Five takeaways from the devolution white paper
Billed as the “biggest transfer of power out of Westminster this century”, the white paper sets out how the government plans to put the destiny of England’s regions in their own hands.
Here are five key points from the eagerly anticipated, 118-page English Devolution White Paper. Alternatively, you can read it in full.
Strategic Authorities
Local government as we know it will be overhauled, allowing for devolution to spread to all areas of England.
Councils in areas where a combined authority does not already exist – such as Cheshire and Warrington – are being asked to put forward ideas for strategic authorities, taking into account economic geographies, current and potential travel-to-work patterns, and local labour markets.
The default assumption is for these strategic authority areas to have a combined population of 1.5m or above where possible.
If areas cannot agree on the best way to form a strategic authority, the government will be able to step in and do it for them.
More powers for mayors
Combined authority mayors like Steve Rotheram in Liverpool City Region and Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester will be given additional powers – akin to those that the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has – to enact change and drive growth in their areas.
They include:
- Development management powers that include the ability to call in planning applications of strategic importance
- Ability to charge a “Mayoral Levy” to ensure that new developments come with the necessary associated infrastructure. A Mayoral Community Infrastructure Levy was introduced in Greater London in 2012 to help finance the Elizabeth Line
- Control of grant funding for regeneration and housing delivery and ability to set the strategic direction of any future affordable housing programme.
Underpinning the above are integrated settlements, which are effectively a single funding pot that mayors can spend however they see fit.
Greater Manchester and West Midlands combined authorities are in line to receive theirs in 2025 with others following in subsequent years.
The government hopes fiscal devolution will end local areas having to “slalom between pots of money to deliver the answer they already know is right”.
Spatial plans for all
All areas, with or without a strategic authority, will have to produce a spatial development strategy similar to the Places for Everyone plan in Greater Manchester.
Another tactic aimed at speeding up the delivery of homes is moving Homes England “to a more regionalised model” to allow the agency to better respond to local needs.
The white paper states that mayors are “integral” to delivering the government’s 1.5m homes target. Devolving responsibility for housing delivery to regions will give the government someone else to blame if the target is not met.
Rail control
As expected, Labour’s devolution white paper sets out a plan to make it easier for combined authority areas to take control of their bus networks as has been seen in Liverpool City Region, Greater Manchester, and West Yorkshire.
However, the draft bill also sets out plans for mayors to have more control over the rail network.
Mayors will have a “clear right to request greater devolution of services, infrastructure, and station control where it would support a more integrated network”, the white paper states.
This is good news for Andy Burnham, who wants to expand the Bee Network to include heavy rail lines to make travel cheaper for workers commuting into the city centre by train.
Standardisation
Labour plans to swap out the current “devolution by deal” approach, which offers deals on a case-by-case basis, in favour of a more systematic approach.
The current system has resulted in an “inconsistent patchwork of powers, coverage and accountability” meaning powers vary between places.
To do this, the government will introduce a “devolution framework” that will standardise combined authority governance at make it easy to understand what they can and cannot do.
The white paper states that: “Established Mayoral Strategic Authorities will be able to propose, individually or with others, additional functions to be added to the statutory devolution framework, or piloted locally, in order to deliver their areas of competence.”
Having the powers is one thing but having the ability , vision , and combative skills to utilise them is also as important.
In Liverpool we have a Mayor who is a journeyman, while Manchester has someone exceptional who can handle the media and is extremely articulate.
Steve hardly ever projects himself and sits in the shadows and seems to shy away from bold but achievable strategies eg a tram network. Meanwhile Andy is never off tv, whether its Kuenssberg , Sky News, Newsnight, Question Time, Radio4
and so on.
Come on Steve if your not at the top table you’ll never get heard.
By Anonymous
More taxes coming from Burnham for his tinpot ideas!!
By Manc
And is Rotheram requiring control over the profitable City Lines in Liverpool?
Or is he intending on letting Burnham snap them up instead?
By John
Local regional identities being finally killed off. A good thing I self-identify as an auto-sexual.
By No more a Cheshire lad.
Sounds like Stockport will be forced into PfE mk 2.
By Rich X
It would be nice to see some actual evidence of devolution working. A range of vanity schemes and poorly delivered projects in many cases. Real devolution would involve more money going directly to Councils rather than the additional tier of costly government that has been created by devolution.
By Anonymous
How will a mayoral levy on development in the north of England help to accelerate development where viability gaps are already enormous? Has any of this been thought through?
By Anonymous
What’s with all the negativity? These seem sensible and long overdue changes in the most centralised country around.
By John Keyes
This is great news to help level up the country. Local control of planning, capital grant funding and transport is the key to greater regional economic growth.
By Anonymous
Burnham is the natural successor to Starmer, who is pretty useless, let’s face it, so keeping Burnham from sabre-rattling from Deansgate, is important as he is waiting to pounce on every betrayal. I personally do not know how incorporating the trains, into the Beeline will work? If people are coming from Huddersfield, will they alight at Greenfield and get on a yellow train? A better idea would be for Merseyside, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and GM to have a service managed by all the four mayors, with a zone system, like in London. This would make transport seamless, between all four areas and in essence was George Osborne’s original idea.
By Elephant
Giving power to mayors is actually the opposite of devolution as far as Labour is concerned.
Being generally top-down control freaks, they were never keen on devolution when Osborne (who he?) was pushing it but have since discovered that putting what power there is is the hands of one person works rather well when the Labour candidate is effectively chosen by the leadership, and won’t argue with London for fear of being kept off the shortlist next time (as in the North East).
Recent candidate selections have shown how this is going and at least in the big Labour-voting cities, more Rotherams and no more Burnhams will be the exciting way forward.
By Square Albert
“All areas, with or without a strategic authority, will have to produce a spatial development strategy similar to the Places for Everyone plan in Greater Manchester.”
Actually – they’ll be similar to the Liverpool City Region Spatial Development Strategy on Merseyside and of course, the London Plan (the PfE being a glorified joint DPD). Also (ref. Stockport, Oldham and others), they’ll be removing power for individual LPAs to veto the plan – instead moving to majority voting.
By Sir Planorak the almighty
Progress is easy . . . just remove all the councillors
By allergic to squirrels