Nearly one year into the Parliament, the outline of the Government's public service reform framework has been drawn. Huge structural reform through English devolution legislation will re-shape our governance landscape. Tight public finances inform an ‘efficiency first' approach to reducing spending. But glimmers of a deeper shift in how the future state might better organise for impact are in sight: through the Cabinet Office's Test, Learn and Grow programme and the NHS 10 Year Plan's vision for neighbourhood healthcare.

This broad sketch of public sector reform now needs some colour. As participants gather for our annual festival of community power, Stronger Things, the question of how we paint our collective future is our backdrop for the day. Three themes at the core of New Local's purpose will run throughout – those of power, prevention and place.

Questions relating to power run deep in our public life. Who holds power and why? How is it hoarded or shared? The consequences of those feeling powerless flare up from time to time – communities overlooked, angry or atomised. These shocks reverberate across the system, sparking initial response – for example levelling up policy followed the Brexit vote which revealed disillusion in ‘left behind areas'. But business as usual swiftly returns. The opportunity now, with a radical governance shift out of Westminster through imminent English Devolution legislation, is for a deeper and enduring power shift to take place.

There are lessons to be learnt from existing combined authorities developing priorities driven by locality needs rather than national delegation – such as Liverpool City Region's Office for Public Service Innovation and the North East Combined Authority's work to tackle child poverty

But this must be about more than institutional architecture. How can we ensure devolution isn't simply a technocratic endeavour and that the new strategic authorities are meaningful to people? There is a graveyard of institutions which failed this test – few mourn the loss of regional development agencies and local enterprise partnerships. The devolution agenda needs some heart as well as head. The creation of mayors is the big democratic innovation, but in an era of more polarised politics and the rise of populism, we also need to consider moving beyond ‘winner takes all' institutional capture. How might strategic authorities serve to bridge divides and build consensus, with collaboration hardwired into their ways of working, through constituent members and beyond to communities?

There are lessons to be learnt from existing combined authorities developing priorities driven by locality needs rather than national delegation – such as Liverpool City Region's Office for Public Service Innovation and the North East Combined Authority's work to tackle child poverty. As strategic institutions mature, their priorities should be informed by energy and initiative from the grassroots up, creating space for wider deliberation on strategic questions and people's active participation on issues that matter to them.

Power and prevention are intrinsically linked, although this isn't always recognised in policy terms. Prevention cannot be ‘done to' someone – it requires their active, ongoing participation. This means a service response that understands both its own limits and role to enable and work alongside people's capabilities and assets. So how do we hardwire prevention into our system of public service provision so heavily and expensively skewed towards crisis response?

Building on the outline that has already been drawn, a more purposeful shift towards place-based working is the real opportunity for public service reform. Poor outcomes are often geographically concentrated at a hyperlocal level, and too often priced into our traditional approach to public service provision, which seeks savings from scale and delivers services in silos. Both these routes are producing diminishing returns. The real promise of devolution is for a more geographically intelligent system to emerge which is capable of adaptation and responsiveness to the different circumstances of place.

This would combine the best of national entitlements, strategic population data insights, local priorities and hyperlocal community-led practice. Services should be organised around the neighbourhood as a meaningful unit where communities are people rather than statistics. The direction of travel is towards place across core areas of government policy, including the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Cabinet Office – the next step is to better align measures into a more coherent place-based public service reform agenda.

Looking back over previous eras of national policy, drawing inspiration from the neighbourhood renewal and Total Place approaches of the noughties, these routes to change have long been apparent. So beyond simply talking these new ways of working into being, we need more determination to put to rest what hasn't worked in the past. Echoing the theme of one workshop at Stronger Things, how can we gently hospice the old? Previous models, such as New Public Management, which are no longer fit for purpose in today's era now need a dignified passing, while we seed and nurture the new.

While the fragility of ‘business as usual' is taking its toll personally, professionally and societally, there remains cause for optimism.

At Stronger Things we create the space to imagine a hopeful vision of the future – giving it form and colour as the movement for community-led renewal and place based reform continues to grow.

Jess Studdert is chief executive at New Local