The next phase of the Sure Start story comes in four interconnecting parts: getting programmes established on the ground; dealing with a change of ministers; the next Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR); and setting up the evaluation. All of these were to have profound effects on Sure Start. The first 60 trailblazer areas were announced in 1999; hence, the most important job from 1999 to 2002 was getting 250 Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) established, spending money and delivering Sure Start in local areas. At the same time, the wider business of government continued. The first reshuffle of government ministers took place in October 1999, and work was starting on the 2000 CSR. It seemed odd even at the time, and even stranger in retrospect, that while we were struggling to get our initial allocation of funding out the door, and had not yet even commissioned the evaluation, we were required to make recommendations to ministers about the programme budget for 2001–04.

Commissioning of the evaluation was also highly fraught. Indeed, the evaluation story is complex enough to warrant two chapters: Chapter Five on how it was commissioned and Chapter Eight on the results.

Getting going: local delivery

The first and probably most important task was to get 250 SSLPs up and running. Ministers wanted visible change on the ground, and civil servants were tasked with setting up a complex approvals process that would put significant amounts of public money into the hands of sometimes local groups that had little or no experience in setting up new services with funding direct from the centre of government. It is no wonder that the civil servants were more comfortable in dealing with a local authority, or at least a major charity, as the accountable body for SSLPs. Ministers, on the other hand, were very clear that they wanted very high levels of community engagement in the planning and running of the new programmes. There was a tension between spending large amounts of public money fast and ensuring local people had a substantial role to play. Other government programmes like the New Deal for Communities were facing very similar challenges.