By FGF Executive Director Adam Terry — originally published in The MJ
Andy Burnham’s plans to devolve new powers to mayors across England have largely been met with praise, as hopeful indicators that Britain is about to get — after over a decade of false starts — the change that people keep voting for.
That praise has not been universal, though. Scepticism has been brewing in the corridors of Westminster with critics worrying whether mayors are up to the task, if there will be adequate scrutiny, and what will happen if things go wrong.
It would be foolish to dismiss these concerns. Though there are many highly effective actors in local and regional government up and down the country, things can and do go awry. This partly reflects the straitened financial circumstances in which local authorities find themselves — often through no fault of their own — though in some cases poor management decisions have also played a role. Those who question the wisdom of giving yet more power and responsibility to local and regional decision makers aren’t entirely without cause.
And yet, over the past 40 years, Westminster has demonstrated that concentrating power at the centre — even with all the oversight honed through hundreds of years of democracy — does not protect Britain from government failure. Evidence of this failure is not difficult to find. The Public Accounts Committee found that central government recorded £6.6bn in losses in 2024–25, including cancelled projects, write-offs, debts no longer pursued and fraud. The Ministry of Defence alone recorded £1.6bn in losses from cancelling projects.
Clearly it would be unfair to hold mayors — or any local leader — to an unrealistic, one-sided standard that Westminster itself cannot meet. That’s not to say that we must expect and tolerate failure, but that we should acknowledge that no level of government is immune to making mistakes. The bigger question is how can we build systems of government that can identify and learn from mistakes made in the past, in order to create more effective ways of governing for the future.
Getting this right is fundamental to national renewal. Britain has spent decades concentrating political and economic power in Whitehall to its cost. Growth has stagnated, along with the general public’s trust in elected officials and the belief that things can get better. While local politicians may not be inherently wiser than national politicians, they are closer to particular challenges in their area giving them a better chance of knowing how to fix them.
Critics of devolution worry that it could further alienate voters by making power and accountability more diffuse and opaque. But this is a — if not the — major problem of the current system: Whitehall officials making life-changing decisions from a distance and often from a spreadsheet. Devolution done properly could give local people true agency to elect (and get rid of) leaders who have no choice but to bear the consequences of their decisions.
This more democratic and effective system will only work if there is proper scrutiny. Anything less risks proving Westminster’s naysayers right and further weakening public trust in government. Devolution cannot simply mean moving power out of Whitehall; it must mean creating institutions that give local people genuine oversight of how that power is exercised.
At The Future Governance Forum, we have several recommendations to make this accountability meaningful. Firstly, there should be evidence-based, independent processes for assessing how well local leaders are performing, with the results presented in ways that are clear and accessible to the public. This would ensure local and strategic authorities are not only accountable to Westminster, but to the communities they serve.
Secondly, strong regional Public Accounts Committees could provide forums in which local leaders are held to account, with opportunities for input from communities and the public. And finally, procurement and contracting should be sufficiently transparent for taxpayers and journalists to see where significant sums of public money are going and what they are expected to deliver. These robust guardrails are essential if we are to give future local leaders more than tokenistic powers to serve their area.
Ultimately though, devolution should not be judged on whether it produces a perfect system; in politics, no such system exists. It should be judged on whether it gives local leaders and voters the capacity to meet the challenges of our time. If mayors can help people feel greater pride in where they live, give them a greater say in the issues that matter to them, and if it can allow regions to contribute to national economic growth, then devolution will have succeeded. And proper accountability is fundamental to that success.
