Andy Burnham as newly elected Makerfield MP and possibly Prime Minister has promised to apply 'the Makerfield Test' to future government policy.
Asking Ministers and senior civil servants 'so what will this mean for the people of Makerfield?' is a good place to start Andy's biggest challenge as a potential Prime Minister: The wholesale reform of public services.
This isn't just a north – south phenomena.
Communities in North Paddington, Westminster are as detached from policy making and as voiceless as people in Platt Bridge, Makerfield.
Public service policy is driven through increasingly fragmented Whitehall Departments (dominated by The Treasury) with an incoherent centre that doesn't consider the true impact of policies on communities and place.
Individual short-term pots of money and initiatives such as 'Pride in Place' and the reinvention of Total Place 2 will not bridge the growing divide between people and government. As Andy has said we all know politics is broken but deeper than that, the current model of public services is equally broken.
Increasingly decisions that affect people's lives seem to be made by nobody; there's no evidence of a human being either political or managerial being held to account, For example, huge warehouses springing up in residential areas which meet national planning rules but are horrific for the people who live beside them and they create perhaps 5 jobs. Could Andy make the state more human?
The issue of where real power lies, community voice and citizen control remain largely unaddressed in policy making and delivery both within central and local government.
In Wigan we created with partners and the community what has been described as a "nationally totemic approach to citizen power" in The Wigan Deal. It was a partnership with people not a paternalistic approach. It was about shifting power from state to citizen. Could this ever happen in Whitehall?
I worked closely with Andy as both the MP for Leigh and the Mayor of Greater Manchester as his lead for public service reform. He's both impressive and determined.
Andy was always a big fan of The Wigan Deal. He still talks about it as being a seminal shift from traditional public service delivery because it changes the balance of power between the public and the public servant to one of equal partnership with shared responsibility and accountability.
He has through his own experiences of being an MP a clear grasp of the brokenness of traditional silo services and a visceral commitment to reset the relationship between local places and the increasingly impersonal, detached state.
As Greater Manchester Mayor Andy has driven through massive changes across every area of policy, especially transport.
People around Andy want to work with him, do well for him, deliver for him because he always brings it back to the impact on people, communities and places. He would build a strong team in Westminster with a focus on names not numbers. Who are the people we're supporting? Where do they live? What are their hopes and dreams?
We set this out clearly in the Greater Manchester Model which has flourished into Live Well – a seamless support package to people across the NHS, DWP, Council, Housing, Police et al in a place.
If this radical model of integrated neighbourhood working with people at the centre of service design could be rolled out across Westminster silos – imagine the difference this would make!
A restructure of long-established Whitehall departments into teams around the problems of the UK as they are experienced by real communities would force a rethink of the heavily centralised, initiative focussed Whitehall machine.
As councils and NHS partners embrace a transfer of power and invest more in the third sector and prevention and step back to allow communities to thrive – so could central government step back and allow local government to deliver and thrive.
Other than North Korea we live in the most centralised state in the world. Let's use this opportunity of potential new government political leadership in local government to embrace a new social contract between citizen and state – a new Deal.
Professor Donna Hall, CBE (Former CEO Wigan Council, The Wigan Deal)
