The current Heywood Fellow, Lucy Smith, today set out a series of reforms to help government think long-term. These reforms, captured in the National Strategy Playbook, are needed to help prepare the UK for the major challenges – climate risk, demographic change, technological transformation and fraying social trust – that stretch beyond electoral terms. Lucy argues that, like other democracies around the world, we need to build new strategic capabilities which enable us to set and achieve long-term goals, building on democratic strengths but avoiding the pitfalls of short-termism and fragmentation.

The reforms will enable a new approach to strategy in government: 

• A 15-year horizon, and the production of National Scenarios to engage the public in discussions about the future
• New institutions including a National Office for Foresight & Strategy responsible for developing and delivering the national strategy, with an Advisory Council with members drawn from politics, business, devolved and local government and civil society
• New techniques based on Project Solarium, a 1953 strategic exercise commissioned by President Eisenhower, which could help governments confront today’s hardest problems by creating taskforces to expose conflicting perspectives, reach deeper thinking and deliver coherent pathways for major national change
• A place-led approach that can elevate local strategies to national importance
• A National School of Government to train and convene everyone involved in meeting national goals – elected officials as well as civil servants, business and the wider public sector.

This approach would enable the government to deliver a long-term strategic framework to guide action without centralising control, informed by and mobilising the talents and experience of partners across society, debated with the public, and built through a transparent exercise. 

Lucy Smith said:

“We should end the idea that strategy is done by elites in stuffy rooms. We need a more outward-looking, more future-focused, more nationally informed way of setting ambition and direction and mobilising to solve our biggest problems. The Playbook shows how it can be done in a series of very practical steps.” 

Suzanne Heywood, Chair of the Heywood Foundation, said: 

“The Heywood Foundation has been delighted to support Lucy’s work, and her push to get the UK government to be better at thinking long-term – which is the only way to address these cross-generational challenges – is very much welcome. These are not easy issues to address, but our children, and their children, will thank us if we put in place long-term plans to address these issues, and formulate that thinking in a way that engages people across our society." 

 Professor Ngaire Woods, Dean of the Blavatnik School, said:

"The Heywood Fellowship offers a unique opportunity for a senior civil servant to step out of the Whitehall arena and take the time to reflect, research and respond to critical challenges. Lucy's work is a great example of using this time and space to good effect, taking a closer look at how governments can best face the most critical generational challenges ahead."

You can read the full playbook here.

The purpose of the Heywood Fellowship, created by the Heywood Foundation in memory of Jeremy Heywood, Cabinet Secretary from 2012 to 2018, is to give a senior UK civil servant the opportunity to explore issues relating to public service and policy outside of the immediate responsibilities of government duties, with a focus on longer-term issues and/or those that cut across government departments.

Senior UK civil servant Jenny Bates was appointed as the fourth Heywood Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government. She will be a visiting fellow at Hertford College.