The support of deputy prime minister Angela Rayner for Total Place in her speech to the Local Government Association conference could be the call to arms that local government needs. The concept of Total Place embeds the importance of place leadership and a belief that local government has the key role in joining up public services to make them work for citizens. It is no surprise that the inspiration for Total Place 2.0 is coming from the parts of government that are tackling public service reform.
We in local government should be at the centre of it. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, in the final years of the last Labour government and before the era of austerity under the coalition, Total Place was a way of thinking about public service delivery which comprised two elements: calculating the amount of public money spent in a place and joining up that public money to provide better services on the ground; and using the power of place to cut across some of the rigid boundaries and silos imposed by individual services and government departments.
