In the latest in a series of essays, Simon Kaye, Director of Policy and Research at think tank Re:State, argues that it's time to widen the scope of devolution if we are to fully transform the UK state.
With the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act now law, attention turns to what comes next. There are more opportunities opening now than any advocate for devolution could have predicted a few years ago. There are also a lot more obstacles than we might have expected when we were promised a “devolution revolution” and “devolution by default”, less than two years ago.
The Act contains real progress. Strategic Authorities are now part of the statutory furniture of the English state. Mayoral areas gain clearer powers over transport, planning, housing and economic regeneration. The ‘right to request’ further powers creates a route, at least in principle, from today’s settlement to something much more ambitious.
But the big weakness is now equally clear. The removal of the backstop powers to ‘insist’ on the creation of Strategic Authorities, or to move Foundation Strategic Authorities towards mayoral governance or ‘established’ status, means the map will very likely stay incomplete. Some places will move. Some will set themselves up permanently at first basecamp. Some will never quite get their ducks in a row. The result will be something extremely familiar to the sector: another patchwork.
That creates a strategic problem. Whitehall may now increasingly speak in the language of localism, but it thinks in systems. It wants consistency, maturity and confidence that devolved institutions can absorb powers without creating new risks. A country of established mayoralties, foundation authorities, reluctant collaborations and missing geographies makes the next big leap harder. Fiscal devolution – excitingly now under active exploration at the Treasury – will be a bigger, tougher ask now. So will any effort to push the case for better alignment of public service boundaries: in too many places the call for co-terminosity will be met with a response of “what boundaries?” or “those boundaries – are you joking?”.
This creates urgent need for an ambitious sense of what the underpinning vision for future devolution should now be, along with a practical sense of how to build consistency, organisational maturity, and collective consensus on the ‘new asks’ that ought to follow the Act. We’re hard at work on a new project called the Devo Next Initiative which is designed to help fill that gap.
The opportunities extend beyond the potential for boundary alignment and fiscal devolution. For example, central government has woken up to the need for less dependence on arms-length bodies and quangos at the national scale – devolving these budgets and functions could in many cases be the smartest way to make them democratically accountable and attuned to local need.
The task now is to capitalise on this moment so that this becomes more than just the pet interest of a small set of policy wonks. And to make much of this work, the need will be for not only Strategic-scale devolution, but meaningful internal devolution within Strategic Authorities, too.
For the UK’s Core Cities, it will be crucial to avoid becoming trapped in a lowest-common-denominator debate, or end up settling for the weakest version of devolution. These are major urban systems: complex, dynamic, and already deeply engaged in strategic decision-making with repercussions beyond the borders of any individual local authority.
There is still time to shape the future of devolution. The only mistake would be if we let the contents of the new Act define the end-state… rather than the starting point.
The task now is to capitalise on this moment so that this becomes more than just the pet interest of a small set of policy wonks.
Simon Kaye Director of Policy and Research at Re:State