Guidance

Partnerships for People and Place: Guidance and advice for officials working on place-based policymaking

Published 10 April 2024

Applies to England

Executive summary

Partnerships for People and Place (PfPP) was a two-year programme of work funded by HM Treasury via the Shared Outcomes Fund. It ran from February 2021 to March 2023.

It aimed to test a new approach to how government departments undertake ‘place based’ policy design and delivery, by working in 13 places facing social policy challenges which they felt could be better tackled via closer working between central and local government.

For the purposes of this paper ‘place-based’ work means collaborative partnerships between central government, councils and other key partners to produce solutions to specific challenges or issues facing places and communities.

This paper outlines 5 common barriers which can prevent this way of working:

1. Structure. Departmental structures can be complex and difficult to navigate.
2. Priorities. National and local priorities are often misaligned.
3. Funding. Labour intensive, complex and competitive funding programmes.
4. Data-sharing. Real and perceived data sharing restrictions.
5. Culture. Open and collaborative place-based working is not the norm.

It then sets out some practical recommendations and learning from PfPP and other place-based initiatives, which may help civil servants and other colleagues to tackle the barriers which we have identified.  

The paper also includes brief case studies, to bring to life examples of place-based work delivered by central government and local partners - these are annexed in full at the end.  

Overall, the paper points to a growing evidence base to support place-based working as a tool to improve the lives of communities and the outcomes achieved in a place.

Foreword

Everyone wants to receive quality public services, enjoy good life chances for them and their families, and live in thriving communities where people get on well together.

Good joined-up, place-based working – between central government, local authorities and communities – is core to delivering these aims, which are at the heart of our Levelling Up mission to create opportunities for everyone across the UK.

Recent work provides some good examples of this type of work in action – the vaccine rollout during COVID-19, the preparation and delivery of the Coronation last year, and the country’s ongoing support for people arriving from Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

All developed and delivered by central and local teams, collaborating and working in partnership to deliver shared goals.

But, while there are many things to celebrate about such strong central-local partnership working, there is always room for improvement.

Many Civil Service departments’ programmes can overlap – in both their reach and outcomes. This can happen both during the development phase, when ideas are being worked up, and the delivery phase, when work is being rolled out on the ground.

This causes issues for local people and places. On occasions, central government might be working on different priorities, or different timelines to local government and communities.

Objectives might be repeated across multiple programmes in the same area. The complex web of centralised funding pots and programmes often doesn’t align with local needs or timescales. Institutions which mean to help can quickly become siloed. And, despite the best efforts of everyone involved, these siloes can reduce the quality of the support or investment people receive, which in turn can reduce the flexibility and dynamism of local partners.

It can also reduce opportunities to learn from each other and our experiences – including mistakes that we might be making, or other glitches in the system.

PfPP was created to tackle issues like this. To show the benefits on offer when we join up across central and local teams.

We wanted to unblock barriers to partnership working and bring place to the centre of our policy – aiming to deliver better outcomes for local people.

But how do we even begin to tackle such complex challenges?

Firstly, we should acknowledge that the answers to local challenges most likely do not sit in the head of a civil servant sitting in an office in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast.

Instead, we should look to our communities, who have shown time and again that they are experts in their place, able and willing to develop and deliver innovative locally led work to tackle the challenges they face.

There are so many incredible examples of local partnerships like this, across the country where local partners have shown that, even in times of real challenge, people can come together in new ways to improve lives.

From mobilising neighbourhood level groups to deliver food and medicines during the recent pandemic, to providing housing and support for those fleeing persecution or war in Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine, for example.

This was the central hypothesis of the Partnerships for People and Place (‘PfPP’) programme, whose final report and evaluation material is below.

Essentially, could cross-government working to address such challenges enable financial and time/resource savings for both central government and local places? And what would that look like in reality?

Funded through the HM Treasury’s Shared Outcomes Fund, PfPP sought to analyse the impact and effectiveness of government’s work to address specific local challenges – spanning mental health, energy efficiency, fuel poverty, youth unemployment and more – to identify new, more efficient ways to address the delivery barriers that a lack of central government join-up causes.

To do this, we brought together 11 different parts of central government, who were all working in the same places, delivering work to improve the lives of residents who live there.

While the work we were delivering was different, our overall departmental objectives were all closely aligned.

We then selected 13 of these ‘cross-over’ places and funded them to trial projects to tackle the hyper-local, thorny policy issues that they felt held their places back - issues that mattered most to local people.

• In Hastings, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero joined a local council pilot to tackle fuel poverty and poor energy efficiency in the private rental sector.
• In Luton, the Home Office and local partners combined to tackle anti-social behaviour in the town centre.
• In Bradford, we brought together Health Department colleagues with the local authority and NHS partners, to show how community hubs can support young people and families facing mental health challenges.

PfPP also aimed to build on previous place-based initiatives, such as Total Place, and work alongside current place-based initiatives like government’s work on Funding Simplification and Levelling Up Partnerships amongst other areas, to help address these challenges and improve the way central government works with local places.

