The Change Moment - Why UK Public Services Are Facing a Transformation Like No Other

I've worked in and around the public sector for most of my career. And I say this not to alarm anyone, but because it's genuinely true: the scale of change happening right now across UK public services is unlike anything I've seen.

It's not one big transformation. It's several, all happening at the same time.

What's actually happening

Let's take stock for a moment, because I think it's easy to lose sight of the sheer volume of change that's underway.

In the NHS, NHS England is being returned to the Department of Health and Social Care. Integrated Care Boards have been asked to cut their running costs by 50%. Many are set to merge into larger footprints from April 2026. The 10-Year Health Plan sets out a fundamental shift in how care is delivered, and new legislation is expected before Parliament in 2026 to make those changes permanent.

At the same time, local government is going through the most significant reorganisation in a generation. Two-tier council structures are being replaced across 14 areas of England, with strategic mayoral authorities set to cover the whole country by the end of this Parliament. These aren't tweaks to boundaries. They're changes to the fundamental architecture of how local services are governed and delivered.

And running through all of it is a financial reality that makes everything harder. Councils are facing a combined funding gap of £6.2 billion across 2025/26 and 2026/27 just to sustain services at current levels. Government departments are expected to cut administrative budgets by 16% by 2029/30. The government's £3.25 billion Transformation Fund is a genuine signal of intent, but it comes with serious expectations around delivery.

The people in the middle of all this

Here's what I keep coming back to.

All of this change, structural reorganisation, digital transformation, cost reduction, new governance models, is being asked of teams who are, by any honest measure, already running at capacity. The NHS workforce has been through an extraordinary few years. Local government teams are managing demand pressures in social care, housing, and SEND that have no easy answer.

And yet the expectation is that they absorb transformation on top of delivering services every single day.

That's not a criticism of the transformations, many of them are overdue and genuinely important. It's an honest observation about the human reality of this moment. Change at this scale, poorly managed, doesn't just fail to deliver, it burns people out.

Why this moment matters

Despite all of that, I find myself genuinely optimistic. Not in a naive way, I've been around long enough to know that optimism without a plan is just wishful thinking.

But these are mission-driven organisations, full of people who chose public service because they care. The direction of travel, towards integrated care, strategic devolution, and digital-first delivery, is the right one. And the investment signals, from the Transformation Fund to the Modern Digital Government roadmap (2025–2030), suggest a real commitment to making it work.

The question isn't whether to change. It's whether we can manage the human side of that change well enough to make it stick.

Because here's what the data tells us, and what my own experience confirms: around 70% of transformation programmes fail to meet their goals. Not because the strategy was wrong. Not because the technology didn't work. But because the people side, the communication, the engagement, the trust, didn't get the attention it deserved.

In the public sector right now, with this much change happening simultaneously, there is no margin for that kind of failure.

What I'll be sharing

Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing about what I've learned from years of helping public sector teams through transformation, the things that actually work, and the things that look good on a programme plan but fall apart in practice.

We'll cover why most transformations fail, how to go from launch to lasting adoption, why engagement beats enforcement every time, and the specific challenges that make public sector change uniquely difficult.

Because making change work at this scale isn't just a management challenge. It's a leadership one. And I believe the public sector has exactly the leadership it needs, if we give it the right support and approach.

Watch this space.

 

Webinar: Leading through change. Why people resist, and what helps.

Change management is often talked about as a process, framework, or methodology, but in reality, it’s about people.

In this session, Natasha Osborne and Claire O'Dwyer will explore the fundamentals of change management. Join us to unpick why some people resist change and how to help them through, often inevitable, organisational shifts.

Register here