• 10 communities across England will get ‘innovation squads’ as part of £100 million government reform programme to deliver the Plan for Change.
• Flagship reform will end ‘Whitehall knows best’ and focus on testing solutions directly in local areas with frontline workers and communities who know best.
• Policy officials, tech specialists and other experts will be deployed to directly test new ways of fixing some of the biggest local problems. 

Working people across England are set to benefit from better public services, with ‘innovation squads’ sent in to back community ideas and work with the frontline as part of a £100 million ‘Test, Learn and Grow’ reform programme to deliver the Plan for Change. 

The teams, deployed to the places from central government will work alongside local government and service users to tackle the biggest challenges directly affecting local communities and people.

Challenges the teams will look at will include increasing the uptake of Best Start Family Hubs to support parents and young children, establishing neighbourhood health services, better supporting children with special needs, getting more people into work, rolling out breakfast clubs, and tackling violence against women and girls. 

The squads, working with tech specialists and other experts will have an explicit mandate to try new things and be creative, collaborating directly with frontline workers and people using services. 

Cabinet Office Minister, Georgia Gould said:

For too long residents and frontline workers have had to navigate fragmented and underfunded public services, people feeling like they have to arm up to battle to get the support they need. 

We are going to end this. The test, learn and grow programme will bring the centre of government out of Whitehall and into communities, working with those who deliver and use public services to solve problems together, as part of our Plan for Change. We will reform public services from the ground up so people always come first.

The programme is a flagship part of the government’s reform programme. Instead of trying to devise perfect solutions from Whitehall, the teams will work directly with affected communities to test out what works. 

The ‘test and learn’ approach – outlined by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in December – will help tackle our biggest national challenges and make better policy across the board. 

The approach has already been trialled successfully in four areas across England. Earlier this year, ‘innovation squads’ tested new ways to get more families through the door of local family hubs in Sheffield, resulting in many more local families using the hubs. In Liverpool they worked with the council to build an innovative data-led platform to manage temporary accommodation. 

The news comes following the launch of a new partnership for the programme, working with external experts, academics and local authority networks to further enhance and spread learnings from the programme across the country.