Working together with local areas and across government, it tested innovative, collaborative approaches, flexing delivery plans as the landscapes required - and sought to explore how to drive long-term change across both central and local government.

A big part of the programme involved getting out and about, to see the issues on the ground.

Local meetings and site visits attended by both central departments and local officials have offered a chance to challenge misconceptions, grapple with local issues together and build a shared understanding of what effective delivery in person, in place looks like.

Many of our pilots have continued to deliver on their local challenges by seeking additional funding, changing working practices, influencing corporate strategies, continuing working and funding relationships for the benefit of their communities.

We hope that the learning we have captured below will help to shape future policy and inform better, more joined-up ways of working. Learnings from the programme are being fed into government wide programmes and strategies, including Levelling Up Partnerships, funding simplification work and into cross-government skills and capacity building programmes.

Most importantly, however, the programme continues to help improve outcomes for local communities and people, our proudest legacy.

Finally, we would like to express our thanks to colleagues and officials in the 13 PfPP pilot places (Birmingham, Bradford, Cornwall, Durham, East Sussex, Hackney, Liverpool, Luton, Newcastle, Northumberland, Southwark, Sunderland and Wakefield) for their insights into their local areas, their commitment to the programme and the many hours of hard work they put in to deliver this work.

We’d also like to thank our 11 government departments and arms-length bodies for their contributions to the programme which was often challenging due to this being a new way of working that required constant adaptation to the way we delivered depending on the needs of our places.

And we’d like to thank Ipsos UK and Grant Thornton who have led the evaluation process and report right from the start, and who also had to flex their approach as we learnt together on the way.

Without these many contributions, we would not have been able to deliver for the 13 communities who took part or build this set of recommendations. We now hope to share our learning far and wide, to improve place-based working and deliver better outcomes for communities across the country in the years to come.

Catherine Frances, Director General for Local Government, Resilience and Communities

Will Garton, Director General for Levelling Up

1. Background

The Partnerships for People and Place (PfPP) programme was born out of an understanding that government departments could and should do more to join up whilst working in a place.

PfPP aimed to build on previous and current place-based initiatives, to test whether closer working between central and local government partners can lead to measurable benefits for local communities and people.

Between February 2021 and March 2023 PfPP worked closely with 13 pilot partners (Birmingham, Bradford, Cornwall, Durham, East Sussex, Hackney, Liverpool, Luton, Newcastle, Northumberland, Southwark, Sunderland and Wakefield) in place and 11 government departments/arms’ length bodies on a variety of local challenges – spanning mental health, energy efficiency and fuel poverty and youth unemployment, identifying and evaluating new collaborative ways to address local delivery barriers.

Significantly, the local challenges were identified by the pilot places themselves, creating an additional sense of ownership and an increased commitment to the programme.

Ipsos UK carried out an independent evaluation, focused on building an understanding of the enablers and barriers to effective collaborative partnership working between central government and local partners.

The evaluation also explored wider factors which affect how effective place-based working is at both local and central levels.  

This included tracking and quantifying funding flows from central government into each of the 13 pilot locations. Grant Thornton delivered this mapping exercise and worked closely with project partners to map funding from central government to the pilot local authorities, and to the specific outcomes the pilot places were tackling.

The mapping exercise aimed to identify opportunities to improve efficiency and outcomes through more strategic joined-up funding. Read the full evaluation report.

Diagram 1. Partnerships for People and Place (PfPP) locations and pilot overviews

2. The 5 barriers to place-based working

Building on the work of several other place-based initiatives – including Total Place, Changing Futures, Levelling Up Partnerships and others – PfPP was set up to explore what the blockers or barriers were to place-based working, and to identify solutions to overcome them.

Our early work to develop the programme and agree partnerships with the 13 PfPP pilot areas identified that, in many cases, local and national systems are not designed or managed to support effective and consistent place-based approaches. This was at both the design stages, when a new policy was being worked up, and during its delivery phase, when it was being rolled out on the ground, in places and with communities.

To further test this theory, in its two years of operation, the PfPP project team connected with 114 government teams across 17 departments – all of whom had a role or responsibility in tackling the specific policy challenges identified by each of our 13 PfPP places.

This work has revealed the following barriers which are inhibiting effective place-based policy work between central government and local places:

Barrier 1 - Structures

• Organisational structures can be overly complex and vary across government departments. This hinders the ability to identify the relevant directorate, team or colleague to partner or ‘buddy up’ within a place.
• For example, to tackle fuel poverty in the private rented sector, the East Sussex PfPP team met with over 26 different individuals across ten teams in the Department for Energy, Security and Net (DESNZ) and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).

