Report

Whitehall Monitor 2026

This report from UK think tank the Institute for Government assesses the government’s progress and judges whether it is heading in the right direction.

Labour came into power in 2024 with big ambitions for state reform. Mission-driven government would break open Whitehall, transforming the civil service into a collaborative, innovative, dynamic workforce, operating in partnership with businesses, local government and the third sector alike. A new cabinet secretary, Sir Chris Wormald, was appointed at the end of that year, tasked with “the complete rewiring of the British state”.7 That ambition was welcome, and necessary.

Last year’s Whitehall Monitor set out the state of the civil service as Labour took office, and found that familiar problems remained unaddressed.8 An effective, and reformed, civil service is a key enabler of the state reform central to Labour’s mission-led approach. We said last year that 2025 would be a pivotal year, one in which Labour would need to turn ambition into action – at the end of which we would learn whether this government was capable of focusing on civil service and state reform for the long haul. Such reforms will never be the work of a single year; this edition of Whitehall Monitor assesses the progress the government has made so far, and judges whether it is heading in the right direction.