There is growing recognition that the political responses to the financial crisis of 2007-08 have generated or intensified forms of governance that are becoming embedded as the 'new normal' in an era of entrenched austerity. A combination of cuts in state funding, public sector retrenchment, new modes of service delivery, and reform of governance structures across spatial scales are reshaping the way that social and spatial inequalities are addressed. The hollowing out of local government has been accompanied by a turn to sub-regional forms of governance (LEPs and combined authorities); growing reliance on the private and third sector to deliver services; and increasing expectation that 'community' can fill the void left by state withdrawal. Increasingly fractured devolution settlements in England and across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also create conditions for policy divergence and increasing potential for differential outcomes. Taken together these changes have profound implications for the economic and social well-being of low income groups and areas.

This conference will explore these implications by interrogating key developments that include, but are not limited to: privatisation; contracting out of services; retrenchment or reconfiguration in the public sector; financialisation of public services; devolution and new forms of territorial governance; public service 'transformation'; and a turn to community to tackle social problems. These developments have been explored in the UK and overseas through concepts such as 'disaster capitalism' (Klein, 2008), 'austerity urbanism' (Peck, 2012) and 'risk-shifting' that emphasise that the fallout of the financial crisis has been 'downloaded' onto social and political actors at increasingly localised scales.