Total place was a remarkably ambitious intervention designed to be ‘a fundamentally different approach to public service reform, which puts local authorities and their partners at the forefront of a drive to look at all local public service spending: uncovering waste and duplication and freeing up resources to refocus on what people actually want and need’. (HM Treasury & DCLG, 2010).

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In practice it became a bold effort to pioneer open policy making through a process of supported co-creation. It established a local process of exploration of assets and opportunities in order to identify deeper dives into issue with sufficient local ownership and energy to mobilise the key local players. After exploration and deep dives the local programmes co-created policies and plans to tackle their issue.

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This was a long way from the default central government device of a transactional negotiation and trading of outputs for relatively small pots of peripheral money. Instead total place aspired to pool and ultimately devolve control of significant chunks of public spending. 

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The promised incentive for local public agencies was to be an increase in local freedoms to operate and a progressive removal of the ring fencing of central government resources. The programme was launched in the budget in 2009 as one key recommendation from HMT’s preceding Operational Efficiency Programme (OEP). 

The pilot areas, covering 63 local authorities, 34 Primary Care Trusts, 12 fire authorities and 13 police authorities. Together they spanned £82 billion of public spending – around 20% of the national total.

 

 

There were three core principles that guided the approach:

• Counting: the starting point of each pilot – reflecting the efficiency imperative – was to conduct a 'count' of public expenditure in their place, including a “deep dive” into specific policy fields. This mapped the complexity of public spending across local partners and aimed to encourage discussion locally and nationally about how to improve the benefit of the spend within an area and prioritise areas which could coalesce the interest of multiple agencies and departments. The design assumption was greater local impact would be come from pooling resources and cutting ineffective spending. This stage was a critical stage in the collaborative exploration of issues and interests and enabled the pilots to agree on the problems and service gaps which could most benefit from collaboration. 

• Culture: the process of the pilots was designed to start to overcome the reality that multiple national agencies and local agencies often targeted the same problem but resisting interagency and interdepartmental collaboration. 

• Citizen insight: the intention was to put citizens 'at the heart of service design' by pooling resources around locally identified priorities.

 

Driven by the imperative of efficiency the local process began by examining the totality of public spending in an area, looking to uncover waste and duplication and free up resources so that they can be applied more effectively. There was a particular focus on putting ‘the citizen at the heart of public service design’. The pilot partnerships identified local priorities within a national menu of 51 targets, and developed plans and actions that would meet ‘stretching’ targets. Areas chosen included: children’s services, drugs and alcohol misuse, housing, worklessness, asset management, services for older people and offender management (HM Treasury & DCLG, 2010)

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Total place was never going to be an approach that worked for all policy domains – but if offered a new approach of co-creation for local public services that moved on from the legacy of top down targets, inspection and intervention. It was partly process for strengthening local collaboration, capacity and establishing shared priories, and partly a catalyst for innovative new solutions to complex long term issues.

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The process was beginning to show a way for local and national policy makers and deliverers to take a strategic look at their assets and existing policies – and driven by the timescales of the programme, make choices about where there was sufficient imperative and common ground to act on specific clients and issues. 

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Judging by the blank looks when I mention Total Place to younger civil servants It is forgotten by many in Whitehall  - although not in the wider public service. It showed what is involved in meaningful devolution of decisions making, collaborative policy making, and how government can act as a connector, capability builder and investor. It was a practical model for many of the key roles of a government acting as a system steward. 

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A first version of case study on Total Place will be published here in February 2025. A second iteration will draw on primary research with players in the reform, due to be published later in 2025.

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