Powers shared, futures secured
Councils should “seize the moment” for devolution with the arrival of former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham as Prime Minister.
Joanne Roney CBE, Managing Director of Birmingham City Council, and formerly Chief Executive of Manchester City Council, told the LGA’s annual conference she was “hugely excited” and wanted to see a “rapid advancement” of devolved powers to places.
“I genuinely think this is a golden opportunity for local government to lead in and fix the things that have always been a challenge for us, working with our private and public sector partners to co-design systems that work for people in our places.
“The test of it will be whether our people feel anything is different. The challenge for us will be to keep them on the journey, because it won’t happen overnight.”
Will Garton, Director General for Local Government, Growth and Communities at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), said it was “an exciting time to be a localist”, with a new administration “that really gets places”.
He acknowledged that, with devolution and local government organisation, plus SEND reform, neighbourhood health and much more going on, the pace and scale of change feels “overwhelming”.
But he predicted that by the end of this Parliament there will be fewer councils in exceptional support, a single layer of local government, and “massive progress” in mayoral and combined authorities, with power “out of central government and into local government”.
Rob Bridge, Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, said there were a “lot of really exciting opportunities”, but cautioned it “will take time and patience to make sure you build the right organisations”.
He said it was “vital” combined authorities were seen as part of the local government family, and that the LGA’s work supporting new ones is “really important, because there’s a lot of learning”.
It must be made easy to get devolution right, he added, to avoid others going through what Cambridgeshire and Peterborough experienced, where the combined authority was subject to Best Value notices from MHCLG.