The case for Total Place 2.0

There is currently a gulf between the way that the government funds and delivers public services and the way that citizens use them. The government typically allocates money through departments, which fund specific services such as the NHS, schools or local authorities. Each service then spends money to meet the needs of its users: pupils, patients and benefit claimants among others. But that approach does not match people’s lives.

In 2009, in the final years of Gordon Brown’s premiership, the government launched an initiative called Total Place, which encouraged agencies within a place to count how much they collectively spent on services, identify duplication and redesign services around the needs of the users. It was short-lived, but held promise. 

Fifteen years on, the returned Labour government, under Keir Starmer, should use its first spending review this summer to launch a revitalised version of Total Place.