A new era of possibility: in response to Rewiring the State 

The Government’s recent cabinet statement lays out a bold and comprehensive set of plans for devolution and public service reform that will fundamentally change where power lies in our country.  

We believe Rewiring the State represents the most significant opportunity for local government in all its forms – councils and MSAs – we have seen in decades, and certainly since the dawn of austerity. We particularly welcome:

• The fundamental recognition of the relationship between good growth and public service reform – a focus which has been missing from the national growth agenda. 

• The adoption of an operating principle of devolution by default. 

• Clear recognition of the role and value of local and regional government, accompanied by an intention to devolve both power and resources, and acknowledgement of the need to ease the huge financial pressures local government has faced in recent years. 

• Its emphasis on the value of place-based collaboration, the role of public services beyond local government such as health, education and policing, as well as the essential role of the voluntary and community sector, and the enabling potential of co-terminous public sector boundaries.  

• Its clarity about the need to change how central government operates to facilitate genuine devolution and the establishment of No10 North as both a symbolic and real relocation of power outside Whitehall and a new engine for change.  

These plans reflect a fundamental rebalancing of power and shift in public service delivery that New Local and its partners – alongside many others – has long advocated for. We particularly welcome the scale and ambition of these plans compared to the piecemeal and incremental steps along the devolution path of the past twelve years or so.

We also believe Rewiring the State signals a decisive shift from the usual top-down policymaking. We see reflected in the statement a Prime Minister and team who understand the potential of devolution from the perspective of a place. This policy direction is informed by lived experience and the hard yards of place-based working. It builds on the long-term pioneering work in Greater Manchester, and also the best reforms which have been developed by local government in response to the challenges posed by austerity, the pandemic and cost of living pressures. It recognises the spirit, creativity and relentless focus on what’s right for people and communities shown by local government.

In short, there is a huge amount to be positive about, and the conversations we’ve had with leaders from across New Local’s network in recent weeks reflect this too. Of course, a great deal remains unknown and there is no doubt that delivering on a vision of this scale and ambition, at pace, will be challenging. We know strains will be felt – alongside the pressures of LGR and other public sector reorganisation, the financial operating context for many across local government and other parts of the public sector, and real issues about capacity, capability and readiness. But forward-thinking leaders know this is what local government, our places and regions have been waiting for.

With this in mind and at this early stage, we want to set out some thoughts and questions which we think will be important to consider as policy develops at pace over the coming months. These reflections draw from conversations with our network of leading councils and our new network of Mayoral Strategic Authorities in recent weeks.

Devolution with direction and reform of the state as well as rewiring 

Bringing decision making closer to people and places brings huge benefits, but this alone is not sufficient. It’s critical that we are clear what devolution is for, and the changes we want to see as a result – we could think about this as devolution with direction.

The emphasis in Rewiring the State is somewhat structural, primarily about what power and resources will sit where. However, as work in Greater Manchester and many other places has shown, we also need the state and public services to work differently – ‘how’ as well as ‘what’. Devolution must help us move away from a state focused only on transactional service delivery as a route to fixing people’s problems to an enabling state that works alongside communities and others to co-create solutions.

An accompanying public service reform strategy, or at least a clear set of design principles or values – co-produced with local government to reflect the progressive work already underway – would help support this, sending signals to the wider system about what’s important and clarifying the type of state and public services we are seeking to grow right across the public sector as devolution brings the NHS, policing and education closer to local and regional government influence.

Community power, not just institutional 

The devolution of powers and resources to local and regional government is essential and welcome. But to create an enabling state this shift in power needs to be accompanied by a commitment to invest in communities, social infrastructure and civic participation, not only public services. Reflected in New Local’s membership there is growing consensus across local government that in order to solve many of our biggest policy challenges – including good growth everywhere and access to training and employment – we need to grow power in local communities and neighbourhoods, enable people to influence local decisions and services, invest in social infrastructure and support people to participate fully in civic life. Across the UK and as documented by New Local, communities are already showing what is possible when they are supported to lead change, but this approach is still not part of the mainstream. As we are currently exploring in partnership with Test Valley, devolution must be about bringing power into communities and neighbourhoods too.

Human and relational services 

This ambitious devolution agenda also provides a significant opportunity to deepen and grow relational practice across public services and ensure a qualitative shift in how people and communities experience these services. Drawing on great work already underway across local government, we need to ensure that rewiring public services also help us build more human and relational public services that bring about a qualitative shift in people’s experience of being supported by the state.

For us this is about how the principle of community power is expressed in the context of public services through relational practice: is it an empowering or disempowering experience? Do people feel heard, are their strengths recognised? Are people’s whole story and experience of interconnected issues the starting place for a conversation? Do people feel they have agency in this dialogue? Do staff connect with people they are working with on a human level, building a relationship and doing the right thing to support them? Are people connected back into their community? Can they get support early, before problems escalate?

New Local is setting up a relational working community of practice with pioneering councils to help shift these approaches into the mainstream, but devolution can help liberate public services and staff from the shackles of New Public Management and the market paradigm that constrain human, person-centred ways of working – transaction, narrow metrics and performance reporting, the mindset of targets, delivery and measurement.

New values, culture and behaviours alongside new powers 

To grow community power and enable human, relational and preventative public services requires the building of a different culture across the public sector as well as an enabling environment and clear direction. There is lots of evidence and learning about how to do this well from places across the country, such as Wigan, Camden, Luton, Coventry, Leeds, Doncaster and many, many more (just take a look at New Local’s network!)

Many of these places are articulating this through values, behaviours and ways of working for staff and supporting the adoption of these in their organisations and across whole local systems.

