On rewiring the state part three — join the conversation on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_stop-me-if-youve-heard-this-before-odysseus-ugcPost-7489455705083588610-uWgy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Odysseus finally reaches Ithaca after twenty years.
But he doesn’t walk through the front door celebrating; he’s in disguise.
His home has been occupied, resources consumed. He can’t trust the place.
That’s uncomfortably close to the position of many public servants. ‘Rewiring the State’ is the most exciting thing to happen for yonks.
Real devolution, local fiscal power, better alignment between public services and a smaller centre. The possibility of organising services around places and lives rather than Whitehall departments. And the social care speech was great!
Damn close to what many of us have wanted.
But arrival isn’t the same as safety,
People in the NHS and local government have repeatedly been told that the latest reform will end fragmentation, empower local leadership, reduce bureaucracy, and support prevention. Then structures changed and the underlying controls remained.
NHS England is being abolished. PCCS are being abolished. LGR is happening alongside devolution, financial pressure, service pressures. Moral harm abounds, trauma is common.
Staff have learnt what to expect!
Will the power move? Money follow?
Is there a plan?
Will departments stop intervening?
Will this structure survive the next political change?
This isn’t a communication or change management problem — it’s experience.
‘It’s not the despair that kills you, it’s the hope.’
Hope carries risk. People who believe the promise will reorganise teams, invest in new relationships, and expose themselves professionally and emotionally. If the centre changes direction again, they carry the consequences. Again.
Cynicism is the scar tissue left by earlier enthusiasm. That doesn’t mean public servants no longer care. Often, they care enough to be wary of anything which might disrupt the fragile arrangements currently protecting people.
So implementation can’t start by demanding belief — it has to earn trust through action.
Move authority before accountability, provide financial stability for places to make decisions across years, protect the relationships and institutional memory which hold services together, and let staff and citizens see that evidence from delivery can alter policy, measures, commissioning and budgets. Be clear about what will endure.
Some people will step forward quickly. Others will remain in disguise for a while, watching to see whether this really is home. That’s reasonable. And some never completed the voyage — remember them.
The positive possibility is that this time arrival could lead to restoration. The announcement doesn’t complete the journey, but it creates the chance to recover local authority (no pun intended), rebuild institutions, and make places governable around the realities of people’s lives.
I welcome the return to Ithaca.
But trust won’t be declared into existence, it can only be rebuilt through what happens next.
What would make you believe?
chosen path 