Street works charging powers move to English mayors

According to legislation.gov.uk, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 (Commencement No. 3) Regulations 2026 were made on 26 October 2026 and take effect on 29 October 2026. The text is short, but the change matters: part of the power over street works charging is moving away from the Secretary of State and towards some English mayors. Justin Madders, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Transport, signed the regulations on behalf of the Secretary of State. That is your first clue that this is less about potholes and cones appearing overnight, and more about who gets to make certain decisions from now on.

If commencement regulations sound obscure, here is the useful bit. When Parliament passes a major Act, not every clause has to start on the same day. Ministers can switch on different sections at different times. This set of regulations is the third commencement instrument under the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026. On 29 October 2026, it brings into force section 26 so far as it connects to Schedule 9, paragraph 1 of Schedule 9 so far as it connects to paragraph 2, and paragraph 2 of Schedule 9 itself. That may feel like legal shorthand, but it is really the machinery that turns a policy decision into something that can actually operate.

The part now being switched on amends sections 74A and 74B of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991. Those are the rules used when highway authorities deal with charges linked to street works on roads they maintain. The word 'undertaker' can sound odd if you do not spend your time reading transport law. Here it means the organisation carrying out the street works under the legal framework, often the kind of body doing utility or infrastructure works in the road. **What matters here is not a brand-new fee appearing everywhere at once, but who gets to approve a local authority to use an existing charging power.**

Before this change, the Secretary of State held that approval role. From 29 October 2026, that role is devolved for areas with a Mayor of a Mayoral Combined Authority or a Mayoral Combined County Authority. In those places, the mayor becomes the appropriate authority to approve, by Order, a highway authority to charge an undertaker for street works. That is a small sentence with a large democratic point behind it. Devolution often arrives not with headlines, but through dry legal transfers like this one, where a decision that used to sit in Whitehall is passed to a regional elected figure.

The regulations also make clear that this is not universal. If a highway authority is not part of one of those mayoral structures, the Secretary of State remains the appropriate authority. The same is true if an application for approval is submitted before the first mayor of the relevant authority has actually taken office. **What this means in practice:** not every council in England suddenly gets the same new power on the same day. The system now splits in two. Some areas will route these approvals through their mayoral office, while others will still go through central government.

There is another detail worth noticing. These regulations do not commence paragraphs 3 and 4 of Schedule 9. So even within this one part of the 2026 Act, ministers are only switching on selected provisions, not the whole package. The explanatory note also 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. That does not mean the change is meaningless. It means ministers are treating it as an administrative transfer of responsibility rather than a major new cost or spending measure. The main Act, the note says, already has an impact assessment.

For readers, this is a useful reminder of how power moves in England. Sometimes the most important question is not 'what is the new rule?' but 'who now gets to make the call?' In this case, the answer changes on 29 October 2026 for some mayoral areas and stays the same elsewhere. If you are tracking devolution, local government or transport policy, this is the line to remember: street works charging approval is becoming more local in some parts of England, but only for the slice of law now brought into force. It is technical, yes, but it is also a clear example of how Westminster decisions are being redistributed below national level.