Barrier 2 - Priorities

• Central government departments often focus on national priorities and policies with limited flexibility for local adaptations.
• Within the PfPP programme this rigidity was attributed as a key reason for preventing pilots from changing or influencing policy, regulatory or funding barriers.
• For example, DLUHC’s Changing Futures programme found barriers to aligning priorities include working across geographical areas, such as two tier-counties comprising several districts.^{[footnote 1]}

Barrier 3 - Funding

• Funding to a place is regularly inflexible with rigorous criteria and reporting requirements that often do not relate adequately to place specific outcomes.
• For example, the PfPP fund mapping exercise when working with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) identified that some DHSC funding for diabetes and heart disease is ringfenced to enable DHSC (and to a lesser sense the National Health Service) to account for how this funding is spent against specific targets.
• Such requirements mean that local healthcare providers are often unable to use this funding flexibly to address specific needs – such as work relating to obesity.
• Spend and commissioning processes regularly result in duplicated funding flows from central government departments to multiple recipients to a place.
• For example, in Cornwall four grant programmes related to net zero went to ten different recipients across the public, private and education sectors.
• DLUHC’s Changing Futures programme also found that siloed and competitive commissioning in both local and national funding streams was a key barrier to effective joined-up service delivery.

Barrier 4 - Data-sharing

• There are genuine barriers to sharing data, however multiple place-based initiatives including PfPP have found teams can be unwilling to share data due to perceived legal barriers and restrictions. PfPP also found a lack of awareness of the available data sharing guidance and support.
• A lack of data sharing across agencies was identified as a key barrier to change in six out of 13 PfPP pilot places. Most of these places were focused on supporting people with multiple disadvantages or developing and tracking shared objectives across multiple stakeholders.
• For example, in Bradford, limited data sharing between the NHS, the local authority and voluntary and community services was highlighted as a key barrier to multi-agency working and supporting people with mental health issues. The PfPP programme enabled the PfPP pilot team in Bradford to meet with NHS Digital to learn about how to improve data sharing.

Barrier 5 - Culture

• A collaborative partnership working culture is not always present in teams and across many departments who are solely focussed on their own policy areas.
• Throughout the PfPP programme the project team found that place-based working was simply not the norm when approaching colleagues from other government departments to collaborate on specific pilots.
• For example, PfPP found that an individual’s commitment to place-based working influenced civil servants’ interest in the programme activities and their willingness to prioritise investing in local collaboration despite time and resource constraints.

3. What next: practical tips to improve place-based approaches

In this section we outline practical steps to improve place-based working that are categorised around the five barriers. We hope these recommendations will improve central government departments’ place-based policy design and delivery functions.

1. Structures:

a) Departmental place-based forums and or boards to meet regularly to share intelligence, contacts and best practice.

b) Departments could establish ‘place connector’ roles to develop and manage place directories and case studies which are used to inform strategy development.

c) Departmental Place or Region Champions - Senior leaders championing an issue or programme of work to push forward an agenda or influence other colleagues.

d) Improve or establish regional engagement mechanisms which enable departments to engage with local authorities and communities. Officials can draw on those mechanisms to test policy at an early stage of development to understand the realities of delivering it in place.

Central government and local authorities are made up of complex structures that are often difficult to navigate, particularly when regional teams who can more easily support place-based working do not exist. Departments may therefore wish to establish structures – such as place-based regional forums and or place boards – or consider how new ways of working (such as through ‘place connectors’) could help to identify opportunities for place representatives to support and work alongside government policy makers.

We have seen how effective senior champions have been in supporting wider corporate or policy aims. Teams may wish to use this model to push forward the place-based working agenda further than junior staff might feel able (or empowered) to do. Departments with regional and area teams are, in most cases, better-placed to build place-based working into policy development because of their knowledge of a place and their working relationships with local partners. Departments without regional/area teams may want to consider how best to build these knowledge and relationships.

2. Priorities:

a) Work towards understanding, recording and sharing regional and national priorities.

National and local priorities will not always align; however, we think an improved awareness of local and national policies will enable policy makers and delivery partners to design policy which can be flexible dependant on place priorities. We think that central government could use the above recommendations - departmental place-based forums and or boards, place champions and improved or established regional engagement mechanisms to better understand what regional priorities are.

In addition, departments may wish to produce easily accessible updates or reports on their work and priorities by region. This could help local authorities and communities understand what central government priorities are in their region and what work is being delivered in the region – in turn, helping central departments to work towards understanding, recording and sharing regional and national priorities.

3. Funding:

a) Awareness of the existence of current funding guidance and simplifying current funding guidance, most notably green book and magenta guidance.

b) Creating longer-term cross government funding pots which includes the flexibility to adapt spend based off specific place-based needs.

c) Establishing a team or teams which deliver cross government funding pots and are resourced to manage relationships with fund recipients to ensure funds meet local need.

Short-term funding agreements can get in the way of delivering better outcomes in a place. The real and perceived inflexibility of funding can get in the way of local authorities spending their funding to meet the needs of their communities.

