Contact us

Putting wellbeing at the heart of decision making

  • Adam Lang, Carnegie UK
  • 12 June 2025
  • 5 minute read

Part One: Why it matters

In this three-part blog series, I want to explore and set out key aspects of what we at Carnegie UK mean when we talk about putting wellbeing at the heart of decision-making.

In this first instalment I will begin by looking at some of the overarching issues around why we believe this matters and, specifically, why it matters right now. The second and third blogs in this series will then share more about what putting wellbeing at the heart of decision means in practice as well as what we are learning about how we can make this happen.

The reason Carnegie UK believes that new approaches to public policy, governance and decision making are needed now is because too many people are currently being let down by our existing approaches.

 

We know this from official and third-party evidence across a variety of social and economic issues. These cover everything from growing income inequality; economic stagnation; squeezed budgets for essential public services; rising child poverty; declining healthy life expectancy and the erosion of trust in our democracy and public institutions. We also know it from our own Life in the UK data, which tells us that from one end of the country to the other too many people do not have what they need to live well.

 

These issues would be complex enough to address on their own but they are compounded by global challenges, such as ageing populations, technological disruption, the worsening impact of our climate crisis and the rise of populism and extremism.

We must do better.

The good news is that at Carnegie UK we firmly believe that we can. We know this because both history and pockets of current practice show us the powerful and significant impact that well-made public policy can have on people’s lives.

For example, the introduction of the welfare state and the NHS in the 1940s changed the game in terms of reducing poverty, addressing inequality and improving the life expectancy of the population. Landmark civil rights and equalities legislation in the ‘60s and ‘70s helped make our society more equal for people regardless of who they were, what they believed or who they loved. The introduction of the Minimum Wage Act in the late ‘90s protected low-paid workers and reduced in-work poverty. The smoking ban and Climate Change Act in the early 2000s both delivered huge steps forward on public health and climate governance, respectively.

 

But it is not just policy and legislation that have had a positive impact on people’s lives over this time. The ways we have continued to evolve and develop how we are governed has also led to real improvements for people.

Carnegie UK was established as an organisation before there was universal suffrage, which was introduced in 1928. Select Committees were established in the late ‘70s to provide enhanced scrutiny and oversight of parliamentary activity. Devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the late ‘90s decentralised democracy and regalvanised policy making for local impact. The Human Rights Act in 1998 gave citizens enforceable rights in court and the creation of the Supreme Court in 2009 reinforced the independence of our judiciary. Reforms to both the structure and culture of how we govern ourselves continue to this day, with further mayoral devolution planned in England and emerging digital or participatory democracy initiatives aimed at improving the accessibility and efficiency of public services.

This is all to say that it can be easy at times to lose sight of how much positive and progressive change there has been and how positive and impactful public policy can be in people’s lives. There is a lesson in this for any government struggling with either the challenges of incumbency or the desire to show impact at scale for the electorate.

Disruption doesn’t have to be regressive and blunt: it can be deliberate, careful and inclusive while still being radical and ambitious.

There always are and always will be challenges to overcome and it is certainly true that the path to continually improving our collective wellbeing is not quick, easy or linear. But it is one worth travelling because the prize of better wellbeing for people in the UK and Ireland is huge. It might feel that the kind of shift in how we do government that I’ve sought to describe in this series is too big a change to feel optimistic about, but as John Kennedy said in 1963: “Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

At Carnegie UK we believe that putting wellbeing at the heart of decision making is not something that is just a nice to have, but an urgent necessity for a future where policy making can still help solve real problems. Because wellbeing approaches to government are fundamentally grounded in understanding people’s needs, they are effective tools for bridging divides and focussing on people and place. It is an approach to governing that actively grapples with complexity and policy trade-offs to try and ensure we all have what we need to live well.

This is why we think putting wellbeing at the heart of decision making matters and why it will continue to inform our work for the coming years. Next up I will try and detail what this could look like in practice and, crucially, how we can make it happen.