One-way only won't work

The Government's plan to send civil servants into mayoral authorities bothers me. It wraps a good idea in one of Whitehall's oldest assumptions: expertise starts at the centre and only travels outwards. Instead, this should become a reciprocal public service talent exchange.From this autumn, each mayoral authority is due to receive five to 10 civil servants. Mayors can request the skills they need. They apparently asked for support; strategic authorities need capacity and may provide a missing middle between councils and Whitehall. Civil servants who work closer to delivery may return to the centre with a better grasp of how policy meets place.The one-way model and the signal it sends is the problem, not the movement of people.The announcement describes ‘high-performing' officials being ‘posted' to provide the ‘skills and expertise' needed to build local capability. An able centre helps a deficient locality. The language exposes an old hierarchy which could easily become the design.It's unfair to civil servants too. I have seldom met one who wasn't bright, capable and ready to learn. Casting them as emissaries of superior Whitehall competence does them no favours. They appear to have little agency beyond being posted; local government appears mainly as the grateful recipient.Meanwhile, local government reorganisation will replace 134 councils with 38 unitaries. Chief executives and senior officers are being asked to lead the abolition of their own organisations, keep services stable through the disruption and then compete for fewer jobs. Appointments must be open and rigorous; this isn't special pleading for incumbents. But changing the organisation chart doesn't reorganise the knowledge people carry.Rob Huntington, chief executive of Rossendale BC, has made the contradiction clear: we're treating Whitehall, councils, and strategic authorities as separate labour markets, although they serve the same places and are all part of the public service. We risk making experienced people redundant through administrative accident while importing ‘capacity' from somewhere else.Why move people from districts and counties if those councils are disappearing? Precisely because they are disappearing. Districts hold deep knowledge of housing, planning, local economies, and community networks. Counties hold social care, children's services, highways, and public health. The institution may disappear, the knowledge doesn't have to.Send civil servants to muck in with districts, counties, and unitaries through reorganisation. Send council officers into Whitehall and mayoral authorities. Let each learn what the other is focused on, and contribute their perspective. Build ways for learning to change the institutions that sent them rather than adding to an individual's CV.This also matters constitutionally. England is rebuilding a second tier of local government, much of it around directly elected mayors. These bodies could become genuinely local institutions, rooted in place and drawing on council knowledge.Or they could become regional outposts designed chiefly to be legible to Whitehall. Strategic authorities may draw money, functions, attention and career prestige upwards, while constituent councils remain closest to residents but further from power. We could rebuild a tier which looks towards Whitehall for authority and downwards to councils for delivery (and if we do, they'll seem a natural place to locate services over time).Equality of esteem doesn't mean pretending everyone has the same skills. Whitehall has national policy, fiscal, and convening expertise that local government needs. Councils have operational, democratic, and place knowledge that Whitehall often lacks. Neither should arrive as the natural teacher. Mutual learning only counts if it changes both institutions.There's a sharp irony in using mayors, intended to embody local political authority, to reproduce central government's operating system. This can look like administrative colonialism: the centre supplies the people, categories and methods, then calls the result devolution.There is a practical alternative. Turn the scheme into a reciprocal public service talent exchange. Before councils are dismantled, map senior and specialist capability across every affected area. Give people visibility of opportunities in new unitaries, strategic authorities, and government departments. Let receiving organisations define what they need, and let individuals apply, rather than moving people as pieces on a structure chart.GDS Local, and before it the Public Service Transformation Network, offer useful precedents: civil servants, local government recruits, and direct council secondees working together. A fuller exchange should connect with the NHS, police, fire, universities and voluntary organisations. Places don't really experience or judge public service as a set of different workforces.The prize is shared learning, collegiality, institutional memory, and a shared public service workforce.Equality of esteem doesn't mean pretending everyone has the same skills. Whitehall has national policy, fiscal, and convening expertise that local government needs. Councils have operational, democratic, and place knowledge that Whitehall often lacks. Neither should arrive as the natural teacher. Mutual learning only counts if it changes both institutions.The Government should invite mayors, council leaders, chief executives, civil servants, staff representatives, and unions to shape the scheme as equal partners. Measure not only the capacity inserted, but the capability retained, the decisions changed and the careers opened in both directions.We can't rewire the state while keeping its workforce in separate labour markets with an implicit hierarchy. I would welcome engagement on how we build the shared public service workforce that devolution now requires.Benjamin Taylor is managing partner of RedQuadrant and chief executive of the Public Service Transformation AcademyThis was written in advance of the Government's decision to pause local government reorganisation on Monday 7 September.

Title

COMBINED AUTHORITY

One-way only won't work

By Benjamin Taylor | 08 September 2026

Popular articles by Benjamin Taylor

SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING

Popular articles by Benjamin Taylor