As part of our Prioritising Public Services series, our team is exploring how a 'reset' in the relationship between central and local government can improve policy implementation. Anya Kemble explores the pivotal role bridge-builders can play in facilitating learning, providing insights from past programmes, facilitating a live feedback loop during programme delivery, and sharing key lessons for the future.
This month, as part of our Prioritising Public Services series, the team at Mutual Ventures have been reflecting on the working relationship between central and local government and the opportunities the new government brings. As an ex-Civil Servant, I recall the challenges and successes of numerous central government programmes, all of which heavily relied on robust relationships and partnership with local government for successful delivery.
When these relationships were lacking, colleagues – both at national and local levels – often felt like programmes failed to leverage existing and emerging knowledge and best practices. Sometimes this resulted in mistakes being made multiple times, such as implementation of one-size-fits-all solutions that didn’t account for local variations, or miscommunication leading to duplicated efforts between central and local government. Other times, it meant that programmes missed out on opportunities to build on successful implementation, leading to reinventing the wheel rather than building on what works well already.
My experiences working in and alongside both sides of government have underscored the critical need for a robust learning and feedback loop, to ensure that insights and lessons learned are integrated into programme delivery, as well as future policy interventions.
In a recent article, Hannah Sampson examined how the role of a 'bridge-builder' can support relationship-building, fostering an environment conducive to successful collaboration between central and local government. By facilitating real-time knowledge sharing, enhancing understanding of past interventions, and ensuring valuable lessons are captured and disseminated for future use, bridge-builders can also play a crucial role in improving policy implementation.
So, how can bridge builders capture and share learning between central and local governments?
Learning from past programmes
Bridge builders can bring expertise from previous programmes, ensuring that valuable knowledge is not lost when central or local government staff move to new departments or roles. This learning helps inform both sides of government of what has or hasn’t worked previously, and identify lessons which can be applied to new programmes.
For example, as delivery partner for the Department for Education, Mutual Ventures supported the Regional Adoption Agencies (RAA) programme from 2016 to 2022. This was a national programme bringing together groups of local authorities from across England to regionalise their adoption functions, deliver services at scale and improve quality. Based on our experience, we knew that the challenges RAAs six years ago, would be similar to the challenges facing local authority clusters establishing their Fostering Recruitment Support Hubs in 2024.
As the bridge-builder on both programmes, we integrated the learning from the RAA programme into our support of local authority clusters setting up new regional fostering recruitment support hubs, for example through webinars, resource sharing, and facilitating connections between Fostering Hub and RAA leaders. Without a bridge-builder to carry forward insights from previous programmes, opportunities to mitigate challenges faced in the previous programmes could have been missed.
Learning during programme delivery
A strong focus on learning during programme delivery is crucial for improving implementation and optimising outcomes. Bridge-builders can play a vital role in this process by facilitating communication and continuous improvement between central and local government.
Recently, Mutual Ventures have been supporting the DfE’s Fostering Recruitment and Retention Programme. As learning lead for this project, I have seen first-hand how a robust learning feedback loop between central and local government can help them learn from each other in real-time, adapt their approaches to programme delivery, and ultimately ensure that new Fostering Recruitment Support Hubs are as effective and impactful as possible.
Key components of these feedback mechanisms including regular checkpoints between us, as the bridge-builder, and the DfE to share key themes and insights, and facilitating Community of Interest groups and peer networks to provide a space for local authorities to discuss common challenges and facilitate joint problem solving. This ensures that all stakeholders on the programme have a real-time picture of implementation progress, early insights into impact and emerging best practices.
Learning for future policy and programmes
Bridge-builders can also help ensure lessons are effectively captured and disseminated beyond the life of a programme. This prevents valuable insights from being lost and helps inform the design and delivery of future policy interventions. For instance, we have developed resources that capture lessons learnt through the fostering programme that can be accessed in the future [link to website]. One such resource is our iterative ‘Guide to Setting up Recruitment Support Hubs’ which brings together programme learning into a step-by-step guide to setting up hubs. This guide is intended to be a valuable resource for establishing new hubs for local authorities how are not involved in the programme and captures lessons around regional working in children’s services, which will be of particular use for new Regional Care Cooperatives.
By enhancing understanding of past interventions, facilitating real-time knowledge sharing, and ensuring valuable lessons are captured and disseminated for future use, bridge-builders can play a crucial role in capturing learning, improving relationships between central and local government, and ultimately improving policy implementation.
If you want to hear more about Mutual Ventures’ experience and approach to bridge-building, please get in touch with us at anya.kemble@mutualventures.co.uk.
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