The Preconditions for Radical Place Leadership

In this article, Prof. Donna Hall and Andrew Laird argue that the principles of Radical Place Leadership need to flow all the way from the council corporate centre to the heart of communities.

Many organisations and systems are currently considering a fresh approach to the leadership of their localities. Councils see that traditional models of public service delivery (new public management) have failed. They simply don’t work for real people, families, communities and are deficit based by design.

Leaders can see that public trust in organisations is declining, resources are increasingly stretched and it’s more difficult than ever to meet the expectations of both residents and inspectors. We have previously written about the loss of trust between public services and communities - When Power Forgets the People.

Across central/local government and the NHS the language of relational public services,  place-based approaches and the importance of neighbourhoods have become increasingly common parlance – albeit these terms often mean different things to different people!

Concepts such as:

-        Community power

-        Prevention

-        Relational working

-        Integrated neighbourhood teams

-        Co-production

-        Systems leadership

-        Test, Learn, Grow

Yet in many places, these reformist ambitions struggle to move beyond pilot projects (often funded by central government), a few enthusiastic individuals, or pockets of good practice.

The problem is not a lack of intent. It is that Radical Place Leadership and relational public services cannot thrive unless councils deliberately create the preconditions essential for them to work effectively and become embedded.

Radical Place Leadership is not about charismatic individuals or devolving responsibility without support. It is about creating the conditions in which leadership is shared, relational, and rooted in communities themselves. That requires fundamental shifts in culture, power, capability, and trust — shifts that many councils underestimate.

From transactional services to relational public services

At the heart of the challenge is the architecture of local government itself. Traditional council systems are designed around transactions: eligibility, assessment, referral, hand-offs between services, and performance measures tied to organisational boundaries. Residents are positioned as service users rather than active participants in shaping the conditions for good lives.

This model is increasingly unsustainable. Demand in Adults’ and Children’s Social Care continues to rise, costs escalate, and outcomes remain stubbornly poor. More importantly, the transactional model is ill-suited to addressing the complex, interrelated challenges that shape people’s lives — loneliness, insecurity, poor health, and lack of opportunity.

Efforts to reform public services are often limited to the breadth and depth of a particular service silo (children’s social care, adult social care, housing) or a single presenting condition pathway (homelessness, unemployment, frailty).

Relational public services offer a different proposition. They are built on long-term relationships, trust, and continuity. Relational public services consider and design responses around the whole person, ignoring the siloed walls of services where possible. They recognise people as holders of assets, not just needs, and communities as part of the solution rather than the site of intervention. But relational practice cannot be bolted on to systems designed for control, standardisation and risk avoidance. It requires a fundamentally different environment.

The barriers we need to confront honestly

One of the strengths of the report underpinning this article is its realism. It recognises that the barriers to place-based and relational approaches are not merely technical, but structural, political, social and cultural.

Structural and political barriers are often the most immediate. Large-scale reorganisation, for example, can weaken public trust and create confusion about accountability. When decision-making moves further away from communities, residents can feel disempowered, even when engagement activity increases. At the same time, devolving power challenges established norms inside councils. Councillors may be reluctant to relinquish control over budgets, while officers may fear the risks associated with community-led decisions.

Geography and demography also matter. Rurality, transport, digital exclusion and dispersed populations shape who can participate and how. Online engagement may widen participation in some contexts, but in others it risks excluding residents with limited connectivity. The often-used label “hard to reach” usually says more about the limitations of council engagement methods than about communities themselves.

Capacity and resources present a further, unavoidable reality. Meaningful engagement takes time, skill and money. It requires facilitation, community development, accessible venues, and sustained officer support. Crucially, communities themselves do not start from equal positions. Some have deep reserves of social capital; others do not. Without active support, place-based approaches risk reinforcing inequality rather than reducing it.

What Are the Essential Prerequisites for Radical Places to Work?

If Radical Place Leadership is to move from rhetoric to reality, councils and systems will need to focus less on structures and methods alone and more on the environment in which those structures operate. Six preconditions are particularly critical.

1.     A community-focused culture, led from the top:

Cultural change cannot be delegated. Senior leaders set the tone through the behaviours they model, the questions they ask, and the risks they are prepared to tolerate. Moving from a “provider” mindset to a “partner” mindset requires leaders to prioritise residents over service silos and outcomes over organisational convenience.

A genuinely community-focused council operates as One Team, One Council. Problems are shared, not contained within departments. Learning replaces blame as a management strategy. Importantly, leaders must be prepared to unlearn — to let go of practices that once offered control but now inhibit collaboration and trust.

