Why public servants and policy wonks need to disrupt to deliver on the promise of total place

Right now is a really exciting time for devolution and locally led regeneration and reform. Or at least, it should be. The government has recognised that policy innovation is happening in places and is moving to support it. Though ‘lies’ and leaks made the headlines, the November Budget also announced new powers for mayors to introduce a visitor levy and a trial of place-based budgets in five Strategic Authorities to help unlock funding for prevention. These stack on top of Pride in Place funding announcements in September, allocating £5 billion of community led investment to support 250 neighbourhoods over the next decade. And at the Britain Renewed 2025 conference on 2nd December, Cabinet Office Minister Josh Simons talked about the vital importance of tackling of insecurity through reviving total place principles and designing public services around relationships. 

These announcements should be celebrated. Many of these policies are ones that we at the Growth and Reform Network (GRN) have been calling through for years – through our predecessor the Centre for Progressive Policy and our partners Metro Dynamics and the Future Governance Forum. They reflect our calls to government ahead of the 2024 election and build on the intellectual weight of the 2020 Public Services Commission, which originally ran from 2008-2010 and which we revisited in 2020.

And yet… I find myself feeling sceptical. Or at least, worried that the funding landscape is so complex and fragmented that none of these initiatives will be afforded the money or time for them to really be a success. Our work for the Health Foundation on the impact of socio-economic policies on health, finds that unless interventions reach a certain threshold of investment and duration, then they do not tend to achieve wider benefits such as health improvements. These place-based policies are attempting to tackle the discontent being fuelled by economic insecurity and promote a more inclusive form of economic growth that can be seen and felt in local infrastructure and services. It is a tall order. Yet the overall investment in projects like Pride in Place is small - less than 1% of the enterprise and economic development investment budget  - and the government is constrained by the timing of the electoral cycle. The urgency and funding constraints are particularly concerning in the context of hollowed out local government and community capacity, and the time it takes to develop a pipeline of new community leaders. There is also a chance that the successes and lessons from community initiatives are missed, because the government’s attention is elsewhere - focussed on cost savings and headline data points that can’t reliably measure the impact of local programmes.

There are many brilliant organisations working on the evaluation of and learning from locally led projects – from Local Trust’s Big Local archive to Greater Manchester’s Prevention Demonstrator - which is attempting to illustrate the links between prevention initiatives and public cost savings. And at the GRN, disseminating this learning and building the actionable evidence base for inclusive growth and public service reform is at the core of our mission. But as contributors to the Britain Renewed conference discussed, a culture of risk-aversion risks missing the window of opportunity. Public servants and the wider progressive policy community need to be active disruptors to ensure our collective attention is focussed on supporting places to deliver.