Making missions real

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Making mission-oriented government an enduring reality requires fundamental changes to the organisational architecture of Whitehall.

To illustrate what making those shifts might look like in practice, we have sketched out what it would look like to apply the Radical How to one important mission likely to be high on the next administration’s agenda: decarbonising the nation’s housing.

Decarbonising Britain’s Housing Stock

Radically changing how we heat the nation’s homes is a crucial contributor to achieving net zero and reducing our dependence on volatile energy supplies. Home heating accounts for about 14 percent of the UK’s emissions, and gas or oil boilers are among the single most polluting items most households own.

The question for government is how to substantially increase the level of uptake in zero-carbon heating.

That will require some of the tools typically used by Whitehall, including legislation to incentivise consumers and the market to shift away from gas boilers towards alternatives like ground and air source heat pumps.

Legislative levers will need to be applied thoughtfully by any government seeking to drive change; if the drafted legislation is highly prescriptive and not outcomes-based, it can lock in all sorts of risky hypotheses that prove incorrect as time passes. However, well-drafted enabling legislation can provide the flexibility needed to accommodate the results of early experimentation, as it did for Universal Credit.

It is also clear that just focusing on legislation won’t be enough. Previous attempts have not brought about their intended outcomes. There’s enormous friction in changing the heating habits of millions of people—what else can government do to reduce, or eliminate, that friction?

The Radical How approach might look something like this...