Turning Whitehall Inside Out Is a Start but Reform Must Go Deeper

Minister Georgia Gould’s recent remarks on reforming the civil service will strike a chord with anyone who has worked in, around or alongside government. Her call to “turn Whitehall inside out” is hopefully more than a mere soundbite. Hopefully, it signals action in a promised and long-overdue shift in mindset and approach. Yet, if we are serious about renewing the social contract between citizen and state, geography alone will not be enough.

The proposal to move thousands of civil service jobs from London to Leeds, Sheffield and Darlington is welcome. The symbolism matters. For too long, the machinery of government has been both physically and psychologically distant from the people it serves. This remoteness has contributed to a brittle form of policymaking. As Gould notes, one too often characterised by abstraction, submission-writing and centre-down control.

Yet what Gould correctly identifies is something deeper: a cultural and operational disconnect between those designing policies and those delivering services. It is not simply that the civil service is based in the wrong place. It is that it operates in the wrong way.

This is where her diagnosis aligns with the demands of the Fifth Industrial Revolution. While the Fourth Industrial Revolution was about technology itself, AI, automation, big data, the Fifth is about putting people back at the centre. It is a re-humanisation of systems that had begun to treat people as data points, transactions or outputs.

And that re-humanisation must begin at the heart of government.

From Submission Culture to Permission Culture

The Whitehall operating model has remained largely unchanged since the heyday of post-war bureaucracy. While departmental machinery has modernised in fits and starts, the underlying structures of authority, accountability and decision-making remain stubbornly top-down whilst strategic capability has been hollowed out.

What Gould describes, civil servants feeling they “don’t know how to start” or that they “don’t have permission”, is the symptom of a culture where doing things differently still requires special approval. This is not just a morale issue. It is a structural flaw in how we deliver change.

In the Fifth Industrial Revolution, the successful organisations, public or private, will be those that embrace frontline insight as critical to success. That means investing in operating models where learning is continuous, cross-sector collaboration is the norm and feedback loops between policy and practice are short and sharp.

Moving missions outside of London is a step in the right direction. But if those missions are still governed by the same rules, the same civil service processes, the same programme templates and business case cycles, then nothing truly changes. We will simply have replicated the old model in new locations.

The Real Reform Is Relational, Not Regional

This is where the current government must be more ambitious. What is missing from the current narrative is a willingness to reimagine how the centre of government functions, not just where it sits.

Georgia Gould’s instinct to re-centre the frontline is well placed. But the clearest articulation of what this shift requires comes from Hilary Cottam, who argues that we need to build a new social settlement around relationships, not transactions. Her vision of relational welfare is not just about changing services but redesigning the very role of the state, from fixer to enabler, from provider to partner.

Whitehall cannot just move north and expect connection. It must adopt an entirely different way of listening, learning and acting, grounded in the messy realities of people’s lives. I note that the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods, in their interim report, argued for civil servants responsible for policy undertake ‘tours of duty’ outside Whitehall to understand the communities they are trying to help. During his time at the Department for Education, Jonathan Slater located teams outside White Hall to deliver initiatives like the Opportunity Areas.

I believe need to move from programme thinking to platform thinking. From a model that sees government as a deliverer of pre-designed solutions to one that enables, curates and facilitates collaboration, experimentation and co-production. From a world where policy is made behind closed doors to one where it is shaped in the open, with those who experience services every day.

This is not a call for chaos or a rejection of standards. It is a call for design that starts with citizens, not spreadsheets. It is a call for government to operate as a connector and enabler, not a distant controller.

Rewiring for the Foundational Economy

We must also recognise that these reforms are not simply about productivity or performance. They are about legitimacy.

Much of the anger and alienation we see across the UK is rooted in the sense that the system no longer works for ordinary people. When basic services, healthcare, housing, transport, feel inaccessible or ineffective, trust in the entire democratic infrastructure erodes.

These are the services of the foundational economy. The essential but often overlooked parts of our public infrastructure that keep life going. They cannot be fixed with tweaks to procurement or ministerial reshuffles. They require a different kind of relationship between government and society, one built on mutual respect, open dialogue and shared responsibility.

Gould’s story of a man unable to attend job interviews because of his teeth is not trivial. It is emblematic. Services that treat people as whole individuals, rather than isolated cases within siloed systems, are more effective, more dignified and more just. That is the promise of a truly human-centred public sector.

What Happens Next?

There is a deeper question here too. If the centre is too remote to understand the lived experience of people’s lives, why should it continue to control the design of services that depend on place-based integration? This is especially true of areas like social care, early years and housing.

The answer may lie not in decentralising Whitehall but in embracing a new constitutional settlement that devolves power, responsibility and funding to regional and local authorities. Gould’s proposals hint at this shift but stop short of enabling it. The risk is that we continue to redesign delivery without rethinking who should be doing the designing in the first place.

The risk, as always, is that we mistake motion for progress. That we move jobs without moving power. That we consult without ceding control. That we pilot without ever scaling.

The real test of the government’s intent will be whether these new missions in Leeds, Sheffield and Darlington are free to operate differently, or whether they simply replicate Whitehall thinking with a northern accent.

We need to build an operating model for public services that reflects the Fifth Industrial Revolution. One that blends the best of technology and data with the wisdom and compassion of human connection. One that sees frontline workers not as foot soldiers of policy but as co-creators of value. One that decentralises not just buildings but authority, insight and innovation.

If the Fifth Industrial Revolution is about re-humanising systems, it must also be about rebalancing power. That means not just redesigning the operating model of Whitehall but recognising when Whitehall is no longer the right operating centre at all.