The human spark: devolution and the challenge of re-wiring the state

There is a lot of talk about devolution at the moment – a once-in-a-generation opportunity for places to shape their own futures. If we get it right, bringing powers closer to places should make it easier to design services around what people actually need, rather than what fits neatly into a national framework. But there is a real danger that we mistake devolution for transformation. Moving power is not the same as changing how power is used and creating new institutions will not automatically create new behaviours. 

Our public sector history is littered with examples of organisational reform that promised much more than it delivered. That is because systems are rarely constrained by structure alone, they are constrained by culture, incentives, relationships and habits. Changing how people think and work together can take years. Oh, the complexity of us humans….

In some ways, the state is still operating on assumptions that made sense in a different era. Much of our public sector architecture was built around the idea that consistency, accountability and quality are best achieved through standardisation and control. That approach has obvious strengths. Nobody wants 152 different approaches to issuing passports or collecting taxes!

The challenge is that many of today's policy issues aren't production-line problems. They are complex, complex human problems. Social care, health inequalities, economic inactivity, community resilience and children's services are shaped by countless local factors that interact in really unpredictable ways. All of them require adaptation, learning and judgement. For me that is where devolution becomes really interesting.

Its real value – to me – is not simply that decisions are made closer to home. Its value lies in creating the conditions where places can learn, adapt and respond in ways that would be impossible from the centre. The most important shift is not geographical, it is philosophical.

Success will be determined by whether places are able to build the relationships, trust and confidence needed to use those powers well. The authorities that thrive will not necessarily be those with the largest settlements or the broadest responsibilities. They will be those that create environments where learning is valued, where organisations are willing to share power, and where frontline staff are trusted to solve problems, rather than simply administer processes. 

There are many other great examples (and I find it hugely frustrating that such success is not replicated) which is why the conversation about "rewiring the state" matters.  We need these rich learnings to become the norm.

I've said it before but I love the word “rewiring”. Rewiring suggests something deeper than institutional rearrangement. It suggests changing the assumptions on which the system operates, moving away from the idea that improvement comes primarily through tighter control and towards the recognition that improvement often comes through creating the conditions for people to learn together.

That is not, perhaps, a comfortable shift for many. For many, control feels reassuring and learning can feel messy. We know that genuine collaboration is rarely as tidy as a governance diagram, yet every meaningful public service improvement I have encountered has emerged from people being given the space to think differently, build relationships and adapt to local circumstances, rather than from the introduction of another reporting framework. 

Devolution needs to be a very human project. Its success will depend less on constitutional machinery and more on whether people are prepared to work differently together. Whether leaders can resist the temptation to replicate central control at a regional level. Whether organisations can move beyond protecting territory and start building shared solutions.

Devolution gives places greater freedom to act. What happens next depends on whether that freedom is used to reproduce existing systems on a different map, or to create something genuinely new. Rewiring the state is not really about moving power from one set of institutions to another. It is about recognising that lasting change happens when people closest to the challenge have the trust, relationships and confidence to solve it. 

Structures matter, of course they do, but they are only ever the wiring. The spark has always been human. Devolution can provide the loom, the powers and the freedoms, but it is our people who supply the spark. The real transformation will come when local leaders, communities and frontline professionals are given the freedom to weave their own solutions, bringing colour, texture and life to what would otherwise remain a technical design on a piece of paper.