What England’s devolution plans mean for local power

In a gov.uk speech on remaking the state, the Government begins with a sharp contrast. The UK is the world’s fifth biggest economy and the second biggest in Europe after Germany, yet seven out of ten of the poorest regions in Northern Europe are in England. The speech also points to London: average incomes are high, but more than one in four Londoners live in poverty, around a third above the national average. Let’s put that plainly. A country can be rich overall and still leave whole communities stuck. The speech argues that to understand why, we have to look not only at wealth but at where power sits, who gets to make decisions, and how far those decisions are from the people who live with the results.

The main claim is that England is too centralised. In other words, too many major choices are still made in Whitehall, even when the effects are felt on local streets, bus routes, housing estates and high streets. The speech says that countries where power is spread more evenly, such as Germany, do not show the same level of regional inequality. **What this means:** when power is concentrated in one place, local areas can end up waiting for permission, funding or attention from the centre. If decisions about your transport, housing or town centre are taken miles away, it is easier for local knowledge to be missed. The speech links that to a bigger democratic problem too: if promises keep arriving from far away and little changes where you live, trust in politics becomes much harder to rebuild.

From there, the Government lays out a three-part answer. First comes devolution by default, which means power should move from Whitehall to regions unless there is a strong reason not to. Second comes place-based delivery, where services are joined up locally and budgets are pooled so money can be spent on what an area actually needs. The speech says this builds on neighbourhood working and the earlier Total Place idea, which tried to organise services around places rather than departments. Third comes a shift in power towards service users, so the people using services have more say than the institutions providing them. **What this means:** if you hear the word subsidiarity and want to switch off, don’t. It is a long word for a simple rule: decisions should be taken as close as sensibly possible to the people affected by them. The Government argues that this can also produce more preventive public services, because local people often spot problems earlier than distant systems do.

The speech presents the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act as the starting point for that change, not the finishing line. Under the plan, mayors gain new powers over transport, planning, housing and regeneration, with the aim of helping regions grow in a way that is broader and fairer. The message is that devolution should not be a special favour for a few places; every region that wants it should be able to have it. There is also a push for fiscal devolution, which means giving local leaders more control over money as well as responsibilities. The first example in the speech is the Overnight Visitor Levy. England sees more than 130 million overnight visits each year, and the argument is that local areas should be able to use some of that visitor economy to pay for local priorities rather than depending only on small, fragmented grants from the centre. The speech notes that this kind of charge is already common in Europe and North America.

Another idea here is that devolution should deepen over time. Through the Right to Request, mayors can ask for more powers as their capacity grows. The speech says the first round ended in May, and that all mayors will now have the final say on mass transit projects in their regions, including trams. That may sound narrow, but transport choices often shape access to jobs, schools, shops and public life. The Government also wants public services to line up more neatly with local boundaries. Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire are set to have Deputy Mayors for Health, linking health more closely with housing, transport and other parts of daily life. Liverpool, South Yorkshire and the North East are named as early test areas for new powers in education, the arts and flood management. The speech adds that with one in six young people not in employment, education or training, local control over skills and employment support has become more urgent. It points to the Netherlands, which has localised similar services, as an example worth learning from.

The speech points to integrated settlements as another practical step. These would give mayors one flexible budget covering transport, regeneration, housing, skills, the environment, health and public service reform. The promise is less Whitehall micromanagement and more room for local leaders to connect problems instead of treating them as separate boxes. The examples given are deliberately concrete. In Liverpool City Region, the speech says mayors are already using this freedom to build new stations. In West Yorkshire, it says local control is helping to open up land for housebuilding. In Greater Manchester, it points to bus network upgrades. That matters because, as the speech argues, most people judge politics by what they can see around them: the state of their street, the home they can afford and whether daily life feels easier or harder. This is an attempt to turn devolution into change people can actually feel.

One of the strongest parts of the speech comes when it turns from structures to lived experience. The speaker reflects on work as a councillor in Brixton, where a housing estate set up a residents’ management organisation so housing managers answered to an elected residents’ board. The claim is that services improved sharply once the people using them had a direct line of control. Two other local examples push the same lesson. Community groups, churches, businesses, voluntary organisations and young people were able to cut violent youth offending when the council opened funding and spaces to their ideas. A struggling food market was revived when a social enterprise worked with traders, owners and the council, while empty units were offered to start-up businesses on little or no rent for their first months. In public service language, that is often called co-production: people shaping services with institutions rather than just receiving them. The teaching point is clear. People are not just recipients of policy; they can help shape it.

That same thinking sits behind the Pride in Place programme. According to the speech, almost 300 of the poorest communities are set to receive up to £20 million each to improve life and life chances, but local people rather than politicians will decide how the money is spent. This is where the article’s biggest democratic claim appears. Devolution is not meant to stop at the mayor’s office or the town hall door. **What this means:** the speech calls this double devolution. Power should move down from Whitehall to regions, and then further down to residents, service users and communities themselves. The Government also accepts that this only works if people have the support and resources to use that power well. If the plan works, the prize is larger than tidier government. It would mean growth shared more evenly, public services that answer more directly to real needs, and a politics that starts to rebuild trust because people can actually feel decisions changing the places where they live. The speech ends on that note: if the state is rebuilt in this way, the country will be better placed to face a changing world with more confidence and more hope.