But this remains work in progress constrained by the challenges of a paradigm that keeps organisations locked in a silos and services mindset, as well as the pressures of austerity. These cultural changes are therefore unevenly distributed across geographies, the public sector and different services, relying on the heroic efforts of local leaders willing to work against the grain and do what’s right for their people and place. Devolution needs to help places move this work forward, removing barriers where possible and providing investment and support for the culture change needed.

New capabilities and approach to learning  

This agenda presents both a challenge and opportunity to grow the right capabilities across all tiers of government to solve complex economic, social and environmental challenges. In addition to the community-powered and relational ways of working outlined above, modern government needs to mainstream a whole suite of additional new capabilities including test and learn, coproduction and codesign, participatory and deliberative methods, service design, digital and data expertise, use of AI technologies, collaboration and system thinking.

These capabilities have all grown in recent years, but remain peripheral skill sets not well reflected in staff training, job descriptions, recruitment and leadership development offers.

It is essential we explore where these capabilities and ways of working should sit across tiers of government, how to grow them, and how to continue to build the learning infrastructure, networks and movements needed to support this. MSAs will have an increasingly important role in capability building across local systems – which in itself requires a distinct set of skills. We need a serious investment in capability building for modern government at all levels.

Empowering local authorities, not just recreating the central state at regional level 

There is a risk that devolution focuses on MSAs and SAs without enough attention given to the role of local authorities. Local authorities are essential partners in tangibly bringing power closer to people and communities and in delivering on a public service reform agenda which brings a qualitative shift in how people experience both life in their communities and engaging with services. Much of the innovation in relational public service reform and understanding the importance of community power has been driven by forward-thinking local authorities.

Rewiring the State was careful to articulate the role and value of local authorities, but notably less careful to set out how it would engage local government in the discussions that would follow. We need to be clear that successful, effective devolution and impactful public service reform relies on local government and its closeness to communities and individual places and neighbourhoods, stewardship of places that people identify with and responsibility for many services that touch people’s daily lives.

As we have heard repeatedly in conversations with New Local’s new network for MSA members, MSAs are only as strong as their constituent parts and rely on shared direction and strong and trusting relationships. Our focus must be on building genuinely collaborative local and regional systems (many of which are already maturing), more than the sum of their parts, built on healthy appreciation of the strengths different partners bring and enhanced by the leadership and accountability of regional mayors. We must not fall into the trap of recreating the central state at regional level. (And we note that London’s governance arrangements are built on very different principles and will need attention to facilitate good collaboration and system working).

Decisive shift towards place-based leadership and collaboration  

Achieving the vision set out in Rewiring the State will require mature place-based leadership and collaboration across local areas and regions.

There is good practice to learn from here, for example Sheffield’s excellent development of a collaborative cross-sector City Leadership Group, driven by the co-produced City Goals and now enabled further by a cross-sector leadership development programme.

But in our experience, this kind of work is unusual in its scope and ambition and unevenly distributed. Places and regions will need to build the relational and practical infrastructure for collaboration and support organisational leaders to become system leaders across all sectors, and they will need help to do this.

National government has an important role to play here in signalling the importance of place-based working and collaboration and helping to create an enabling environment to support this. In particular, government needs to look at where strong upward accountability in public services like the NHS has for too long hindered deeper place-based collaboration. The culture and orientation shift needed to realise the value of greater local influence or control over wider public services is huge, and will need robust support, direction and discipline from national government.

Culture change in national government 

The culture change needed across national government will be equally significant. Not surprisingly, we’ve heard examples from local leaders of behaviours and assumptions from departments and civil servants over recent weeks that highlight where national government culture is now relative to the direction of travel set out, and the scale of the culture change needed in the centre to enable devolution. There is also the challenge that many civil servants simply do not understand local and regional government – its responsibilities, structures, democratic accountabilities. Secondments and transfers of people are part of the answer, but not sufficient. This is also going to require humility, care, an openness to learning and ideas from places and a respect for local democracy and strong, resolute civil service leadership.

New Local’s role 

We will do all we can to help birth this new era of possibility, working hand in hand with our council and MSA members as they navigate this new landscape and try to ensure the opportunity of a lifetime is realised.

We will keep building on the thoughts set out here by actively exploring these core questions both internally and with our members and partners through the coming months:

• How do we ensure devolution tangibly brings power and decision-making closer to communities and rebuilds trust in all tiers of government?  

• How do we ensure the ambitious structural change and shift of power and resources set out in ‘Rewiring the State’ also changes how the state works – developing more relational public services, growing community power and integrating economic growth and public service reform?  

• How do we best support public service leaders across all tiers of government and in other public services to meaningfully participate in the rewiring agenda, build collaborative local systems and support colleagues across their organisations to engage with this opportunity? 

• What capacity, capabilities and ways of working do we need to grow locally, regionally and nationally to deliver on the rewiring agenda and how can we do this?  

We will create spaces for sensemaking, reflection and learning as devolution policy develops further, and support leaders in our network who now have this huge opportunity added to already full plates. We will continue to connect pioneering places to share great ideas and practice on how to deepen and grow relational public services and community power as core currents and aims of devolution. We will work hand in hand with places who want our support to do this. And we will share insights with local, regional and national partners to influence the direction of policy and practice and facilitate conversations across different parts of government to build relationships, trust and collaboration.

There is so much to do, so much to work out – and so much to play for. For those of us who have spent their entire careers in this space, this is the work, and we welcome the opportunity to do it alongside our partners in local, regional and national government. If you would like to be part of it, get in touch!

Photo by Katerina on Unsplash.

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