Beyond the Headlines: Making English Devolution Work 

Earlier this week myself and Carnegie UK colleagues were pleased to join the team from Re:State for their third annual conference on re-imaging the local state. This year’s event took place in Liverpool just 24 hours before the Chancellor made her Budget statement and as England wrestles with the mechanics of a renewed “devolution revolution”.  

Reflecting on the event, which was filled with great discussion and insightful speakers, I was thinking about how the experience of policy work in Scotland and Wales over the past quarter century offer practical, sometimes uncomfortable, but vital lessons for those now grappling with greater devolution to English regions.

If the goal is better outcomes for places and people, not just an institutional reshuffle or tokenistic decentralisation effort, then policymakers must look beyond headlines or single fiscal policy leavers to three important realities about making devolution work: measurement, capacity, and democratic legitimacy. 

Measuring what matters  

First, measurement. The most recent insight from Carnegie UK’s recent Life in the UK index underlines a painfully clear finding: that for far too many across the UK, life is not improving. This matters because devolution is ultimately a governance reform aimed at improving people’s lives in places, not just transferring functions. Measuring what matters, and using those measures to shape choices, budgets and performance needs to be front and centre of any devolution model. Scotland and Wales have both experimented with wellbeing or outcomes-oriented policy approaches; England’s devolution agenda should enable and encourage mayors and combined authorities to develop wellbeing metrics that connect local revenue raising and spending to local outcomes that matter to local people. 

Matching resource to responsibilities 

Second, devolution without capacity is a hollow promise. Governments and legislatures in Scotland and Wales have shown both the benefits and limits of having distinct policy levers. Each nation has pursued different approaches on key social, environmental and economic issues, yet they have been policy choices constrained by fiscal resources and institutional capacity. Devolution within England must ensure that the powers that are transferred to local areas are backed by fiscal frameworks and resources to match their intent. Matching resources to responsibilities means investing in policy and practice capability at a regional level, and ensuring technical systems (data, procurement, workforce pipelines) are in place to turn formal powers into real delivery. This issue was a recurring theme of attendees at the Liverpool event and something that local mayor, Steve Rotheram, spoke passionately about in his keynote address. 

Liverpool Mayor, Steve Rotheram at Re:State’s Reimagining the Local State conference

Bringing people with you  

Thirdly, legitimacy and public buy-in matter. Devolution in Scotland and Wales has reshaped political identities and expectations over time, sometimes consolidating trust in local institutions, sometimes generating friction with the centre. Where local leaders can demonstrate that new powers translate into visible improvements (affordable housing, transport, jobs, social support), then they stand the best chance of ensuring that legitimacy follows.  

But reforms that look like top-down imposition or that create uneven geographies of power – ‘islands’ of mayoral authority in a sea of unshifted wider governance – risk alienating voters and producing patchy outcomes. England’s devolution White Paper proposes extending mayoral models widely; doing so without a clear and coherent narrative on the vision and benefits for local places would be a strategic error. This is particularly true in relation to ensuring that new Strategic Authorities align with and contribute to the proposed Local Government Outcome Framework, which is acknowledged in the draft framework as a current gap. In addition, building in local evaluation capacity so mayors can pilot, learn fast, and scale what works, rather than repeating costly policy experiments in silos, should be a priority. 

Change means difference 

Finally, it is important to both expect and plan for policy divergence. Scotland and Wales increasingly use their devolved competencies to test different policy mixes (differing child poverty measures are a live example). England should view this not as a threat or challenge, but as a national asset: policy pluralism can generate evidence and innovation that benefits the whole UK, as long as there are clear channels for learning and sharing what works.  

If English devolution is to be more than a slogan in White Papers, it must be judged by whether it improves people’s lives in measurable ways, builds durable institutional competence, and sustains democratic legitimacy. England’s mayors and councillors will have to earn that trust and policymakers at Westminster should design a devolution architecture that enables them to do so. The prize is a more resilient, responsive and enabling state that works to improve people’s lives. But this won’t happen by itself. There are important lessons and insight to be learned from 25 years of devolved governance to the north and west of England’s borders.