There is a lot of work being delivered across government to tackle this, most notably the DLUHC Funding Simplification programme, which has already taken steps to streamline existing processes and simplify funds into larger pots that can be invested across local strategic priorities.^{[footnote 2]}

Whilst this work is ongoing, local places when receiving funding from central government can struggle to follow the advice included in the available guidance or simply don’t know where to find it. 

4. Data-sharing:

a) Collect information around the real and perceived barriers to sharing data to inform and improve guidance which could include best practice examples and departmental contact information.

b) Raise awareness of new and improved data sharing guidance.

There are genuine barriers to sharing data, however it can also be the case that data sharing barriers are sometimes perceived. This can be due to colleagues needing to share data that hasn’t previously been shared or because of a lack of knowledge of data sharing rules and regulations.  

Teams may therefore wish to use the above structural recommendations (departmental place-based forums and or boards, place champions and improved or established regional engagement mechanisms) as vehicles to tackle data sharing barriers.

5. Culture:

a) Working with cross-government training bodies and senior colleagues working in place-based roles, for example, the Policy Profession and Heads of Place to develop training and skills programmes that focus on upskilling government colleagues on place-based working.

b) Raising awareness and improving communications via a targeted communications campaign that highlights the benefits of place-based working and includes checklists to run meaningful visit to places, promotes secondments to local authorities and shares case studies of the best and worst of place-based working.

A collaborative partnership working culture can help to improve place-based working and deliver the best outcomes for communities. This will likely require a change in the way many of us work, with greater support focussed on skills and training programmes to build capability.

Improving skills and capabilities in this area, as well as rewarding the related positive outcomes could enable colleagues to have the legitimacy to do things differently. This could help colleagues to be equipped to role model new behaviours and change the culture around place-based working.

4. What we learnt about the enablers to place-based working

Whilst there are barriers to place-based working, there are also good examples of government departments and local partners working together successfully in places to deliver better outcomes.

We have outlined some examples below, linking each case study to one of the barriers we identified in Chapter 2, above. You can see these case studies in full at the annex below.

Structures:

The PfPP Good Help Hub pilot in Liverpool

• The project focused on Croxteth in Liverpool where there are high levels of inequality between neighbourhoods, and pupil attendance is below city and national averages.
• The project’s initial intention was to work with one hundred of the most complex individuals or families within Croxteth. However, it was apparent early in the pilot that there were many organisations working and often ‘competing’ to support people with multiple and complex needs. This included DfE’s Family Hub model which was being developed within Children’s Services at Liverpool City Council, and other partners including the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Department of Health, NHS England, Ministry of Justice, and Home Office.
• The pilot team iterated their approach to better fit into the existing landscape and provide a resource which would scaffold around existing services. The Good Help Hub targeted those individuals and families who were not known to services, whose needs were multiple and complex. Importantly, the Good Help Hub aimed to provide a resource for Universal Services to refer into and the more complex and severe cases to be stepped down into.
• Despite initial challenges engaging local public service teams and building relationships, the Good Help Hub became operational in January 2023. The team began implementation with a 12-week set-up period, where various local services joining the Hub came together for training and learning workshops. This included the local DWP, local schools and education services, Croxteth housing associations and Merseyside Police. Over the duration of the project more than 25 services from across Liverpool engaged with the Hub. Project leads emphasised the importance of this 12-week learning period to get to know each other and the local neighbourhood, seeing this as a pre-requisite to future similar initiatives.
• By the end of March 2023, over 550 individuals used the Good Help Hub to enquire about accessing public services, surpassing the original goal of 100 individuals. The team was active in community outreach to make residents aware of the Hub by going door-to-door, visiting community centres and organisations, and having public service centres tell their beneficiaries about the Hub.
• The various public services involved have all committed to basing their staff in the Hub for an additional three months after the original intended completion date, recognising the benefits of place-based working in Croxteth.

Priorities:

The PfPP pilot, tackling fuel poverty and energy inefficiency in East Sussex

• Hastings has the highest percentage of fuel poor households in the Southeast. Evidence shows that energy efficiency standards are low in the private rental sector. 29.6% of Hastings dwellings are privately rented compared to an average of 17.3% in England.

• While several initiatives have been or are already being delivered, key barriers remain. These include the cost of installing improvements and the need to support tenants and landlords to initiate improvement works. The levers to drive change are held at different levels of government (central and local).

• The East Sussex pilot aimed to develop a better understanding of these barriers to action and co-design ways of overcoming them with landlords, tenants, and central government partners. The pilot conducted local research and facilitated several co-design workshops with central government partners to discuss barriers to change, identify solutions, test, and evaluate them through PfPP.

• As a result of the East Sussex pilot team realising an opportunity to influence national policy, 316 households have been provided with information on the support available relating to fuel poverty and energy efficiency. 67 of the 150 properties where a home assessment was carried out have had small improvements made such as draught proofing and minor insulation. The pilot intended to implement improvements in 100-150 properties. Small improvements were installed at all properties where these were required, and consent was given by the resident.

