Why English devolution is fraught with difficulty | Devolution

Your editorial on Andy Burnham’s devolution plans rightly argues that greater local power must be accompanied by greater scrutiny (The Guardian view on Burnham’s devolution plans: power must be accompanied by scrutiny, 6 September).

I work as a bid manager in the third sector, applying for publicly procured contracts to deliver employment and support services. From that perspective, the increasing devolution of funding has real potential: decisions can be made closer to communities and, importantly, local organisations should have greater opportunities to deliver services.

Yet my experience is of an increasingly complicated and inconsistent commissioning landscape. Different local and combined authorities take markedly different approaches. Some have strong procurement practices, engage constructively with providers and appear well equipped to manage devolved funding. Elsewhere, processes can be fragmented, difficult to navigate and considerably less transparent. It is beginning to feel like a postcode lottery.

There is also a contradiction here. One stated benefit of devolution is the ability to engage more local suppliers, including smaller voluntary and community organisations with deep roots in the places they serve. Yet these are often the organisations least able to navigate multiple procurement portals, differing requirements and commissioning approaches. Large national organisations can resource this complexity; small local charities often cannot.

My concern is not with devolution itself. But transferring substantial sums of public money must be accompanied by investment in local commissioning expertise, procurement capacity and meaningful scrutiny.

As more funding moves away from Whitehall, we should ask not simply where power sits, but whether every place has the capacity to exercise it well.
Haile Reed
Birmingham

In your editorial, you focus rightly on accountability, but overlook something more fundamental: whether local authorities currently have the capability and capacity to deliver devolution at all.

England is already midway through reorganising local government, with 185 councils being reshaped across 21 areas into new unitary authorities, alongside six new mayoral authorities. Disruption is inevitable.

This is happening against a backdrop of serious financial strain. Eight councils have issued section 114 “bankruptcy” notices in the last six years, compared with almost none in the 18 years before that. In a 2024 survey, the Local Government Information Unit found 51% of councils thought it likely they would issue such a notice within five years.

Layering new devolved responsibilities on to institutions that are simultaneously being dismantled and rebuilt, and in many cases barely solvent, risks devolving responsibility faster than those institutions can actually deliver it. Devolution may well be the right destination, but the sequencing matters.
Alan Coppin
Former Crown Representative, Cabinet Office

Lamenting the decline of local media, your editorial proposes “a tax on social media giants to fund local journalism”.

Yes please. The Hastings Independent Press (HIP), a professional-quality, bi-weekly, 24-page newspaper written by and for the community, has somehow survived 11 years and 310 issues. Edited by an all-volunteer editorial team, who mentor and support new writers as well as produce the paper, HIP has no premises, no equipment and no grant funding, relying on advertising from small businesses – a diminishing source of revenue as they battle falling income and rising costs.

Funding from “the socials” would make all the difference to our grassroots collective. To stop living hand to mouth, to plan issues, perhaps even find people to deliver 7,000 copies of the paper to shops instead of doing it ourselves. We can dream.
David Young
St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex