TRANSAS Covid-19 Expert Interviews

The scale of the crisis arising from the COVID19 pandemic was such that it impacted almost every domain of public policy. Beyond the acute phase of government response to COVID, there have been consistent attempts to frame what comes after the pandemic as the return to some kind of ‘normality’ across social and economic life. Whilst much is written on crises and models of policy change, this is usually post hoc; however in this research we were able to study changes to policy in real time as the crisis response unfolded. We present data and analysis from a unique longitudinal set of interviews undertaken between May 2020 and September 2023 with key stakeholders from the UK transport industry, a sector amongst the most profoundly impacted by the public health response to the pandemic. It explores how competing narratives of the need for either change or stability evolved, and seeks to understand how institutional settings, financial structures and resources, and professional expertise influenced policy responses. Despite there being an evident desire to see through such changes on the part of many of our interviewees, the wider governance system found it difficult if not impossible to achieve them in practice, because other components of the system worked directly against change. This ‘allure of normal’, we suggest, undermines our ability to adapt to achieve public value over the long term.