In this guest feature Janice Morphet offers a constructive evidence-based perspective on the new UK Government’s ‘five missions to rebuild Britain’, asking whether there is perhaps a missing piece to the puzzle, namely a focus on place, planning and housing. The piece demonstrates the role that social science can play in supporting the new Government to ensure that its missions are cohesive and that they have the best chance of succeeding.
The missing mission? A social science perspective on the new UK Government’s plans for change
The incoming Labour Government has bet the farm, or perhaps the Green Belt, on providing more homes in England. Yet the Prime Minister’s commitment to mission- based government doesn’t explicitly mention achieving this objective. Does this matter for the success of the likely outcome or does it represent a continued siloing of issues in Whitehall which will undermine if not fatally flaw the achievement of this objective?
The role of missions in government, long promoted by Mazzucato and taken on in the Labour Manifesto, is to provide a laser-like focus on the achievement of outcomes for specific problems or objectives that may be split across many parts of government or not yet tackled at all taking an holistic or systems-based approach. In the first Blair government, the establishment of the Social Exclusion Unit acquired a legendary status for its focus on delivery with Sure Start Centres as one of its main outcomes. Yet this integrated approach to problem solving did not continue and while the Spending Reviews that followed and Barber’s deliverology, as offered through the Prime Minister’s Strategy and Delivery Units, represented the frustration felt by Blair in the focus on outcomes over organisation, they were not regarded as having the same level of recognised success. As Prime Minster, Brown introduced contractual requirements for delivery on departments and senior civil servants which appeared to be getting nearer to resolving these issues but were thrown off with a sigh of relief when a slower-paced Coalition government was crafted in 2010 by Gus O’Donnell, then Cabinet Secretary.
This experience demonstrates that mission-based approaches in government may be needed to tackle the government’s priorities although they may not be successful or survive into a subsequent Parliament, even if led by the same Prime Minister. Does the housing objective have a better chance of success outside this regime, or will it be relegated? Housing is a key component of achieving the five missions that have been identified by the government – for growth, energy, the NHS, public safety and access to opportunity – that will be led by mission boards chaired by the Prime Minister. The role of housing in achieving these objectives is not explicit in their action programmes yet.
The objective to build 370,000 homes within five years requires action across a range of central programmes. The government has started with a consultation on the reform of planning guidance to guarantee more affordable homes are provided in new development at the time when private developers are reducing output and housing associations are failing to take on those homes already provided through this mechanism and stand empty. A promise to include funding for more social housing provided by local authorities and housing associations in the coming Spending Review has been made by the Deputy Prime Minister yet local authorities are currently dealing with major pressures to provide temporary accommodation for the homeless, including those that are subject to no-fault evictions. Landlord reforms are a priority intervention required to ease these pressures, but no action has been taken yet. Social landlords also face years of underinvestment in the maintenance of existing stock to respond to issues of damp and mould, repairs and decarbonisation.
So, the question is whether there should be a mission to deliver more homes or whether there needs to be a wider ‘place-focused’ mission that situates them in places that people want to live and are well-served by social infrastructure. In the past, governments have used the terms ‘place making’, ‘place shaping’, or just ‘place’ by Michael Gove, to consider more integrated policies and programmes packaged in centralising ‘deals’ since 2012. Is community the right term or is that harking back to an even earlier period of policy in the 1960s? Yet without a uniting term and associated narrative, a story of how towns, cities and neighbourhoods can work better as they grow and change, it will be hard to see housing delivery within this wider context. In the 1940s, the country adopted a programme of new towns which were the envy of many other countries. But these places were not dormitories but settlements with jobs and town centres, community facilities and green spaces. However, these were only achieved by government intervention in land assembly and development while placing restrictions on factories and offices being built in inner London and Birmingham which went on until 1980. The government is proposing more new towns to create additional homes beyond its target but can these be delivered without the kind of integrated investment planning that was used before?
The role of missions in focusing on places has been used before by Michael Gove in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 but while contextualised as local authority targets most were reliant on central government interventions or funding. Lucas and Hopkins (2024) have also commented on this missing mission, suggesting that it could be an integrating tool for the other missions particularly focused on combined authorities and their mayors that would bring together linkages to the national industrial strategy, spatial development strategy as proposed in the current planning reforms, housing, employment and improving public safety. This approach provides an opportunity for subsidiarity and those aspects of the five missions that are to be delivered by sub-national government tiers can be brought together in a programme and linked to public investment. This coordination will be necessary to make the five missions work and includes housing which is otherwise omitted.
But if housing is to be delivered in locations unpopular with existing communities, then the narrative must be wider than the number of homes achieved. Is there another approach? Could there be a mission for communities and place that includes housing? The need to address housing and community wellbeing meets the overall requirements of a mission, in that it is a long-term complex problem requiring measurable solutions. These include numbers of new homes but will also relate to energy, employment, health, safety and opportunity missions. So, what might an overall measurable goal be? An all embracing ‘improving community and individual wellbeing’ mission would offer a start. This could reflect location, place and space as part of a policy offer. But it needs to include decisions about the provision of public services in accessible and sustainable locations, to provide business rate support for the dwindling number of local shops as in other countries, reverse Ridley’s 1986 out of town policy to one of town centres first and requires government funding decisions to align with these policies, not operate in their own silos. Providing new homes on distant urban peripheries which are car dependent does not work, as some new and expanded towns found in the 1950s. Isolation, lack of access to services and jobs did not reinforce their role in creating good places to live, even where the physical conditions inside the homes might have been far superior to those experienced by households before.
Focusing on housing delivery on its own is not enough. It needs to be in the kind of places that policy makers enjoy in their own domestic environments. An integrated, mission-based approach is required to make everywhere somewhere and offer secure and calm places to live. So the government could create another mission, which takes a positive policy approach, seeks to deal with housing in a systems thinking model by bringing together consideration of polices affecting new and existing housing, its locations and support services across the whole of government to include a range of departments. This would provide a way of improving current homes and setting the societal context for new ones in a coordinated and integrated way that will contribute to achieving improved health, decarbonisation, sustainable living and support for economic growth. Without addressing this, the housing crisis continues to be tackled in a fragmented way which a new mission could overcome.
About the author
Janice Morphet is an independent researcher, Visiting Professor in the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London and is a Design Council Built Environment Expert. Janice was a member of the Planning Committee of the London 2012 Olympic Games. She was a Senior Adviser on local government at DCLG 2000-2005, having been Chief Executive of Rutland CC, Director of Technical Services at Woking, and Professorial Head of the School of Planning and Landscape at Birmingham Polytechnic. Janice has been a trustee of the RTPI and TCPA.
Image credit: Nick Hawkes, Unsplash