Our Insight

Connect merges with Stratagem to build ‘unrivalled’ public affairs offer

17 June 2019

• Projecting £3m revenue, the company will be one of the UK’s leading independents focussed on public affairs
• Acquisition is first deal by fast-growing Connect since 2016 MBO
• Gráinne Walsh will lead Stratagem in Belfast and joins Connect’s top team

Connect, the Westminster-based public affairs and planning communications specialist, has today joined with Stratagem, Northern Ireland’s largest public affairs agency. While technically an acquisition, it is positioned as a merger, with Stratagem continuing to operate with its own highly successful brand.   

The initiative comes at a pivotal political moment, with Northern Ireland playing a key role in Westminster politics and Brexit negotiations.

The move grows the overall Connect group team to 35 consultants and its projected group fee income to £3m, making it one of the UK’s largest public affairs focussed agencies that is independently owned.  

Gráinne Walsh, Stratagem’s head of consultancy since 2013, will take over the role of director from Quintin Oliver. Gráinne will lead the Stratagem team in Belfast and become a member of the Connect leadership team. 

Andy Sawford, managing partner of Connect, said: “Having grown our income organically by 50 per cent since 2016’s management buyout, Connect has been looking for the right opportunity to catalyse the next phase of our growth. There is a huge opportunity for us and Stratagem to grow together. Connect and Stratagem are a great fit, with closely aligned values, complementary products and services, and a shared commitment to setting high standards. Joining up with Belfast’s biggest public affairs firm creates an unrivalled client offer at a time when Northern Ireland is playing a pivotal role in UK and European affairs.”

Gráinne Walsh, director of Stratagem, said: “Today’s news represents an exciting opportunity for Stratagem. We would like to thank and pay tribute to Quintin for his vision in founding Stratagem and leadership to make us Northern Ireland’s number one public affairs agency. Quintin’s dedication and passion for politics and our business has seen Stratagem thrive and deliver outstanding results. These are changing times in politics and public policy, and it is now the right time for Stratagem to become part of a UK wide team with Connect and broaden our client offer.” 

Quintin Oliver, founder of Stratagem, explained: “Stratagem has defined the public affairs market in Northern Ireland ever since the Good Friday Agreement two decades ago. Bringing Stratagem together with Connect makes huge sense at this stage, with talks underway, hopefully for the Assembly and Executive to return, and with the Brexit drama unfolding around us, across these islands.   

“The joint business will bring added scale, investment and strong relationships with key policy-makers, opinion-formers and political institutions. I am pleased that the team at Stratagem will continue, headed by Gráinne Walsh and I wish them well as I now take a step away to concentrate on other projects.”

An electoral pincer: the Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton by-elections and the peril the results could spell for the Government

22 June 2022

On Thursday, voters will go to the polls in the Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton constituencies in a pair of by-elections that could have seismic consequences for both of the UK’s main political parties.

It is often said that by-elections are an opportunity for voters to let off steam, and are often a more accurate reflection of the national political mood than local elections. In this case, it would appear there is a fair bit to be let out.

Wakefield, where the Conservatives triumphed with over a 3,000 vote majority in 2019, is now considered lost by all but the most optimistic Conservative sources, with a poll from the Sunday Times and JL Partners earlier this month showing Labour ahead by 20 points. This tallies with findings from YouGov, showing that the Red Wall – the swathes of former Labour seats across the North and Midlands that the Conservatives won in 2019 – is set to return almost entirely to Labour.

This creates a separate risk for Labour leader Keir Starmer, in that the situation is considered so bleak for the Conservatives that nothing less than an overwhelming victory will meet expectations – a narrow win only is likely to lead to questions from within the party over his ability to capitalise on the Conservatives’ political woes and severely dent his political authority.

If anything, the situation in Tiverton and Honiton is even more worrying for the Conservatives. Won in 2019 with a 24,000 vote majority, the seat is now under serious threat from the resurgent Liberal Democrats, who will be looking to build on strong local elections results with an upset victory. Such a victory would be the largest by-election swing since 1935, and with Liberal Democrat internal polling reportedly has showing two parties tied on 45% each, is much in reach.

That Tiverton and Honiton is even in play should worry the Conservatives. What will worry them more is the potential fate of the dozens of other seats in what were formerly considered Conservative heartlands in the Shires and South, most of which have far smaller majorities than Tiverton and Honiton.

The primary cause of this desperate situation for the Conservatives is none other than their own party leader. Since mid-January, when the Partygate scandal took flight with damaging revelations about the Prime Minister’s own personal conduct during the pandemic, voters in focus groups, polls and on doorsteps have consistently cited his behaviour as their main reason for not voting Conservative, with the current toxicity of his personal brand reflected by a recent JL Partners word cloud in which the word most commonly associated with him by voters was ‘liar’.

