Public policies are inherently spatial in nature yet their geographical dimensions remain frequently underdeveloped and marginalised in policy practice and scholarship. This paper reflects critically on these common spatial blind spots, using as its case study example the UK’s Work Programme employment support policy. Whilst social ‘creaming’ (i.e. deliberate prioritisation) and ‘parking’ (i.e. deliberate neglect) by providers of differently placed service users within public policies is widely acknowledged and researched, this paper introduces to the literature equivalent but neglected risks around spatial creaming and parking of differently positioned local areas. The paper’s framing identifies that the Work Programme’s particular treatment of place exposes areas to high risks of spatial creaming and parking. Building on these critical spatial foundations, the paper moves on to present sophisticated statistical analyses of official and comprehensive Work Programme data. These original analyses demonstrate systematic spatial inequality in outcomes and financial resource that are at the expense of already more deprived geographies and that are consistent with our spatial creaming and parking hypotheses. The paper highlights the need to consider more fully the role of place within public policy practice and scholarship.

公共政策本质上是空间性的，但其地理范围在政策实践和学术研究中经常不发达和边缘化。本文以英国的《工作计划》就业支持政策为例，对这些常见的空间盲点进行了批判性的反映。尽管公共政策中不同位置的服务用户的提供者对社会的“尖叫”（即故意的优先排序）和“停车”（即故意的忽视）得到了广泛的认可和研究，但本文向文献介绍了围绕空间的等效但被忽略的风险在不同位置放置奶油和停车。该论文的框架表明，工作计划对位置的特殊处理使区域面临空间奶油和停车的高风险。在这些关键的空间基础上，本文继续介绍官方和综合工作计划数据的复杂统计分析。这些原始分析表明，结果和财务资源存在系统性的空间不平等，这些不平等的代价是本已匮乏的地理区域，并且与我们的空间假设和停车假设相符。本文强调需要更充分地考虑地方在公共政策实践和奖学金中的作用。