The list of things the consider is long almost exhaustive. Most of the points have already been made, some by other people too, if you follow these things online. While there is nothing there earth-shattering, it's good to see it all nicely laid out. People dismissing everything with a sentence, are not doing it justice.
However. The report is thin on recommendations "What is to be done now?", or did I miss them really!? That really surprises me. If I were to define it in two sentences: UK central gov is ultra centralised in Whitehall (#1) (almost Stalinist in that respect!!), and then that centralised power is further held in a strangle hold by the Treasury Brain - Deep State - OBR complex (#2). So together they are like Centralisation^2.
Atm that ensures - #1 nothing can be done by anyone else, and #2 they've settled on "do nothing" b/c everything costs money, and #2 care disproportionally more about that cost, and much less about what capability assets etc that cost buys UK. Once nothing tangible is done, laziness is naturally encouraged, activity punished, and every promotion every jostling in the hierarchy becomes entirely a beauty contest, divorced from any real-word results. All this seen afar by outsider without any insider knowledge. Just listening to Rory Stewart and Dominic Cummings relying info about the inner workings of UK gov machine.
So any intervention would have to come (walking backwards) into point #2, and or at point #1.
Point #2 means smashing the power of the Treasury. They are good servant, but a bad master. No.10 (the PM) needs to re-assert itself over and above No.11 (the FinMin) by 1st-ly taking decision powers out of No.11 hands. No.10 would have to work much more on getting things done, take interest in that, and leave behind the media PR Circus it's totally devoted to atm. Just assume you will serve 1 term (or less!), drop the "permanent electioneering mode" (that nowadays the position goes into while in gov??), don't think of re-election and try get stuff done, assuming you've run out of time. Can't see how a change like that can come but directly from the top, from the PM. Supported by legislation and votes to dismantle the 1000 roadblocks, via the political power of MPs voting in Parliament.
Point #1 means decentralisation of power. UK for a long time used to have vigorous local authorities that could innovate in various ways. Admired once at the riches of local gov building in Birmingham (UK 2nd largest city). The idea that some pimply fresh graduate 20yo SpAd 120 miles away in London would be telling these people how many pencils they should buy I presume would have seemed to the people running the City gov absurd, like a Monty Python sketch to us.
Mid-term UK needs to build another 10mil strong cities agglomeration, e.g. Liverpool - Manchester - Leeds - Sheffield - Hull, by connecting them with transport links, and building housing along the links for commuting whichever way people fancy. With Birmingham half-way between this new MegaCity and the old London. So London gets some competition, and raises its game too. Atm feels London is coasting because TINA.
