Place: Thinking of national strategy from the ground up.

Port Talbot beach

The 2024–25 Heywood Fellowship sets out to examine how governments come to a national view of what really matters over longer time horizons, the ways governments can best confront and tackle future problems, and how the configuration, mechanisms and capabilities of the state can best enable the pursuit and delivery of long-term outcomes for citizens. 

PolicyWISE has partnered with the Fellowship, colleagues at the Blavatnik School of Government (University of Oxford) and the Future Governance Forum, to look at how nation-states can achieve this long-term national view, by having a better understanding of challenges and strategic priorities of places within a state when deciding what long-term outcomes to pursue. 

By clicking the link above you can read our project research publications. It includes case studies on Port Talbot and Cambridge, as well as our core paper which calls for joined-up planning across all levels of government, rooted in local strengths and identities. Based on expert interviews and case studies, it advocates for bold leadership, better coordination, and inclusive engagement to overcome fragmented policymaking and unlock the UK’s full potential.

We are now working towards practical policymaker toolkits which will support the practice of long-term national strategy. These will support practitioners with a national strategy process which can effectively account for place specific strengths and opportunities, and support and enable strategic action at different spatial levels. This will work will draw on the feedback from our case studies, which included:

  • Drawing on comprehensive and place-sensitive evidence to diagnose challenges and opportunities. There should be a clear ability to see how any trade-offs and big bets play out and are amplified and absorbed at local and national levels.
  • Creating conditions to incentivise alignment of activity across levels of government, sending clear and stable signals that enable confident private and third sector action. 
  • Dialling down ’central chauvinism’, seeing places as a source and sometimes leaders of strategies that deliver nationally critical outcomes.
  • Mature shared conversations about trade-offs with more realistic dialogue on how to prioritise resources; spot untapped synergies and respond to uneven place impacts.
  • Ending the ’closed system fallacy’ and focus on synergies between places to capture maximum global value rather than foster artificial competition between places for a narrow set of resources.
  • Sustaining this shared approach through continuous, respectful engagement.

Dewi Knight, Director of PolicyWISE, said:

“The practice of national strategy for, and by, the UK must draw on place-specific opportunities and strengths. Our work reflects a sense of optimism about what could be achieved through this practice. Collaborating across the UK’s multi-governance system means that we can draw on the full capacity and capability of the state – central, devolved, and local government – as well as the private and third sectors. Such an approach should inform the UK’s ‘big bets’ of the future.

“We are delighted to contribute to this year’s Heywood Fellowship research and project, and to work with colleagues at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, Cabinet Office, and Future Governance Forum. We hope that our findings, and recommendations on the contribution of ‘place’, will inform the practice and study of national strategy-making and long-term outcomes for citizens.

“Our focus on comparative and cross-nation research and analysis supported the project’s commitment to understand and analyse place, devolution and multi-level governance within the UK.”

Notes:

The Heywood Fellowship was created by the Heywood Foundation in memory of Jeremy Heywood, Cabinet Secretary 2012–18. 

This visiting fellowship gives a senior UK civil servant the opportunity to explore public service and policy issues outside their immediate government duties. 

The Fellowship is based at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, with support from the Cabinet Office. The fellow is associated with Hertford College, Lord Heywood’s former college. This year’s Heywood Fellowship sets out to examine how governments come to a national view of what really matters over longer time horizons, the ways governments can best confront and tackle future problems, and how the configuration, mechanisms and capabilities of the state can best enable the pursuit and delivery of long-term outcomes for citizens. 

Follow the Fellowship and its publications at www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/fellowship/heywood-fellowship. Image is of Aberafan beach, Port Talbot