🏡 More affordable, safe and warm homes
🏥 Making good healthcare more accessible
..and much more besides.

What you need to re-wire your systems to consistently deliver all this, will vary from place to place. We at Centre for Thriving Places can help bring together different communities, sectors and leaders to develop a shared roadmap towards what needs to change and how to do it, backed up by the evidence and data to make solutions stick.

We are ready to be your trusted guides along the way.

12/11/2025

Care-less accounting? Our NEW report, Ending Care Extraction in the UK, reveals that private companies operating social care services in just 3 x UK regions have extracted over £250 million in profit, in 3 years. We looked at local authority contracts and company accounts (where available) and found a third of profits have been siphoned to parent companies in this period, located in tax havens or private equity. From available records, £45m was also paid out in dividends and over £33m in interest alone, more than half of both returning to private equity or tax havens.

Deep breath - that’s not the whole picture – just what we could garner from public record.

Centre for Thriving Places is proud to be a part of Reclaiming our Regional Economies (RORE), which has revealed this analysis today. RORE is a multi-year programme delivered by ourselves, CLES - the National Organisation for Local Economies, Co-operatives UK, and the New Economics Foundation. We look at how local economies should - and could - be better wired, to deliver for real people.

Our report has been in The Guardian today, and Rosie Maguire, one of the report's co-authors, who works on policy and programmes at the Centre for Thriving Places had this to say in an opinion piece for the Municipal Journal: "As partners and long-time collaborators, we don’t just shout about what’s not working. An incentive for doing this work and understanding the mechanisms, is to look for opportunities to intervene now to counter these extractive practices. We identified ways for existing local authority powers to be used to shape the market and commission differently, such as social licensing, empowering communities and supporting non-extractive delivery models such as co-operatives and social enterprises."

"Strong care systems are essential foundations of a fair economy. The current structures are not inevitable. Contracts will end and new procurement and commissioning rounds will be on the horizon. These offer opportunities to review your local market and pipelines and facilitate conversations between staff, partners and communities to explore what is needed to meet people’s needs locally and review your commissioning process."

If you are among the many local authority leaders working in social care commissioning, children's services, and SEND provision, looking for concrete ways to rewire these systems in your local areas, join us for a special webinar on 2 December, to exchange ideas and find out more: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ending-extraction-in-the-uk-care-system-what-local-authorities-can-do-tickets-1932207607969?aff=odeimcmailchimp&mc_cid=0eb71e1b6e&mc_eid=UNIQID

The Guardian piece: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/nov/12/private-care-providers-in-three-english-regions-make-250m-in-three-years

More than third of profits analysed went to firms owned by private equity or based in tax havens, research finds

21/10/2025

🎉 Positive news >>> at Centre for Thriving Places, one of our foundational premises is that all things are interconnected - our health, the climate, the quality of our lives and so on. Too often in places, such things get placed in 'administrative boxes' that don't interconnect. You wind up with separate goals, different teams working on them – and people fall between the cracks. Not so at the pioneering West Midlands Combined Authority, which is doing excellent work to bring climate and health together, as you can see via this tool that we helped them to develop. https://www.wmca.org.uk/what-we-do/health-wellbeing-and-prevention/wider-determinants-of-health/health-and-wellbeing-impacts-of-climate-change-monitoring-tool/ This is the future of good place management.

📞 🖋️ Get in touch if you want to know how we support you, to join the dots in your local systems.

Climate change has been identified as one of the most important health threats of the century. It is bringing warmer, wetter winters, hotter, drier summers and ...

09/10/2025

We're looking forward to diving into this updated mapping of the new economy ecosystem across Europe, and thoughts on where we need to prioritise our collective energies. You can find us in the beta Index of organisations - hoping this becomes a great resources to find and build partnerships.

Discover the growing and diversifying ecosystem of organisations working to transform Europe's economy.

07/10/2025

ICYMI: 🎤 CTP's CEO Liz Zeidler was at the Labour Party Conference last week chairing a panel for RORE (Reclaiming Our Regional Economies), a project we are proud to be a part of alongside CLES - Centre for Local Economic Strategies, New Economics Foundation and Co-operatives UK.

The discussion was around the role of regions in resisting the rise of the far right, reclaiming our economies from faceless billionaires and reshaping politics for the 21st century.

👇🏼 In her latest blog, More Power to Our Regions, Liz reflects on the event and how we need to radically rethink and reshape our economy to deliver for and with the people they are elected to serve.

The urgent need for courageous leadership from every UK region CTP’s CEO Liz Zeidler chaired a panel for RORE (Reclaiming Our Regional Economies) at the 2025 Labour Party conference on the role of regions in resisting the rise of the far right. Here she reflects on the feelings of the day. The cor...

