Labour was elected on a manifesto promising change, with a central pillar of this commitment being the adoption of a mission-led approach to policy. This strategy provides a powerful framework for addressing complex societal challenges by setting clear, ambitious goals that can drive innovation and coordinated action across government.

Labour has chosen to focus its missions on five key areas: economic growth, energy, crime, opportunity, and health. While these priorities are commendable, the details of what will define their success remains unclear. To ensure their missions are effective (and ultimately delivered), the Government must provide clarity on the specific outcomes they aim to achieve, alongside tangible measures that progress can be tracked against.

But while measurement brings value, it will not solve the problems highlighted alone. This will require ambitious policy interventions and investment to act on the insights

This is critical for two reasons. First, as the old adage goes: what gets measured gets done. For Labour's missions to be truly transformative, they must be tied to clear, measurable goals that offer a shared understanding and direction. Second, setting out measurable targets will help convert ambitious promises into actionable successes. Without this, even the best-intentioned initiatives risk falling short.

Clarity is especially important for coordinating activity and budgets across different levels of government. While the strategic focus of the five missions will be set by Whitehall, the role of local government in driving these objectives forward cannot be overstated. Local councils are well-placed to tackle many of the nation's most pressing challenges, whether by building affordable homes, reducing homelessness, improving social care, or driving inclusive growth.

At Grant Thornton, we recognise this need for clarity and alignment, which is why we developed a Missions Index to help bridge the gap between local and national priorities. By selecting over 35 publicly available key indicators, that could be used to measure progress against each mission, we created a data-driven framework to assess each of the 317 local authorities in England according to their level of need, based on the five mission areas. From this, we produced an overall Composite Index, which combines a place's progress against all five missions, and also individual Mission Indexes that explore the specific need of local places across each of the five areas.

The Composite Index highlights significant regional inequalities that Labour's mission-led approach seeks to address. It finds that a clear corridor of high need runs across the North of England, from the Humber through Greater Manchester to Merseyside, with the North East particularly standing out — eight of its 12 local authorities fall within the top 20% of need. In stark contrast, no local authorities in the South West are ranked within the top 20%, although a number appear in the top 40%. In the South East and London, only one local authority in each region falls within the top 20% of need.

Looking below these headlines, the various Indexes do also highlight relative areas of strength, providing solid foundations for further improvement. This can be seen in the South's strong performance across the energy mission and the East's within the crime mission. While there are pockets of strong performance, the Indexes highlight the variations by place and across each area and paint a nuanced picture of the UK's overall strength in the missions identified by the Government. 

These disparities cannot be effectively addressed from Whitehall alone. The new Labour Government is right to recognise the value of devolution and the progress made by the previous administration in this area. Completing the devolution map requires an acknowledgement that different regions have different needs and priorities. What works in Surrey, for example, will not necessarily work in Somerset.

We believe the Missions Index can serve as a tool to foster a common understanding of regional needs between central and local governments. This data-driven insight offers a richer picture of local priorities, helping both levels of government align their actions with broader national goals - we developed this Index to help facilitate this conversation. But while measurement brings value, it will not solve the problems highlighted alone. This will require ambitious policy interventions and investment to act on the insights. 

At the local level, the Index can act as a catalyst for better aligning spending and delivery priorities with Labour's national mission-led approach, and help ensure that local places have clear, measurable goals that provide a shared understanding of the direction they need to take. It can also serve as a valuable tool for making the case for targeted investment, ensuring that resources flow to where they are needed most.

While the Missions Index is not perfect, it provides a crucial first step towards building a data framework that helps local authorities better understand their place and contextualise need, and highlights the importance of not taking a one size fits all approach. This kind of clarity and alignment is essential if Labour's mission-led agenda is to turn its ambitious goals into meaningful, measurable progress, and we're committed to actively engaging with our network to further develop and enhance the Index to support this.

 

Rob Turner is Director Public Services Advisory, Grant Thornton UK LLP