So while the Conservatives may be staring at an electoral pincer now, with Labour threatening from the North and Midlands and the Liberal Democrats resurgent in the South, they can still manufacture their own escape. What the polls and focus groups have also indicated is that the toxicity of the Prime Minister’s personal brand has not – yet – spread to that of the party as a whole, suggesting a change in leader could yet rescue the party’s political fortunes.

If the Prime Minister’s reputation as an election-winner has not already been destroyed by the events of 2022 thus far, loss of two totemic seats under his watch is likely to dispel any notion among wavering Conservative MPs who stood by him in the confidence vote earlier this month that this can be recovered. What happens next will be up to them.

Is the Economics of Music Streaming Inquiry’s report just another broken record?

2 August 2021

The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee recently published their long-awaited report into the Economics of Music Streaming. But will the Government hear the music?

The report received over 300 submissions of evidence and, in a climate when live music has been on hold, artists prevented from performing, and musicians on furlough, the industry has been awaiting the Committee’s response with bated breath.

Read more

The 2021 local elections – high stakes and unsure fates

5 May 2021

With their 2020 counterparts postponed a year due to the COVID crisis, the 2021 local elections have become an unexpected bumper edition of the UK’s usual annual democratic process. With many areas of the UK going to the polls, the elections are important in determining who is running Scotland, Wales, and many cities and council areas across England, and as a major snapshot of the mood of the country.

Read more

Will new approaches to planning decision making continue beyond COVID-19?

30 April 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed the way in which planning decisions are being made in a matter of weeks. Nominally the advent of virtual planning committees and increased use of delegated decision making by officers are short-term measures. But could we see changes becoming imbedded for the longer-term?

Read more

Taking consultations online – Make the most of the new opportunities

30 April 2020

As road transportation shifted from horses to the internal combustion engine even great minds of the time struggled to adapt. In 1899, inventor Uriah Smith came up with Horsey Horseless (pictured left). Smith thought the logical step was in seamlessly blending the benefits of a motorised vehicle with the traditional appearance of a horse. There was some fear at the time that the rise of the car would cause anxiety to beasts of burden using the same roads and this ingenious idea was designed to literally avoid ‘scaring the horses’.

Unsurprisingly it never took off, but it demonstrates what a hard-to-conceptualize thing a horseless carriage was.

Read more

Breaking news: Government publishes regulations on virtual meetings

3 April 2020

How is the planning process staying on track during COVID-19?

In these unprecedented times, the Government has set councils the challenge of keeping the planning system going, acknowledging the role the development industry will play in the economic recovery. Central to this is ensuring that pre-app meetings continue to go ahead and decisions continue to be made.

Read more

Jenrick savagely puts down Khan’s London Plan

13 March 2020

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick today issued a brutal rejection of London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s London Plan, the proposed framework for development in the capital.

Much like a teacher chastising an under-achieving student, Jenrick has declared that housing delivery under Khan’s mayoralty has been “deeply disappointing” and “falls far short of what the people of London expect, deserve and need.” He goes on to blame this failure of housing delivery for “worsening affordability for Londoners”.

Key points behind the Housing Secretary’s rejection of the Plan:

• It delivers only 52,000 homes a year against the identified need of 66,000 homes.
• It is too complex and will reduce appetite for development.
• It directly contradicts national planning policies.

The tone of the letter really is remarkable in the scorn Jenrick shows. The best example is perhaps his citing of a policy on bed linen to evidence the complexity of the Plan, which Jenrick says will “make development more difficult”. He also criticises the Mayor’s flagship estate regeneration reform- the requirement of a residents’ ballot to secure grant-funding- describing it as “onerous”.

The timing of Jenrick’s letter was no doubt very deliberate. With the Mayoral election just around the corner, the Housing Secretary is robustly challenging a key plank of Khan’s re-election campaign- that the election should be a referendum on rent controls and making housing costs more affordable for Londoners. Jenrick is effectively saying to Khan that he is responsible for the affordability crisis through his failure to deliver homes.

Ironically though, given the COVID-19 crisis and the potential for the elections to be postponed until later in the year the timing may have been scuppered.

Jenrick’s conclusion is that the London Plan is not fit to be published and his direction to the Mayor is to go back to the drawing board. The Government’s view is that the Mayor has failed on housing delivery and will continue to do so with this plan- and that message has been delivered with absolutely no subtlety at all…

Government reconfirms direction of travel for planning policy but offers few new details

12 March 2020

Since the Conservatives secured their majority in December 2019, the Government have consistently trailed that increasing the number of homes across the country and boosting housing supply is a key priority.

Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Robert Jenrick today set out plans to reform the planning system to speed up development, encourage homes to be built more quickly and to facilitate greater involvement of communities who are affected by planning decisions. This builds on some of the announcements by the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak in the Budget on 11 March, which included investment in affordable housing and development of brownfield sites.

How planning reform will likely happen will be set out in the Planning White Paper, which Jenrick says will come in ‘the Spring’. But the Government has revealed some of the measures to be included, indicating a clear priority is to make the planning system quicker and more efficient. It was announced that the White Paper will include reform of planning fees to increase the capacity and resources of local authorities to review and grant permissions to avoid delay – frequent point of frustration for developers.

Jenrick also announced measures to allow for automatic rebates of planning fees where applications are successful at appeal. This would place greater pressure on Planning Committees across the country to be far more considered about those schemes that they dislike or are unpopular but that are largely policy compliant.

The Government has also indicated that they want to see a step change in the production and adoption of Local Plans. They have set a deadline for all councils to have adopted their Local Plan by 2023, with Government intervention if they fail to do so – exactly how remains unsaid.

Other notable measures announced by the Secretary of State today include:

• Developers encouraged to build upwards and above stations.
• Proposals being considered to turn disused buildings into homes more quickly.
• Ensure that land for housing is actually delivered through greater transparency on land ownership.
• Expand the use of zoning tools to support local areas to simplify the process of granting planning permission for residential and commercial development.
• New map of brownfield sites to make the most of unused land.
• Improve the effectiveness and role of Compulsory Purchase Orders.

At no point did Jenrick mention of the Green Belt in his statement.

We will have to wait for the White Paper for further details and measures to be taken. The Government has been consistently keen to present their plans for reform of the planning system as radical, and certainly some of what has been trailed gives the sense that they are serious. The White Paper will confirm if the detail will live up to this.

Launch of the Women and Work APPG’s Annual Report on Inclusivity and Intersectionality

10 February 2020

As secretariat to the Women and Work All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), Connect is proud to launch the APPG’s Toolkit and Annual Report on Inclusivity and Intersectionality. Read more

What now?

13 December 2019

Ten points on what happens now:

1. Boris Johnson will start forming his new Government over the weekend. Most of the current Cabinet could be reappointed but briefs will be reshuffled. Michael Gove, who has had a good election, is tipped to become International Trade Secretary. Former Defence Secretary, Penny Mordaunt will hope for a return, while rising stars, such as Rishi Sunak, who represented the party in election tv debates, could be promoted.
2. Parliament meets next week. MPs start ‘swearing in’ on Tuesday and the Queens Speech takes place next Thursday 19^th December, setting out the Government’s priorities.
3. Boris Johnson’s ‘Brexit Deal’ with the EU will be put before Parliament on Friday 20^th December and will be approved with a big majority. The EU Parliament will approve the deal in early January and the UK will be out of the EU by 31^st January 2020, with a ‘transition period’ to the end of the year.
4. Brexit thoughts then turn to negotiating the future trade relationship between the UK and the EU. The timing is a challenge – trade deals usually take many years to negotiate. The draft ‘declaration’ by the UK and the EU, published in late October, envisages “an ambitious, wide-ranging and balanced economic partnership. This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a Free Trade Agreement, as well as wider sectoral co-operation… It should facilitate trade to the extent possible, while respecting the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union”. That roughly translates as “it’s complicated”!
5. Public spending is due to rise.  The Conservative manifesto commits to increase spending on the NHS, education and policing.  It pledges a rise in teachers pay, help for student nurses, and pensions to rise by at least 2.5% a year.
6. Social care reform must be a priority. The Conservative manifesto contains only the principle that no-one will have to sell their home to pay for care, but as a government with a majority and a clear five year term, there will be pressure for a long term solution to the social care crisis.
7. Climate change featured in all the manifestos, with the Conservative’s pledging to reach net zero by 2050. Linked to this is a pledge to spend £6.3bn on improving the energy efficiency of social housing.
8. Scottish Independence is on the agenda as far as the triumphant SNP are concerned. Nicola Sturgeon will press Boris Johnson for a timetable for a new referendum.  Johnson will resist.
9. Labour will spend some time in a blame game and gearing up for a leadership election. Jeremy Corbyn has said he will not lead Labour into the next election and John McDonnel has ruled himself out.  Angela Rayner, Emily Thornberry, Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long Bailey and Jess Philipps are all contenders. The Lib Dems also need a new leader after Jo Swinson lost her seat – Layla Moran is the favourite.
10. We have a stable government and a Parliament that will start to function again. The make up of Parliament has changed significantly and there are many new MPs to engage with, including some who weren’t expecting to be there. However you voted yesterday, we can all celebrate Parliament becoming more equal with the most women MPs ever elected. Assume it is a five year Parliament, develop your engagement plans and, of course, ask Connect to help!