01/10/2025

From Westminster to Liverpool, our leaders at the national, regional and local level have an opportunity – to radically rethink and reshape our economy to deliver for AND with the people they are elected to serve. Our CEO Liz Zeidler was delighted to chair a panel at the Labour Party conference on Monday, on the role of regions in resisting the rise of the far right, reclaiming our economies from faceless billionaires and reshaping politics for the 21st century. In her blog she reflects on the event and the urgent need for courageous leadership in our regions.

Get in touch if you want to know more or get involved…

The urgent need for courageous leadership from every UK region CTP’s CEO Liz Zeidler chaired a panel for RORE (Reclaiming Our Regional Economies) at the 2025 Labour Party conference on the role of regions in resisting the rise of the far right. Here she reflects on the feelings of the day. The cor...

01/10/2025

'Many of us could work a four-day week and still get everything done'. Juliet Schor has studied every kind of business and found that thoughtfully reducing work hours benefits employees, improves productivity and increases profits.

At CTP we've been embracing the 4 day week since 2018 (officially registered with the in 2023) and firmly believe that this system is not only possible but better. In her regular podcast for The Happiness Lab Dr Laurie Santos and economist Juliet Schor explore what happens when we finally question the 'ideal worker' myth and build work around human wellbeing.

Economist Juliet Schor has studied every kind of business and found that thoughtfully reducing work hours benefits employees, improves productivity and increases profits. She explains how you too can enjoy a three-day weekend with insights from her new book "Four Days a Week".

25/09/2025

'The water you drink, the house you live in, the buses you ride, the energy that powers your home — behind these everyday essentials are companies extracting profit.'

Who Owns Britain is a report by the Common WealthThink Tank which lays bare who profits from the ownership of our essential services. The analysis covers sectors transformed by privatisation, including energy, water, housing and land, transport, mail and care.

• Some of these themes will be explored in our forthcoming social care extraction report, a project we are progressing with our RORE partners New Economics Foundation, CLES and Co-operatives UK

How the radical experiment of privatisation transformed society and reshaped our lives.

24/09/2025

👀 How local leadership and community empowerment can resist the rise of the far right.
Don't miss the RORE Labour Party Conference Fringe event (with updated panel) on Monday 29 September, at 2pm chaired by our CEO Liz Zeidler.

'As wealth has been extracted from the many to the few so has our ability to influence our own lives, choices and futures'. In her blog, Liz digs into the flag-waving, marches and rise of the far right – a symptom of stripping people's autonomy and extracting wealth from our public services, spaces and healthcare systems, leading to a loss of influence over our lives, choices and futures.

CTP's work with others to rewire and reshape local economies takes a different path: to ensure that people and communities are governed by what they need to thrive and feel connected to jobs and opportunities.

Finding the real enemy, reclaiming local economies and building a better future On Monday 29 September our CEO Liz Zeidler will host a Reclaiming Our Regional Economies (RORE) fringe event at the Labour Party Conference, on how local leadership and community empowerment can resist the rise of the fa...

17/09/2025

'It’s really important to see this mass ‘sell-off’ for what it is – the outcome of both political centralisation and a wider economy that for too long has prioritised wealth over wellbeing'.

How can we reclaim our local and regional economies and steer them towards delivering what matters to us, our communities and even future generations?

Liz Zeidler's blog on mass local government sell-offs and the opportunities that a more community, wellbeing-focused and inclusive approach can present.

Recent headlines about massive local government sell offs have got Liz Zeidler, CTP’s Co-Founder, angry. In her new blog she turns her anger to action as she explores the bigger picture reasons behind this asset stripping, and more importantly what can be done to stop it deepening. When I see an a...

09/09/2025

Recent headlines about massive local government sell offs have got Liz Zeidler, Centre for Thriving Places' Co-Founder, angry. In her new blog she turns her anger to action as she explores the bigger picture reasons behind this asset stripping, and more importantly what can be done to stop it deepening.

Recent headlines about massive local government sell offs have got Liz Zeidler, CTP’s Co-Founder, angry. In her new blog she turns her anger to action as she explores the bigger picture reasons behind this asset stripping, and more importantly what can be done to stop it deepening. When I see an a...

08/09/2025

CTP is now part of the community, an initiative spearheaded by Possible, offering our employees more (paid) time off work if they ditch the flights when they go on holiday. We’re calling for more organisations to join the clean travel movement! You can find out more about the Climate Perks initiative here https://www.wearepossible.org/climate-perks