In praise of the defunct What Works Centre for Wellbeing

It feels faintly ironic that an organisation designed to understand how to improve wellbeing has had to close. But that is the situation that unfolded last month as the trustees of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing—of which I was one from the beginning—realised that nobody wanted to fund us anymore. Sadly, we could not do enough via other income generation paths, like consultancy, to earn our keep. 

The origins of the Centre were rooted in Prime Minister David Cameron’s interest in the idea of wellbeing, alongside a passion for evidence-based practice and what works centres from the Cabinet Secretary of the time, Jeremy Heywood. The Office for National Statistics were persuaded to start collecting data on wellbeing and the centre was set up with funding from various departments—notably Public Heath England and the ESRC as a commissioning partner for the academic research. However, in the post Cameron era the government lost interest in the Centre and after a period of support from the National Lottery Community Fund funding dried up. It also became painfully clear that no government department was willing to take responsibility for wellbeing (even DLUHC despite having it as one of its 12 Levelling Up Missions).   

But this is not a sad story. The achievements of the centre have been great—although attribution is always difficult to prove, contribution is very clear. It has helped to raise the profile of the subject, made it more acceptable and respected in academic circles, boosted its standing in the charity sector, and encouraged companies to consider the business case for improving staff wellbeing. Wellbeing has even made itself into the Treasury Green Book, which guides economic decision-making, thanks to the work of the Centre (and especially our terrific ex-Director Nancy Hey).  

It is worth noting that in some places I think the push towards wellbeing has gone a bit too far. I have argued that it is dangerous to use wellbeing to try and convert measures of wellbeing into a monetary equivalent (e.g. using ‘wellbys’, the wellbeing equivalent of Qalys–quality adjusted life years–in health). And there has at times been some confusion around the differences between individual self-reported wellbeing, and concepts like community wellbeing. Wellbeing at work has turned out to be big business for some consultancies and there is, I fear, a fair bit of snake oil selling around this, as in other areas of the increasingly popular ‘cult’ of wellbeing. It has also become excessively linked to mental health, a crucial issue but one that is a relative of, not a synonym for, wellbeing. However, it is good that employers now think much harder about employee wellbeing.  

Has the centre managed to cut through and is wellbeing now influencing policy?  

When I was asked by the Centres patron, Gus O’Donnell, to apply to join the founding board I said I was dubious that it ever would. Could I picture a politician standing up and saying: ‘I know this will reduce incomes, but I know it will improve wellbeing’? That was a tough test, and it has not yet been passed in this country. But I do think that it has influenced some thinking. Indeed, as an old, hardened Treasury official who worked on versions of the Green Book for investment appraisal way back, I am astonished and delighted that wellbeing has now been added as something that should be assessed when looking at investment appraisals.  We have had politicians, including Keir Starmer, talking about how important they think it is—we shall see what he does now as PM. Honestly, I don’t think wellbeing is ever going to go away now and the Centre deserves a lot of credit for making that happen. 

In the end, we closed down the Centre pretty well. It’s not a nice thing to have to do but we secured most of the websites by passing them on to other places, we looked after the staff as best we could, and we published a terrific legacy report. As I said on a message on X, being a founding trustee of the Centre and seeing it right through is one my better contributions to the world. I hope its legacy lives on.