• The research commissioned through the East Sussex pilot has helped formalise relevant anecdotal learning and knowledge East Sussex and local partners had from previous projects on the barriers to local resident and landlord action to improve energy efficiency. This has also provided a platform for sharing learning on these barriers and how they manifest locally with central government partners in DESNZ, DLUHC, and DHSC.

Funding:

The Whole-place Community Budget background

• The Whole-place Community Budget programme was created in 2011 by DLUHC (at that time known as the Department for Communities and Local Government) to test the concept of creating a single pot of funding for all local public expenditure in a place to support and improve collaborative partnership working.

• Four pilot places were selected to take part in the programme, Cheshire West and Chester; Essex; Greater Manchester and the West London tri-borough area (Hammersmith and Fulham; Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster).

• Local and central government co-design was an essential criterion and all pilots produced plans and business cases to outline how they would redesign services and what improved outcomes and value for money could be achieved. Central government ‘counterpart teams’ and secondees worked alongside the four pilot areas.

• As the pilot programmes progressed the pilots adapted their approach from a single pot of funding to a funding pot focussed on specific outcomes such as reducing reoffending, preventing avoidable hospital admissions and developing a more integrated approach to employment and growth. For example, Cheshire West and Cheshire developed six business cases expecting to deliver savings of £108 million over five years for an investment of £41 million. This included a new ‘assertive case management’ approach to 525 troubled families; a council/health joint commissioning approach to children and young people, focused on prevention and early intervention; and a proposal for co-location of national and local employment support work in specific neighbourhoods.^{[footnote 3]}

Data-sharing:

The PfPP pilot, student mentoring in Birmingham

• Birmingham City Council undertook research in 2021 which found that youth unemployment had increased significantly since before the pandemic, exposing pre-existing inequalities within the city.^{[footnote 4]} The research highlighted that some young people were struggling to find the right opportunities to build their CVs and demonstrate their value to employers. This identified a gap to improve communication and information channels between employers and young people.
• Birmingham City Council piloted a mentoring programme for a cohort of students at risk of facing unemployment. It intended to bring central government partners into the project primarily at the dissemination stage, seeking to share learnings and good practice and influence change. The programme team identified DWP and DfE as central government departments involved in supporting student transitions from education into employment.
• The Birmingham pilot seconded a member of the core pilot team for six months from the University of Birmingham to work in the City Council and explore opportunities around improving data sharing, working in the newly formed City Observatory. This has enabled the team to really work through their data sharing issues and work with the DfE Longitudinal Education Outcomes team to understand the barriers and identify the correct data they needed.
• The pilot team identified data held by DfE which could relate to this project, such as data around apprenticeships, further education and educational performance. Through engagement with DfE, the team established that Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) data would not be applicable to the local PfPP project. However, alternative requests related to data held by DfE are being developed by the team for use in future projects.
• The pilot was co-designed with local schools. This worked well to increase trust between the pilot team and schools, building ongoing relationships across those involved. It provided a service that increased collaboration and partnership working between local partners. The programme structure that lay behind PfPP enabled Birmingham City Council and its partners to work autonomously, focusing on their areas of expertise without the need for continuous monitoring. This built trust across the delivery team.

Culture:

The PfPP Bodmin pilot

• The Bodmin Pilot aimed to work in the most deprived areas of Bodmin to identify gaps in provision for skills development. The project targeted neighbourhoods within the lowest ranked 20% from the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019, with higher youth population than the rest of Cornwall, higher levels of no qualifications, lower life expectancy and social challenges.
• Part of the Bodmin Pilot project was to create a joined up and tailored pathway to employment. This included aiming to achieve 50 referrals into the People Hub Cornwall, which offers free advice and support for anyone in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly who is looking for help getting into employment, job training or fully funded qualifications. The project specifically aimed to identify and engage individuals that would not have accessed traditional skills and employment pathways. By engaging with the local community and sharing knowledge with central government, the project aimed to build greater resilience, a stronger community and create lasting person-level impacts.
• While the DWP Partnerships Team based locally were willing to engage in the pilot, there was limited feasibility of embedding them in the delivery of the Bodmin Pilot due to a perceived mistrust of DWP by community champions. However, the partnership working that has taken place as part of PfPP project have led to legacy work being designed and commissioned between Cornwall Council and the DWP Partnerships Team.
• Working at a hyper-local level allowed the project to work with stakeholders with in-depth knowledge of the local context. This included being able to identify beneficiaries to refer into the People Hub and allow the Council to establish relationships with community organisations that could lead to sustainable referrals, providing individuals with the support they need. Key individuals, such as the newly established role of the Cornwall People Hub Coordinator were important in building these relationships, particularly one representative from the People Hub. This individual connected with community champions and was seen as a trusted person which the Cornwall team felt was key to ensuring champions ultimately made referrals.
• The PfPP pilot also allowed the Council team to establish a new connection with the local Jobcentre Plus (JCP) and their employment advisor in Bodmin. As a result of the Bodmin pilot four new initiatives are being delivered by Cornwall Council in partnership with DWP and four delivery partners over the six months from March 2023 following the Bodmin Pilot.

