Colin Marrs talks to Peter Wilding, who moved from head of energy policy at HM Treasury to Treasury secondee in Cheshire West & Chester
After serving in a range of policy roles within HM Treasury, Peter Wilding decided to make a change. A two-year secondment to the New Zealand Treasury ensued and, on his return, he was struck by a thought: “I had enjoyed New Zealand – I wondered if I could enjoy living elsewhere in the UK,” he says.
Soon after, the department was looking for staff to work for six months with four nascent Community Budget pilots. The idea was to bring spending from different departments together into a single pot in local areas to improve outcomes. Wilding joined the scheme in Cheshire West & Chester. “I was attracted to going to work on real public service spending, a step closer to the frontline,” he says.
He soon discovered that, as a Treasury official, he was at an advantage to colleagues seconded from other departments. “Those running the pilot locally wanted me to have a cross-cutting role, looking across, providing strategic advice and acting as a broker. I didn’t bring departmental baggage in terms of trying to defend a policy – I was just looking at the reality of the fiscal situation,” he says.
The main challenge for Wilding was to balance the aim of co-designing systems and policies at the local level, without prejudicing the department’s existing policy positions. He says: “The easiest way for the pilots to engage was to come up with a list of asks of the departments. There was already an enormous amount that could be done locally, but there was a recognition that if ideas looked good then they should merit some discussion centrally.”
The success of the pilots led to an extension of the programme, and Wilding is currently lending support in a new role as managing partner at the northern section of the Public Transformation Network. Bringing in new areas has involved challenges in terms of building trust and confidence, he says. “We sometimes have to persuade them that we are genuinely here to support facilitation, rather than to tell them just to cut their budgets,” he adds.
Overall, the experience has taught Wilding the power civil servants have to effect change. “I will be honest, I have sometimes missed the ministerial engagement and being at the heart of things going on in Whitehall,” he admits. “But I now have a much better sense of how decisions from Whitehall impact multiple agents at the local level. It gives you an invaluable sight of what changing a system actually means on the ground.”