2. Empowered middle management and frontline staff:

Relational public services depend on professional judgement. Frontline staff need permission to work holistically, to respond flexibly, and to build sustained relationships with individuals and communities. Yet, many councils constrain staff through rigid rules, narrowly defined KPIs, and performance frameworks that reward throughput rather than impact.

Quite often, it’s the middle managers, the Heads of Service and those at an AD level that need to feel empowered and liberated. The much maligned ‘frozen middle’ is often trapped in a construct not of their own making.

An enabling environment trusts staff to do the right thing. It recognises that innovation often happens at the edges of systems, not the centre. It supports multi-disciplinary, place-based teams and reduces the need for repeated assessment and referral that frustrate both staff and residents.

3.     A new social contract with citizens:

Cultural change must be visible externally as well as internally. If councils wish to develop a partnership with residents, encouraging citizens to take more active roles in their communities, this must be accompanied by clarity about what residents can expect in return. Simple, memorable “People Pledges” — setting out mutual commitments — help make this new relationship tangible.

This is not about shifting responsibility onto communities without support. It is about honesty, reciprocity, and shared purpose. When residents can see that their participation genuinely shapes decisions, trust begins to grow.

4.     Learning as infrastructure, not an afterthought:

Listening cannot be episodic. Councils need structured, routine ways for frontline staff and residents to feed insight directly into senior decision-making and vice versa. These feedback loops help leaders understand what is really happening on the ground, staff to understand leaders’ thinking, and allow organisations to adapt in real time.

Learning, in this sense, is not a “soft” activity. It is a core capability for operating in complexity.

5.     Strategy, Values and Resources are Aligned:

Councils and wider system partnerships often see this kind of work as just another project rather than the overarching framework which holds together everything else and from which all other projects and programmes flow.

There are often a myriad of similar but overlapping projects within councils and no simple overarching narrative that ties it all together. Project managers focusing on their responsibility to improve one bit of the system are confused about how their project fits in with everything else.

Values within organisations aren’t always linked to core purposes, and they often are no more than posters on the office wall. Values and behaviours that start with people rather than services need to be brought to life daily, celebrated and lauded.

Financial strategies are sometimes divorced from strategy with no investment plans in place to fund innovation; for example, each department being asked to find 10% savings each year to close the budget gap.

In a follow-up article, George Cox and Andrew will be exploring what a Radical Place Leadership and relational approach means for Resource and Finance Directors, and why it is the only way to actively manage demand and create a sustainable future for councils.

Innovative strategic directors of finance understand where the real costs are buried in the failure demand between service silos. They can work with the management team to strip this out and create simpler citizen-focussed support.

6.     Courageous Approach to Risk and Innovation:

In some organisations, risk management means the careful stewarding of status quo rather than a deeper understanding that the biggest risk most organisations and systems face is a lack of challenge to status quo.

Power, money, and the myth of engagement without influence

Perhaps the clearest lesson from practice is this: engagement without power does not build leadership — it erodes trust.

Place-based structures must be more than advisory. If communities are to take responsibility, they must have the authority and resources to act. Devolved budgets and more investment into community/VCS infrastructure, and getting out of the way when others are better placed to do things, is therefore not optional. They are the mechanisms through which priorities become tangible, and participation becomes meaningful. There are major opportunities to get this right through Neighbourhood Areas Committees (a key part of LGR) and Neighbourhood Boards (a key part of the Pride in Place programme).

Equally important is the principle of being “bespoke by design”. While the purpose and principles of neighbourhood arrangements should be consistent, their form must reflect local geography, history and capacity. Co-design is not a courtesy; it is how legitimacy is built.

Time, patience, political and managerial courage

Cultural transformation takes time. Evidence from councils that have pursued relational approaches suggests that meaningful change often takes two years or more to become visible on the ground. Reorganisation can offer a rare window to reset norms and expectations, but that window closes quickly.

Councils that retreat at the first sign of discomfort risk reinforcing public cynicism. Those that stay the course — investing in relationships, devolving power, and trusting their workforce — can fundamentally reshape outcomes, demand, and legitimacy.

A choice, not a slogan

Radical Place Leadership is not a re-branding exercise or a flash in the plan project. You can call it what you want! It is a choice about how power is shared, how people are treated, and how councils understand their role in civic life.

Relational public services cannot be delivered by transactional organisations.

Creating these corporate preconditions is hard. It requires letting go of traditional models of leadership and control, accepting uncertainty, and investing in capabilities that do not always show immediate returns. But without it, place-based ambitions will continue to disappoint — not because communities failed to lead, but because councils never truly allowed them to.

Please do get in touch if this chimes with you or if you would like to share your own experience – andrew@mutualventures.co.uk.

Professor Donna Hall, CBE

Andrew Laird, CEO Mutual Ventures