5. Conclusions and next steps

As we outlined at the top of this paper, everyone wants to receive quality public services, enjoy good life chances for them and their families, and live in thriving communities where people get on well together.

The learning and recommendations presented here hopefully make clear that delivering these basic asks is not a job for one single team, government department, local authority, community group or organisation working on their own, in a closed silo.

And we have also shown how the systemic, interrelated nature of the issues and challenges in play creates barriers and obstacles – both during the policy development phase, when ideas are being worked up, and the delivery phase, when things are being rolled out on the ground.

To overcome them, local and central partners must work together, consistently and over the long term, in a joined-up, place-based way to deliver effective policymaking and policy delivery approaches.

The evidence and examples that we have outlined above demonstrate that, if these approaches are sensitive to the needs of local people and the local area itself, they will deliver better outcomes for everyone involved – from central departments and local government, right down to residents in a postcode or ward area.

We will work with colleagues across government, in local authorities and with other partners, to share the learning and experiences of place-based working outlined above, as we continue to build up evidence, understanding and momentum around the important concept of place-based policymaking to support communities and places everywhere.

Annex: Case studies of good place-based policymaking projects

Structures:

The PfPP Good Help Hub pilot in Liverpool

This project provides an example of multiple agencies and public services being restructured or organised to achieve successful outcomes in a place.

Pilot background

The project focused on Croxteth in Liverpool where there are high levels of inequality between neighbourhoods, and pupil attendance is below city and national averages.

The project’s initial intention was to work with one hundred of the most complex individuals or families within Croxteth. However, it was apparent early in the pilot that there were many organisations working and often ‘competing’ to support people with multiple and complex needs. This included DfE’s Family Hub model which was being developed within Children’s Services at Liverpool City Council. In response, the pilot team iterated their approach to better fit into the existing landscape and provide a resource which would scaffold around existing services. The Good Help Hub targeted those individuals and families who were not known to services, whose needs were multiple and complex. Importantly, the Good Help Hub aimed to provide a resource for Universal Services to refer into and the more complex and severe cases to be stepped down into.

The pilot team were keen to work with central government partners who they felt could remove fears (real or imagined) to taking take a more proactive approach to sharing data across the relevant statutory services. The Good Help Hub team set up exploratory conversations with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Department of Health, NHS England, Ministry of Justice, and Home Office.

The Hub was intended to provide a more localised centre for individuals who required help based on the “20-minute neighbourhood” concept where individuals do not need to travel far to receive assistance. Individuals could reach the Hub through a range of approaches including self-referrals, other agencies signposting people to the Hub, the multi-agency Good Help Team identifying people through their outreach and engagement work. These individuals were then directly targeted for inclusion in the project.

Pilot success

Despite initial challenges engaging local public service teams and building relationships, the Good Help Hub became operational in January 2023. The team began implementation with a 12-week set-up period, where various local services joining the Hub came together for training and learning workshops. This included the local DWP, local schools and education services, Croxteth housing associations and Merseyside Police. Over the duration of the project more than 25 services from across Liverpool engaged with the Hub. Project leads emphasised the importance of this 12-week learning period to get to know each other and the local neighbourhood, seeing this as a pre-requisite to future similar initiatives.

By the end of March 2023, over 550 individuals used the Good Help Hub to enquire about accessing public services, surpassing the original goal of 100 individuals. The team was active in community outreach to make residents aware of the Hub by going door-to-door, visiting community centres and organisations, and having public service centres tell their beneficiaries about the Hub.

Individuals gained improved access to public services by reducing barriers and centralising support in one place. The Good Help Hub provided a central place to access information that is less than a 20-minute journey for those within Croxteth. Those in the local community requiring access to multiple public services can now do so with greater ease under one roof.

As word spread within the community, the numbers of beneficiaries attending the Hub exceeded expectations. The range of public services involved have all committed to basing their staff in the Hub for an additional three months after the PfPP completion date in March 2023, recognising the perceived benefits of restructuring to improve place-based working in Croxteth.

Priorities:

The PfPP pilot, tackling fuel poverty and energy inefficiency in East Sussex

This pilot provides us with an example of how a multi-agency partnership improved outcomes in a place when priorities were realigned to meet a mutual benefit.

Pilot background

Hastings has the highest percentage of fuel poor households in the South East. Evidence shows that energy efficiency standards are low in the private rental sector. 29.6% of Hastings dwellings are privately rented compared to an average of 17.3% in England. While several initiatives have been or are already being delivered, key barriers remain. These include the cost of installing improvements and the need to support tenants and landlords to initiate improvement works. The levers to drive change are held at different levels of government (central and local).

