As a new Government settles in, we are starting to see the first signals of a national approach to mission delivery

The rationale for mission-driven government – its focus on partnership, emphasis on test and learn and the need for public ownership and legitimacy – is natural territory for local government. This is an agenda to embrace rather than fear.

Labour's five missions provide a programme of government rather than a set of policies and, at their most ambitious, it is a new approach to how government is done, as well as what it does.

Mission-driven government, as defined by the Prime Minister himself, is about governing for the long-term and making decisions that look beyond immediate political and financial cycles.

It is also about a sense of collective, national endeavour with missions taken forward by a coalition of the willing – bringing together government, the private sector and civil society.

There is a premium on experimentation and learning, recognising that missions focus on delivering ambitious goals for which there is no known solution.

The risk is progress could be made on the missions through the prevailing logic of our centralised state, particularly with the pressure to deliver growth and to stabilise public services.

The direction is set from above, with missions set by national government, but requiring bottom-up innovation from a variety of actors across the economy and wider public value delivery chain of government, civic society, and trades unions.

This implies a different way of working for central government, moving beyond the still unresolved 60-year debate on civil service generalism. It also means change for local government and how we work.

Nationally, this change means working in a spirit of genuine partnership, looking to mobilise the five million who work in public services, rather than rely on the 400,000 who work within Whitehall.

It means a more active state, but one that ‘orchestrates' rather than instructs, delivering through co-ordination and collaboration as well as devoting resources to whole-system learning. This is particularly important for a government that will lack fiscal firepower.

The risk is progress could be made on the missions through the prevailing logic of our centralised state, particularly with the pressure to deliver growth and to stabilise public services.

Any new government wants to show quick wins and will be tempted to pull on the traditional levers at its disposal. Embracing this new statecraft and recognising the intersection between missions and place will be crucial.

The signs on localism are positive. Early engagement with the regional mayors and the English Devolution Bill forming the centre piece of the King's Speech all point to a resetting of the relationship between central and local government. All upper tier authorities have been invited to submit local growth plans by the end of September.

So far so good, but little has been said about the role of place beyond its central role in driving growth.

All of the other missions, from health to social mobility, will need the expertise and ‘carrying capacity' of local government to drive them. The role of local elected leaders in translating between local and national strategy will be pivotal.

What does the accountability framework look like that galvanises local government, supports local experimentation and learning, while providing proportionate assurance to the centre?

In campaigning, mission-driven government was framed by Labour as welcome signalling of commitment to public sector reform and governing well.

In government, missions as a practice of statecraft will take some time to emerge. Mission Boards are beginning to be established, with a suggestion that the Prime Minister will also chair monthly meetings to ensure things are on track.

The clean energy mission board has appointed the former chief executive of the Climate Change Committee Chris Stark to drive forward the approach.

The unit he leads is responsible for convening across government and industry, driving innovation and monitoring progress. These are all strong and positive signals that the Government is engaging with the challenge of missions as both things to deliver and ways of working.

As the mission practice emerges across government, the gritty issues for the sector will reveal themselves. Some of these have already been flagged in these pages by Elle Dodd and Ed Hammond.

How will public service performance be monitored? What does the accountability framework look like that galvanises local government, supports local experimentation and learning, while providing proportionate assurance to the centre?

How will the role of place and local government be understood within the theory of change for each mission? Will the expectation be that the sector delivers national missions, or contributes to them while setting its own sensitive-to-place local economies and residents' own ambitions for their lives?

There are many lessons from practice and many of them are place-based.

Camden has led on translating the theory of missions into place-based delivery. Greater Manchester has set a target is to become a zero carbon city by 2038. Internationally there are best practice examples from cities like Barcelona and Valencia.

Building on our sectoral strengths, rather than wait and see, I think local government should start the running. There are four things we should hold front of mind over the coming months:

• Make mission our core business. Local government needs to work in partnership with national government to deliver the goals it has set. Sovereignty and subsidiarity are important principles, but coherent national strategy is something the sector should embrace.
• Argue for the conditions we need to deliver on missions – long-term settlements and statutory spending review periods are necessary, but not sufficient. Place-based budgeting supporting integration around outcomes and common public digital infrastructure is essential and hard won.
• Embrace mission-driven government as our way of working – the ‘things to deliver' (the five missions) are arguably less important than the ‘ways of working', requiring us to think over longer-term time horizons, experiment and bear risk in different ways, and leverage more resources from wider sectors. We should be confident the approach will spill over into business as usual.
• Embrace the reform needed within our organisations and systems to make this work. We need to invest in modern capabilities around data, digital and participation, continue our pivot toward prevention and early intervention – all of which will drive improvements in public sector productivity and value generation.

Nick Kimber is director of strategy, design and insight at Camden LBC, policy fellow at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) and an associate at Future Governance Forum

X – @nickcp1