A season for change? Part one: Devolution – a winding path toward relational reform

In brief

As political life resumes in earnest after the Summer break, Rich Bell explores – in a three-part series – the possibility and pitfalls of relational reform under the new Burnham government.

In this, part one, we explore the possibilities of devolution: a necessary but insufficient condition for relational reform.

Of the three policy areas we will explore in this short series, devolution is perhaps the most obvious place to start. Burnham’s commitment to shifting power out of Whitehall and towards the places and communities in which people live is central to his political project. It is also one of the most important routes through which his ambition to build a culture of encounter could be given practical expression.

There is an obvious – and positive – relationship between this agenda and relational government.

As a rule, it is easier to design genuinely whole-person services at the local level. This is, in part, because proximity makes it possible for different parts of the state to work together in ways that reflect the complex realities of people’s lives, rather than narrow institutional remits.

It also reflects the fact that, where decisions are made closer to communities, there is greater scope for public servants to build relationships with the people whose lives are affected by their work and to draw on the strengths and resources that are already present within communities.

Devolution, then, can certainly lay the ground for different, more community-centred and relational ways of working. This, in itself, is reason enough to welcome the government’s devolutionary drive.

Equally, while the transfer of power to more local state institutions is, often, a necessary condition for relational reform, it is rarely a sufficient one. This is for the simple reason that passing power from Whitehall to a combined authority or council does not, by itself, change the way that power is exercised.

There is a reason that the work of councils such as Wigan, Camden, and Ealing in developing more participatory and community-powered forms of local government is cited with such breathless regularity: they remain trailblazers. Their achievements in this respect are the result of deliberate, patient, often countercultural work on the part of local leaders who have consciously sought to share power with the communities they serve, co-producing solutions and building the capacity of communities to act for themselves.

This matters for the development of more relational public services because the way in which public institutions relate to people is shaped, in large part, by where power sits between them. When local people have a genuine say in defining problems, shaping solutions, and deciding how resources are used, they come to be seen not as passive recipients of public provision but as citizens with knowledge, capabilities, and agency. And when people are recognised for what they can contribute in this way, relationships with them become a resource rather than a nicety.

Yet, as things stand it’s not at all clear that the government’s devolution revolution will fundamentally change the way local government works with and for communities. On this basis, it would be difficult to argue that it is on course to fulfil the expansive vision of relationship-centred local state that Burnham himself espoused in his Theos lecture.

Advocates of a more relational state would be wrong to overlook or dismiss the scale of the ambition contained within the Rewiring the State document published by the cabinet in July. In particular, the commitment set out within it to utilise participatory policymaking techniques in place of traditional forms of consultation points towards a genuinely different way of doing government. All the same, this document has little to say about how ordinary people might directly exercise more power over the decisions that shape their lives at the local level, or what kind of state would be required to enable this to happen.

More generally, there is a risk that, because trusting communities appears to come instinctively to Burnham, his government may operate on the assumption that transferring power out of Whitehall will lead automatically to more relational approaches and service models taking hold. As we have set out, this ‘trickle-down’ theory of devolution may hold water up to a point – but only up to a point.

We are, however, still in the early days of this administration. Not only is it owed a bit of grace, but there remains ample scope for it to shape its devolution settlement to galvanise a shift towards relational ways of working across local government and begin to turn Burnham’s aspiration to build a culture of encounter into a reality.

In practice, this would require it to do several things.

Firstly, it would need to formally incorporate a focus on community and civic action into its devolution policy programme. How exactly responsibility for carrying out that programme will be divided up between the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and No 10 North does not yet appear to be fully settled, nor does the administration’s approach to civil society policy. This means that the new government could still design its guiding devolution frameworks and policies to ensure that its drive to empower places will not begin and end with state institutions, but will also endow local people with more control over what happens in their areas.

Secondly, and in order to give this commitment force, Ministers and officials would need to devote more focus, capacity, and money to practical initiatives aimed at enabling citizens to play an active part in local decision-making. Most obviously, this would mean building on the Starmer administration’s work to ensure the Pride and Place regeneration programme is both a cross-government priority and truly community-led. It would also mean bringing forward further investment to support groups seeking to take local buildings and spaces into community ownership; and shaping the neighbourhood governance arrangements that are due to be rolled out across England following the passage of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill to empower local people. Taken together, these measures would amount to a significant investment in the infrastructure of community power.

Thirdly, the government should design its policy programme to recognise the insight at the centre of Burnham’s call to create a culture of encounter: that the degree to which a community experiences a sense of collective agency and the degree to which it is tied together socially are deeply intertwined.

This would require it both to prioritise strengthening the relationships and connections that underpin community life and to bring together these efforts together with its work to empower communities within a single, integrated communities strategy – imbuing its work to renew the fabric of local places with greater focus, force, and ambition. Social cohesion was a notable focus of the policy work undertaken by the Burnham camp during their preparations for power in the early summer – suggesting that this is an area in which the new government may already be primed to act.

Finally, properly pursuing this deeper form of devolution would require the government to configure its own machinery so as to support rather than frustrate this ambition. Downing Street could send a powerful signal to the rest of the system regarding the importance it attaches to the revitalisation of communities by ensuring that this work is at least partially brought within the scope of No 10 North. No less importantly, Ministers must actively challenge MHCLG’s tendency to conceive of communities policy as the least consequential strand of its portfolio – worthy of warm words, but not sustained political attention.

The news that Burnham’s de-facto deputy, Louise Haigh, will lead cross-government taskforces focused on three central priorities, including community regeneration, is an encouraging sign that this government may be willing to invest serious political capital into a policy area that has historically attracted little.

The prize of doing so would be considerable: a devolution agenda that changes not just where power sits, but the relationship between the local state and the communities it serves, and leaves people feeling they have a real stake in what happens around them.

Devolving power to combined and local authorities creates the potential for relational ways of working to gain traction; devolving it directly to communities all but ensures that they will. There is, though, another, complementary way in which the new government might work to unlock community capacity and catalyse relational approaches – through bringing forward a national strategy for public service reform with these aims at its heart. That will be the focus of the next blog in this series.

Go back to the series overview page