Izzy Lepone
Izzy Lepone is assistant editor at LocalGov, covering how council decisions on finance, planning and services translate into concrete impacts on communities and the environment. Her reporting follows policy changes from central announcements through to implementation on the ground, with a consistent focus on what they mean for local authorities and residents. She writes both news-led pieces and explanatory features, including case-study-led articles on councils’ responses to new housing, planning and digital service agendas.
Council finance and tax decisions
She regularly covers how councils raise and lose revenue, with particular attention to second homes and tax policy. One article quantifies how authorities are forgoing over £50m in second homes income, setting out the scale of the shortfall for local budgets. Another examines how hundreds of millions of pounds could be lost as second-home owners move from council tax into business rates, highlighting a projected £383m tax loss and the structural risks this poses for council funding. These pieces combine headline figures with an explanation of the mechanisms behind the loss, showing an interest in the financial architecture of local government rather than single-case controversy.
Housing, planning and land use
Her housing and planning coverage focuses on how policy frameworks play out at council level, often through multi-case features.
In a feature on 10 ways councils are responding to new housing and planning policy, she gathers examples from different authorities to show how they interpret national guidance and adapt local strategies. She reports on targeted investment as well, such as Greater Manchester Combined Authority delivering over £1.6m to unlock new homes on brownfield land, tying financial commitments to land-use change and regeneration.
This strand of her work sits close to her environment beat, linking planning and land-use decisions with their implications for the built environment.
Governance, powers and political leadership
She follows governance issues from formal audits to the day-to-day exercise of council powers. Her reporting on councils gaining strengthened powers to block new betting and vape shops explains how new authority will be used to shape high streets and local public health.
An article on an audit warning of “critical governance failings” at Wrexham Council sets out the shortcomings identified and the consequences for oversight and accountability. She also covers political figures, including younger and emerging leaders such as the country’s youngest council leader and a teenage party leader arguing to be judged on his record.
Incidents that test standards and relationships with residents, like a vice chairman’s sexist remark and subsequent apology or a council’s appeal for help after a museum theft, are treated as part of a wider picture of how councils relate to their communities.
Digital services, infrastructure and climate commitments
Alongside policy and governance, she writes about how councils use technology and data to run services. A feature on digital services and AI collects 10 case studies of councils adopting AI-based tools to transform public services, reflecting a practical interest in implementation and workforce change. Her coverage of Cornwall’s refuse fleet leading in a mobile signal study ties network performance directly to waste operations, treating connectivity as a core piece of local service infrastructure.
In her environment beat she extends this approach to climate commitments, reporting on moves such as South Tyneside’s preparations to abandon a climate declaration and charting what such reversals mean for local service planning and environmental goals.
Format and reporting focus
Her work ranges from concise news pieces on single decisions to longer explanatory features built around lists and case studies. Across these formats she returns to themes of funding, statutory powers and service delivery, grounding wider debates in specific council examples and named interventions. The focus on councils’ responsibilities, options and constraints makes her coverage most relevant when a story intersects with local government policy, finances or the design of frontline services.
4 more environment journalists.
Abby Wallace
Abby Wallace covers where energy, climate and politics meet, with a focus on how net zero, power markets and extreme weather affect people and institutions. She is an energy and climate reporter at POLITICO, covering U.K. energy policy, climate targets and the transition from fossil fuels. Her subjects include government and opposition debates over net zero, decarbonization, support schemes, infrastructure, public spending and climate adaptation. She also reports on energy companies, household bills, labor standards, supply chains and corporate accountability. Her work connects technical policy choices to jobs, competitiveness, public services and voter sentiment. She uses polling, expert voices and political analysis to examine public attitudes and government response to extreme weather. Before POLITICO, she worked on the companies desk at the Financial Times and the business news desk at Insider. She has also freelanced on politics, business and climate.
Adam Fulton
Adam Fulton is a digital news producer focused on fast-moving global stories where environment, conflict and politics meet. He works on the Guardian’s Australian operation, using rolling live blogs to cover geopolitical crises, climate-linked disasters and wars with clear structure and context. His Middle East coverage, including the Gaza peace plan, tracks tension between political messaging and on-the-ground realities, tying leaders’ statements to military movements, diplomatic reactions and humanitarian reports. His disaster reporting, such as on Nepal–Tibet floods, links rising tolls and missing people to infrastructure damage, rescue strain and cascading environmental threats. His Ukraine war blogs treat resource scarcity, especially water and energy, as strategic factors and track how infrastructure damage shapes the conflict. A former entertainment and arts reporter and senior editor at major Australian newspapers, he applies careful pacing and narrative arcs to collaborative, time-stamped live coverage.
Alec Luhn
Alec Luhn is an environment reporter whose work follows climate change at its extremes, frontiers and human consequences, often reporting directly from places where warming, instability and displacement intersect. He covers climate, conflict and migration, showing how abstract climate trends turn into risks for communities, infrastructure, health and preparedness. He reports for New Scientist on climate breakdown, extreme events, El Niño, limits of models, melting glaciers, warming seas and adaptation to heat, mixing scientific explanation with lived experience. A defining strand of his work is reporting from remote icy and mountainous regions on Arctic sea ice loss, permafrost, polar bears, pollution and fragile ecosystems. He has a long record on conflict and security, including the Skripal poisoning case. His reporting appears in New Scientist and major international outlets, with work across print, digital, audio and television and recognition from climate and journalism awards.
Amy Lyall
Amy Lyall is a regular contributor to The Connexion, and her work stands out for turning French rules, services and the built environment into clear, usable advice for everyday readers. She covers housing, energy use, resident obligations and the practical steps behind things like getting air-conditioning approved for flats. Her beat also includes national and local schemes, insurance and legal conditions for lending a car, mobile network coverage, mosquito-borne diseases, water filters, fruit harvests and emergency drones with defibrillators. She writes news, practical guides and magazine-style features, using plain language to explain technical topics and official systems. She also writes explainers on French words and phrases and occasional culture pieces on unusual sites such as Maison Picassiette.