Before I ran a charity, I spent years working alongside patients trying to find their way through the health system. What stayed with me was how often the person in front of me had more to offer than the system was set up to notice. They had knowledge about their own lives, ideas about what would help, and a willingness to take part. Most of that went unrecorded. The forms had no box for it.
Britain is good at counting pressure. We track waiting lists, unemployment figures, poverty, service demand, funding gaps and vacancies. These numbers matter. But they describe a country under strain. They tell us very little about what is being lost before it ever reaches a statistic.
The national mood makes this harder to ignore. More In Common's recent work shows a record share of Britons saying the country is divided. Government, too, is talking more seriously about cohesion, place, work, health and public service reform. Beneath that sits an older question: whether people can get on with their lives in ways that let them contribute, earn, learn, care, recover and belong.
The numbers we do not keep
There is no national figure for the young person whose confidence quietly narrows in the years before they look for work. By the time they appear in the unemployment data, a lot has already happened that we never measured. The same is true of the carer who steps back from a paid job to look after a parent and finds the door has closed behind them. We see the labour market gap. We rarely count the experience that left it.
People with mental health problems often miss out on income they are entitled to, because the process of claiming it is harder to manage than the condition itself. Small organisations hold detailed knowledge of what is happening on the ground, and are passed over because they do not describe it in the language funding rewards. None of this shows up as a loss. It shows up as nothing at all. We do not plan around things we have chosen not to count.
Potential is local before it is anything else
Where I work, in Hertfordshire, potential is not an abstract idea. It is a specific person in a specific town. I think of a man in his fifties who had not worked for years after a period of poor mental health. He started by helping at a community lunch, then began organising it, and is now back in part-time paid work. That did not happen because a programme processed him. It happened because someone local saw what he could do and followed up.
This is what I mean by lived-life logic. The reasons people do or do not take part are usually ordinary and close to home. They are about whether help arrived at the right moment, in a form that made sense. That is hard to capture from a distance, and easy to see up close. And the costs of getting it wrong are not private. People who could work are kept further from employment. Businesses struggle to recruit while people nearby stay disconnected from routes into work. Much of it surfaces later in health, when people who feel stuck or isolated appear in GP surgeries and crisis services, and we pay more to respond to problems that earlier support might have reduced.
A place-based productivity agenda
Productivity is usually discussed in national terms, through infrastructure, investment, regulation, tax and business growth. But productivity also depends on whether people can take part in the life around them. A parent who can access flexible training is part of the productivity agenda, and so is a young person who finds a route into work experience. We separate economic policy from social policy too neatly. Confidence, belonging, skills, health and money worries all decide whether people can move forward.
A measure of what we release
None of this is a new complaint about GDP. Bhutan has measured Gross National Happiness for decades, and Britain has collected its own national wellbeing statistics since 2011. They make a fair point: a single economic figure does not capture how a country is doing. But those measures sit at the national level, and lean towards how people feel rather than what a place is building. My argument is more practical, and it is local.
So I want to put a proposal on the table, not only a question. Every place already keeps an account of its pressure. I think every place should also keep an account of its potential: the capability it is building, set beside the demand it is managing.
Five things would tell us most. How many people moved closer to work, even if they are not yet employed. How many carers, disabled people and people with health conditions stayed connected to learning, work or activity. How many volunteers were matched well and moved into leadership, rather than being treated only as extra capacity. How many residents moved from receiving help to shaping or delivering it. And how many small local groups became stronger and more influential.
These sit between systems, which is what makes them hard. Employment support sees one part, health another, councils the demand, charities the confidence and trust. A measure of this kind cannot be owned by one institution. It has to be held across a place. That is harder, and it is also more honest.
This is wider than any one organisation
No single body releases potential on its own. Individuals bring experience, time and ambition. Local groups bring trust, reach and insight. Businesses bring jobs, placements and a clear view of the skills they need. Public services bring scale, responsibility and data, and can shift earlier towards prevention if their frameworks let them. Funders can back longer work that builds confidence and progression. Charities and social enterprises can connect these worlds, close enough to people to understand the real barriers and to institutions to help redesign support.
For Communities 1st, this sits underneath the strategy we have set for 2026 to 2030: strong local places where everyone can get involved and make a difference. But the argument is wider than us. We are one part of a larger answer.
The 2030 test
By 2030, every local area should be able to answer a short set of plain questions.
1. Are more people able to contribute in ways that matter to them?
2. Are fewer losing confidence because the systems around them are too hard to navigate?
3. Are carers, disabled people and people with health conditions supported to stay connected to opportunity?
4. Are volunteers being developed as future leaders?
5. Are small local groups gaining influence, rather than only being asked to deliver?
If we could answer those properly, we would make different decisions. We would invest earlier, and value confidence as a real outcome. We would judge a place not only by the pressure it manages, but by the potential it releases.
The choice in front of us
I am realistic about how hard this is. Measuring potential is messier than measuring deficits, and the partnerships built around it are slow and sometimes frustrating. I have done this work long enough to know that willing words come easily, and that follow-through is where most good intentions fall away.
After more than twenty years across health, social care, volunteering and local services, I have learned to be careful with optimism. I remain optimistic all the same. The potential is there. What it needs is for us to decide it is worth measuring, and then to behave as though we meant it.
By 2030, the places that thrive may be those that learn to count what they help people become.