England precept rules change under 2026 Devolution Act
Sometimes the most important government changes arrive in the driest paperwork. According to the legislation.gov.uk text, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 (Commencement No. 4) Regulations 2026 were made on 28 October 2026 and bring section 12 of the Act into force on 13 November 2026.\n\nJim McMahon, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, signed the regulations on the same day. For readers, the key point is simple: this measure does not create a new devolution system from scratch. It switches on one part of a law Parliament has already passed.
If that sounds oddly technical, it helps to know what a commencement regulation does. Parliament often passes a large Act first and then starts different sections at different times. That is why this instrument is called Commencement No. 4: it is the fourth set of regulations used to bring parts of the 2026 Act into force.\n\nThe legal power for this comes from section 108(6) of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026. In plain English, ministers are using a power written into the Act itself to decide when this particular change starts.
The change being switched on is section 12, which deals with precepts for mayoral combined authorities and CCAs. A precept is a charge an authority can ask to be collected alongside council tax, so it is really about how certain public bodies raise money for their work.\n\nThe explanatory note says the old restriction allowed precepts to be issued only for mayoral functions. From 13 November 2026, that restriction is removed. That does not automatically tell you a bill will rise on that date, but it does widen the legal basis on which these bodies can set a precept.
This is where the devolution language can lose people, so it is worth slowing down. A mayoral combined authority is a regional body made up of more than one council, usually with a directly elected mayor. A CCA, or combined county authority, is a similar arrangement used to organise powers across a wider area.\n\nIn practice, these bodies may oversee things like transport, skills, housing or local growth across several councils at once. So when the rules on precepts change, the question is not just legal housekeeping. It is about how regional government pays for the work it has been asked to do.
One safeguard stays in place. The explanatory note says the law still requires a separate component for any police and crime commissioner functions exercised by the mayor.\n\nThat matters because it stops everything being folded into one blurred figure. If a mayor also carries police responsibilities, that part must still be shown separately rather than disappearing inside a wider precept. For anyone trying to read a local bill or follow local spending, that separation is a small but important point about transparency.
The legislation.gov.uk note also explains that section 12 amends three earlier laws: section 40 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992, section 107G of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009, and section 41 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023.\n\nYou do not need to memorise those titles to see what is happening. This is Parliament tidying older finance and devolution rules so they match the newer system created by the 2026 Act. It is the sort of change that looks minor on paper but matters because public bodies can only act if the law clearly lets them.
The government says no separate Impact Assessment has been produced for these regulations because no, or no significant, effect on the private, voluntary or public sector is expected. It also points readers to the Impact Assessment for the main English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 instead.\n\n**What this means:** ministers are treating this statutory instrument as a machinery change, not a headline policy launch. But machinery matters. When you hear talk about devolution, this is the practical end of it: who can raise money, what they can raise it for, and how clearly those charges must be shown to the public.