It's time to break the pattern of reliance on pilot schemes

The 26 November Budget highlighted a familiar pattern in national and local relations. With no coherent national vision for growth to anchor decisions, the system continues to fall back on pilots and isolated measures to signal intent. These can and do create real opportunities, but they leave local and regional leaders stitching together long-term purpose from short-term announcements. It is progress of a kind, but not yet the clarity places need to plan ahead.

Within this landscape, the proposed visitor levy is one of the more meaningful developments. For areas with strong visitor economies, it provides a practical way to raise locally controlled revenue and reinvest in the assets that sustain inclusive growth. It also opens up more honest conversations with businesses and communities about how tourism supports shared priorities. Modest though it is, the levy hints at a system slowly recognising the need for a broader set of locally usable tools.

The extension of 100 per cent business rates retention pilots points in the same direction. It gives participating areas greater stability and the ability to plan on a longer horizon. But because these arrangements remain outside the mainstream system, most councils are still operating within short funding cycles and competitive pots. Ambition is strong across the sector, yet the conditions for long-term progress remain uneven.

The renewed interest in Total Place style approaches adds another dimension. The original programme showed what is possible when partners map public spend across a place, understand demand through residents’ eyes and redesign systems rather than individual services. It demonstrated how duplication can be reduced, resources used more intelligently and outcomes improved when organisations share insight and have the discretion to act together. These relational and systemic strengths matter even more now, with public services under acute pressure. Yet the fact we are revisiting Total Place through pilots again shows how rarely its lessons have been embedded. We return to proven ideas because the system has not created the conditions for them to last.

Across the Growth and Reform Network, many areas are already modelling what a mature, place-based approach can look like. They are forming genuine partnerships with anchor institutions, involving communities early and focusing on outcomes that endure beyond individual programmes. This reflects long-term commitment and a clear sense of local purpose. What stands out is the gap between this progress and the wider system. Financial uncertainty, shifting initiatives and the absence of a settled national approach still shape behaviour more strongly than local ambition. The capability is there. The system response has not kept pace.

If the Budget offers anything beyond its individual measures, it is a clearer view of what now needs to shift. New powers and pilots can help, but only if they sit within a stable multi-year settlement and are guided by shared missions that give national, local and regional government a common direction. Relational, locally grounded practice belongs in the mainstream of the system, not at its margins. 

Local and regional leaders are already showing what this approach can deliver. They are building partnerships, insight and momentum while operating within system conditions that evolve only slowly. What they need now is a national framework that reduces uncertainty and reinforces the long-term work already underway. This Budget continues the pattern of relying on pilots to signal direction. The pressing task is to move beyond that cycle and build a more stable, mission-led approach that allows places to plan with confidence. Progress will be incremental, but a clearer, more consistent national framework would make that progress far more achievable.