The organisations should be stewards of their regional system, writes Hamida Ali, head of practice and learning at the Future Governance Forum. And that number will grow further with the government’s intention to ‘fill out the map’ and roll out strategic authorities right across England. We learnt from existing leaders in regional government that setting and sustaining a culture of collaboration is fundamental to this stewardship role and we set out principles for this regional stewardship role. We are calling on arm’s length bodies like Homes England and government investment agencies to put more of their commercial and project capacity into partnerships with strategic authorities. Thirdly, with more and more strategic authorities to be established, we found that an established approach to improvement is a glaring gap in the sector, particularly with three out of 14 strategic authorities either currently or previously subject to a best value notice.