The snap July General Election and postponement of this year's Local Government Association conference meant there was nothing for it but to spend the summer rewriting our latest report Heart of the Matter – getting to grips with whole place transformation. This meant reflecting on the new political reality, the legislative agenda set out in the King's Speech and the early moves of a new administration tackling a polycrisis in public services. All with the prospect of grim public financial choices from the 30 October Budget and unenviable options for day-to-day expenditure in the full Spending Review beyond that.

Building on our previous work around a modern agenda for public service integration, our latest study advocates that switching now to a ‘whole place' model of local public service reform would support the new Government's ambitious national missions.

In Heart of the Matter, Localis recommends the new Government should restore stability to council finances with an immediate cash injection to steady the ship for frontline service delivery as a precursor to charting a course to long-term financial sustainability in the Spending Review

It's not our first rodeo by any stretch of the policy imagination. Looking back to previous attempts at place-based reform, the paper advocates a whole place approach to improving local service outcomes that focuses on:

• empowering local leadership with long-term, stable funding to make meaningful changes;
• embedding preventative approaches: investing in upstream prevention to tackle issues at their source can reduce demand on frontline services, leading to better outcomes and more efficient use of resources;
•  developing collaborative cultures across public, private and third sectors to create user-centred service provision;
• practicing community co-design with meaningful engagement to meet the needs of local residents.

The parallels between Rachel Reeves and George Osborne's approach as chancellor in framing the background to public finance choices have been noticed. It must be noted also that there was no benefit in the coalition years of local government attempting a ‘bleeding stumps' approach to seek mitigation from austerity. That said, in Heart of the Matter, Localis recommends the new Government should restore stability to council finances with an immediate cash injection to steady the ship for frontline service delivery as a precursor to charting a course to long-term financial sustainability in the Spending Review.

We further recommend that council workforce capacity must also be addressed as the first steps to long-term radical improvements we'd like to see in place – in line perhaps with the spirit and intention of other recent pay settlements.

Nothing in life is as difficult to balance as the ability on the one hand to remain firmly grounded in the reality and virtue of our daily life and environment, while soaring on the wings of a hope-filled vision and aspiration to building a new and secure era for people and place.

Likewise, in our final recommendations, Heart of the Matter attempts to balance two imperatives. On the one hand, there is the need for radical, structural reformulation of the settlement between central and local government. On the other, there is the need for councils to continue to find ways to deliver strategically and intelligently, in spite of a system which all too often works against such activity.

To continue to deliver for residents even under considerable pressure, the use of partnership models centering on upstream prevention will be crucial. Councils should, we argue, produce transformational whole place service delivery plans, in collaboration with other agencies. This would give a clear overview of the efficiency and quality of service delivery across an area.

Councils should also plan to prevent – by developing internal models for valuing prevention and review spending accordingly. This would help ensure that they can adopt an outcomes-focused approach to reducing demand on frontline services.

We further argue that priming for good local growth will be key to sustaining long-term transformation. Councils should set out what good growth looks like over the immediate, medium- and long-term as part of the forthcoming statutory local growth plans.

We also call on councils to form partnerships and pool resources with local partners across the public, private and third sectors, to establish innovative vehicles for regeneration, with explicit mandates to use procurement and other strategic functions to promote local economic growth.

Heart of the Matter sets out, we hope, the roadmap for a transformative renewal of place policy that balances the optimism of devolution and community empowerment with the stark realities of fiscal constraints and persistent economic challenges.

In making the argument for whole place transformation, Heart of the Matter is a call to action for both local leaders and central government to work together to deliver the high-quality, sustainable public services our communities deserve.

Jonathan Werran is chief executive of Localis

@jonathanwerran