New Local statement on Deputy Prime Minister’s speech at Local Government Conference 2025

Responding to Government announcements today, Place-Based Public Service Budgets report co-authors, New Local Chief Executive Jessica Studdert and Professorial Research Fellow at Southampton University John Denham, said:

“We are pleased to see Total Place principles at the heart of two major public service reform announcements today: the NHS 10 Year Plan and the Local Government Outcomes Framework. 

“We called for a Total Place style approach in our report Place-Based Public Service Budgets, which would see currently separate siloed service spending identified across a place and then pooled or aligned so that more holistic support can be designed around people’s needs and complex lives. By overcoming fragmentation and duplication, we set out how this would generate more value for the public purse and better outcomes for communities. 

“As the Government’s public service reform agenda takes shape and picks up pace, it is brilliant to see these Total Place principles at heart. The NHS 10 Year Plan sets out a more devolved operating model, with a commitment that local government and the NHS will be able to trial new innovative approaches to prevention, supported by mayoral Total Place powers. Meanwhile, in a speech to the LGA Conference, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Angela Rayner committed to new pilots which would enable councils and mayors to pool budgets and do joined-up services, learning the lessons of Total Place.

“These significant moves towards real place-based public service reform are really encouraging. They mark a clear shift away from a siloed approach driven by separate Whitehall departments, in favour of giving local areas cross-cutting powers to allocate scarce resource in ways that best meet the needs of people and communities, which vary from place to place. 

“This direction of travel now needs to go further, faster.

The Local Government Outcomes Framework should morph quickly into a ‘place’ outcomes framework which would recognise the interconnectedness of local systems, reinforce local democratic oversight and develop collective accountability for progress.

“The signs are positive – with a series of new Total Place style pilots, joint working across health and local government on neighbourhood health plans and new prevention demonstrators at strategic authority level, the groundwork is in place to put these principles into practice, learn from the emerging impact and then spread place-based public service reform more broadly.”

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