The East Sussex pilot aimed to develop a better understanding of the barriers to action and co-design ways of overcoming them with landlords, tenants, and central government partners. The pilot conducted local research and facilitated several co-design workshops with central government partners to discuss barriers to change, identify solutions, test, and evaluate them through PfPP. However, it was determined that several solutions discussed in the workshops could not be tested through PfPP funding because they required changes to legislation or funding that could not be realised during the lifetime of the programme.

In consultation with PfPP central government partners, the East Sussex pilot changed its approach and priorities to building an evidence base about the needs of different types of residents and gaps in current central government funding streams to inform future policy and guidance which was of mutual benefit to this pilot and national policy.

Pilot success

As a result of the East Sussex pilot team realising an opportunity to influence national policy, realigning their policy focus to enable shared objectives, and collaboratively identifying these objectives with central government partners, they were able to achieve successful outcomes.

As a result of this realignment of priorities 316 households have been provided with information on the support available relating to fuel poverty and energy efficiency. 67 of the 150 properties where a home assessment was carried out have had small improvements made such as draught proofing and minor insulation. The pilot intended to implement improvements in 100-150 properties. Small improvements were installed at all properties where these were required, and consent was given by the resident.

The research commissioned through the East Sussex pilot has helped formalise relevant anecdotal learning and knowledge East Sussex and local partners had from previous projects on the barriers to local resident and landlord action to improve energy efficiency. This has also provided a platform for sharing learning on these barriers and how they manifest locally with central government partners in DESNZ, DLUHC, and DHSC.

Funding:

The PfPP programme shows what can be achieved when a places and communities are given the flexibility to allocate or direct funding in ways that better meet the needs of the local challenges they face.

Most of the PfPP pilot place leads referenced the freedom to allocate their funding in accordance with their specific challenge as a unique opportunity which differed from their usual funding relationships with central government.

Outside of PfPP, the Whole-place Community Budgets programme is a great example of improving outcomes for communities when a single funding pot is created in a place to help local agencies work together more closely.

The Whole-place Community Budget Background

The Whole-place Community Budget programme was created in 2011 by DLUHC (at that time known as the Department for Communities and Local Government) to test the concept of creating a single pot of funding for all local public expenditure in a place to support and improve collaborative partnership working.

Four pilot places were selected to take part in the programme, Cheshire West and Chester; Essex; Greater Manchester and the West London tri-borough area (Hammersmith and Fulham; Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster). Local and central government co-design was an essential criterion and all pilots produced plans and business cases to outline how they would redesign services and what improved outcomes and value for money could be achieved. Central government ‘counterpart teams’ and secondees worked alongside the four pilot areas.

Pilot success

As the pilot programmes progressed the pilots adapted their approach from a single pot of funding to a funding pot focussed on specific outcomes such as reducing reoffending, preventing avoidable hospital admissions and developing a more integrated approach to employment and growth. For example, Cheshire West and Cheshire developed six business cases expecting to deliver savings of £108 million over five years for an investment of £41 million. This included a new ‘assertive case management’ approach to 525 troubled families; a council/health joint commissioning approach to children and young people, focused on prevention and early intervention; and a proposal for co-location of national and local employment support work in specific neighbourhoods.^{[footnote 5]}

Although this programme was not upscaled and rolled out fully the many successful outcomes have resulted in new initiatives which have been put in place to sustain and expand momentum which include:

• Establishment of a Public Service Transformation Network, led from the Department for Communities and Local Government (now DLUHC), which worked with 33 upper tier local authorities. The transformation network remained in place until 2016.
• Publication of a joint guide to Community Budgets with the Local Government Association (LGA) – this showcased the work of the pilots and highlighted their successful ways of working and tools used.
• Launch of a Transformation Challenge Awards competition with a focus on efficiency including back-office transformation.

Data-sharing:

The PfPP pilot, student mentoring in Birmingham

The PfPP pilot in Birmingham is good example of how partners have worked together to explore, influence and overcome barriers related to data sharing and information governance to positively benefit local outcomes. Although it was not realised through the lifetime of the PfPP pilot programme the Birmingham pilot team have been able to tackle this issue by connecting with the Longitudinal Education Outcomes team from DfE and are now able to collect and track the required DfE data to understand the future pathways of their identified cohort.

Pilot background

Birmingham City Council undertook research in 2021 which found that youth unemployment had increased significantly since before the pandemic, exposing pre-existing inequalities within the city.^{[footnote 6]} The research highlighted that some young people were struggling to find the right opportunities to build their CVs and demonstrate their value to employers. This identified a gap to improve communication and information channels between employers and young people. 

Birmingham City Council piloted a mentoring programme for a cohort of students at risk of facing unemployment. The Student Mentoring Programme intended to bring central government partners into the project primarily at the dissemination stage, seeking to share learnings and good practice and influence change. The programme team identified DWP and DfE as central government departments involved in supporting student transitions from education into employment.

