SW.One Mission? Joining up across Government to change lives

The grand challenges we face as a nation don’t fit into neat departmental boundaries. When it comes to tackling poor productivity, mental ill-health, homelessness and insecure housing or domestic abuse, there’s typically a lead Whitehall department, but they can never do it alone. That’s why the mission-based approach to the new government was such an exciting part of the Labour offer to social change geeks like me.

AI generated image of someone sleeping rough between Victoria St and Marsham St signs.

However, as I support my clients to make change, Whitehall looks a lot like departmental business as usual. The mission approach seems stuck in the muddy trenches. Whether it’s the struggle to publish a cross-government strategy on violence against women and girls or the inactivity of inter-ministerial groups on homelessness as we approach winter, the age-old divisions remain.

The will and the commitment is there. The civil servants want to have impact. But the same old infrastructure is getting in the way.

So it’s the mission-focused organisations – often in the voluntary sector – that are doing the joining up: ferrying briefings from one department to another, commissioning cost benefit analyses, partnering with MPs to hold a range of Ministers to account. We’ll keep on at it!

Its more than a political-will matter. Its a money flow issue. A question of where budgets sit and who benefits within the budget cycle from savings. The Institute of Government said of the 2025 spending review that “There were no substantial joint budgets”. It was a missed opportunity.

Peter Hyman - who helped Starmer design the missions - wants to see some thrust in the government rockets. He has written an excellent substack on this https://peterhyman21.substack.com/p/how-to-get-things-done-in-government. It would be great to see his ideas reflected in the imminent strategy on violence against women and the strategy on homelessness, and in the structures and funding in place to deliver them. Let's take this chance to do things differently.