Overview
The UK Government’s Communities and Local Government (CLG) department sets policy on local government, housing, urban regeneration, planning and fire and rescue, and has responsibility for all race equality and community cohesion related issues in England, and for building regulations, fire safety and some housing issues in England and Wales. The rest of the CLG’s work applies only to England.
The policy objective of Communities and Local Government (CLG) is to create thriving, sustainable, vibrant communities that improve quality of life. The CLG seeks to achieve this by building more and better homes in order to reduce homelessness, improve local public services, regenerate areas to create more jobs, work to produce a sustainable environment, and tackle anti-social behaviour and extremism.
CLG's vision is to create economically strong cities and regions which enhance England's national prosperity and provide opportunities for everyone, wherever they happen to live. The aim is to narrow disparities in growth rates between different regions by boosting the economic performance of all regions and helping English cities to compete in the international market.
The CLG has, for the purposes of transport-related research, effectively replaced the former Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) (see separate ODPM programme profile for research prior to 2006).
The aim of the CLG’s research programmes is to collect evidence to improve understanding of the requirements of different social groups, and to support the development of policies and programmes that cater to their needs.
CLG has an extensive list of research programmes, but few programmes that are entirely concerned with transport-related issues. The exceptions are the Thames Gateway Research Programme and the New Horizons Research Programme. (The New Horizons Programme assists with horizon-scanning capabilities by seeking proposals from outside researchers to explore issues beyond the scope of the department’s main research programmes).
Other research programmes of CLG include the “Analytical Services Analytical Programme 2008-2009”, Building Regulations Research and Technical Support, FIRE (Arson and fire safety), the Fire Research Programme, the Local Government Research Programme, Neighbourhood Renewal, and the University of Durham Research Programme (which is now closed).