Pilot success

The Birmingham pilot seconded a member of the core pilot team for six months from the University of Birmingham to work in the city council and explore opportunities around improving data sharing, working in the newly formed City Observatory. This has enabled the team to really work through their data sharing issues and work with the DfE Longitudinal Education Outcomes team to understand the barriers and identify the correct data they needed.

The pilot team identified data held by DfE which could relate to this project, such as data around apprenticeships, further education and educational performance. Through engagement with DfE, the team established that Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) data would not be applicable to the local PfPP project. However, alternative requests related to data held by DfE are being developed by the team for use in future projects.

The pilot provided a service that increased collaboration and partnership working between local partners. The set up of PfPP enabled Birmingham City Council and its partners to work autonomously, focusing on their areas of expertise without the need for continuous monitoring. This built trust across the delivery team.

The pilot was co-designed with local schools. This worked well to increase trust between the pilot team and schools, building ongoing relationships across those involved.

Culture:

The PfPP Bodmin pilot

The Bodmin pilot is a great example of a change in behaviour and culture which was personified in the newly established role of the Cornwall People Hub Coordinator and an improved working relationship with the local Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Although this pilot did not deliver all of the expected outcomes within the lifetime of the PfPP programme, their PfPP pilot has led to legacy work which is improving outcomes for the Bodmin community.

Pilot background

The Bodmin Pilot aimed to work in the most deprived areas of Bodmin to identify gaps in provision for skills development. The project targeted neighbourhoods within the lowest ranked 20% from the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019, with higher youth population than the rest of Cornwall, higher levels of no qualifications, lower life expectancy and social challenges.

Part of the Bodmin Pilot project was to create a joined up and tailored pathway to employment. This included aiming to achieve 50 referrals into the People Hub Cornwall, which offers free advice and support for anyone in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly who is looking for help getting into employment, job training or fully funded qualifications. The project specifically aimed to identify and engage individuals that would not have accessed traditional skills and employment pathways. By engaging with the local community and sharing knowledge with central government, the project aimed to build greater resilience, a stronger community and create lasting person-level impacts.

While the DWP Partnerships Team based locally were willing to engage in the pilot, there was limited feasibility of embedding them in the delivery of the Bodmin Pilot due to a perceived mistrust of DWP by community champions. However, the partnership working that has taken place as part of PfPP project have led to legacy work being designed and commissioned between Cornwall Council and the DWP Partnerships Team.

Pilot success

PfPP provided the Bodmin pilot team an opportunity to work in a new way through the community champions framework, collaborating more closely with local third sector organisations and key individuals in the community to reach individuals that they had not been able to engage with historically.

Working at a hyper-local level allowed the project to work with stakeholders with in-depth knowledge of the local context. This included being able to identify beneficiaries to refer into the People Hub and allow the Council to establish relationships with community organisations that could lead to sustainable referrals, providing individuals with the support they need. Key individuals, such as the newly established role of the Cornwall People Hub Coordinator were important in building these relationships, particularly one representative from the People Hub. This individual connected with community champions and was seen as a trusted person which the Cornwall team felt was key to ensuring champions ultimately made referrals.

The PfPP pilot also allowed the Council team to establish a new connection with the local Jobcentre Plus (JCP) and their employment advisor in Bodmin.

The personality and traits of the People Hub Connector working with the community champions played a significant, if not the most important role, within the success of the project. His passion and relentlessly positive outlook, ability to problem solve and to see the best in people must be commended and is directly linked to the trust that was built between the people of Bodmin and the People Hub. (Pilot lead)

As a result of the Bodmin pilot four new initiatives are being delivered by Cornwall Council in partnership with DWP and four delivery partners over the six months from March 2023 following the Bodmin Pilot. The commissions focus on:

• Raising levels of aspiration within under 24s delivered via The Real Ideas Under 25 Explore Series
• Military veteran- led confidence, motivation and enabling courses for over 25s delivered by Active Plus
• An intervention targeted at improving Bodmin’s transport through the provision of e-bikes delivered by Wheels to Work
• A ‘dress to impress’ campaign which provides participants with practical help and assistance to improve their chances of gaining employment delivered by Konnect.

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1. DLUHC, Evaluation of Changing Futures Programme. Baseline report, April 2023. ↩

2. DLUHC, Simplifying the funding landscape for local authorities, 10 January 2024. ↩

3. LGA, Learning from 20 years of place pilots. Appendix 1: Summary findings from each programme in scope, Whole-place Community Budgets, 14 April 2023. ↩

4. Birmingham City Council, Breaking Down Barriers: Working Towards Birmingham’s Future. Supporting Younger People Into Employment, July 2021. ↩

5. LGA, Learning from 20 years of place pilots. Appendix 1: Summary findings from each programme in scope, Whole-place Community Budgets, 14 April 2023. ↩

6. Birmingham City Council, Breaking Down Barriers: Working Towards Birmingham’s Future. Supporting Younger People Into Employment, July 2021. ↩