Written evidence: English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Introduction

1. The Centre for Governance and Scrutiny (CfGS) welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the Committee’s scrutiny of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. We support the Government’s intention to create a more consistent and responsive system of local government. We also agree with the Government that community empowerment must be the organising principle for reforming local and regional government in England.
2. However, for this ambition to succeed it must be backed up by strong scrutiny and accountability. These are as vital to community empowerment as the powers given to mayors, councils and communities themselves. Our evidence sets out recommendations to ensure that this principle runs through the Bill.

Executive summary

3. Based on our experience across local government, combined authorities, Parliament and Government, CfGS recommends that the Bill be amended to ensure:
a. Stronger scrutiny and accountability, with clear mechanisms to hold mayors to account for the new powers they will exercise;
b. Flexibility in governance arrangements, so that empowerment reflects local needs and priorities rather than being constrained by rigid models;
c. Robust oversight and audit, providing assurance to communities that decisions deliver value for money and are made transparently;
d. More clarity on implementation and resourcing arrangements, including on neighbourhood-governance regulations and principles, and expectations and timelines for further accountability legislation.

4. About the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny: Since our founding in 2003, CfGS has worked across councils, combined authorities, Parliament and Government to support effective scrutiny and good governance.
5. Our direct experience with councils – often those at greatest need – shows that when scrutiny and accountability are weak, governance falters, services fail, and trust erodes. But when they are strong, councils and their communities thrive.
6. Scrutiny and governance are therefore at the heart of how local democracy delivers for communities – whether those communities are at neighbourhood, local authority or combined authority level.
General Comments on the Bill
7. The Bill reforms how English local and regional government is organised. It aims to bring greater consistency to a system that is currently fragmented, with different council structures, varying devolution deals, and mixed approaches to neighbourhood involvement and decision-making. Aside from the promotion of economic development, productivity and growth, Government and others have identified an enhancement of democracy as being a key rationale of the devolution process .
8. The Bill addresses these rationales by creating three more uniform layers of place leadership: neighbourhood, unitary and strategic mayoral authorities. These are major changes that will reshape how people interact with councils, mayors and government.
9. CfGS has a number of comments and recommendations. These are both about the Bill’s standardisation and in what the Bill currently misses – namely addressing scrutiny and accountability measures that are equal to the powers the Bill creates.

Key themes

A. Strategic authorities, devolution, and place-based accountability

10. The Bill establishes a much stronger place-governing role for mayors through a variety of changes to mayoral power. These include the Bill’s introduction of Mayoral Powers of Competence. (Part 2 – all, Functions of Strategic Authorities and Mayors.)
11. Together, these measures significantly strengthen the mayoral role, enabling leaders to shape their places across seven “areas of competence” (as set out in Clause 2) and beyond. The Bill also provides for future expansion of mayoral powers, through a “right to request” additional functions from the Secretary of State. This creates a clearer codified process for devolution, but also shifts the democratic landscape.
12. However, the Bill remains largely silent on the need for greater accountability. We are conscious of reports that Government intends to bring forward in the near future a further Bill which may propose changes to the operation of Mayoral governance so as to enhance accountability – including the establishment of local Public Accounts Committee and the strengthening of the powers of overview and scrutiny committees.
13. Without those powers being on the face of this Bill, however, Mayoral governance appears unbalanced – skewed in the favour of decision-makers (especially Mayors) and with little to say about those Mayors’ wider accountabilities both to other elected politicians and to the wider communities they serve.
14. Stronger powers must go hand in hand with equally robust expectations on scrutiny. Without this balance, new powers risk undermining trust and legitimacy. This is particularly the case where the success of Mayoral governance rests so much on the personal capabilities of Mayors themselves – and the relationships that they are able to broker with others across the system .
15. Appropriate scrutiny mechanisms — independent of mayors but rooted in local communities — are vital to rebalance this new settlement . Only by boosting the independence, resource and expertise of scrutiny will the Bill achieve its ambition of empowering leaders while safeguarding democratic legitimacy, especially seen in the context of Government’s aspirations for “mission-led” approaches to public service reform . We comment further on these issues both below and in the section further on in this paper on the Local Audit Office.
16. Aside from the Government being more explicit on its intention for further legislation, including the timescales for that legislation, we think that the Bill should be amended as follows:
a. To strengthen provisions on additional powers by requiring full mayoral consent for their removal or modification by Government. This should sit alongside clearer expectations around accountability for those areas benefiting from integrated settlements (which may in due course involve greater commitments to public dialogue as a central component of decision-making, the establishment of local Public Accounts Committees , or a similar strengthening of those authorities’ overview and scrutiny functions).
b. To establish mechanisms for combined authority overview and scrutiny committees to: require information from, to require attendance from, and to require responses to recommendations from, local partner organisations whose work relates to priorities and strategies set by the Mayor (in respect of their work in furtherance of those strategies). This broad “duty to co-operate” with scrutiny would we consider act as a test-bed for any broader powers for scrutiny that Government proposes to introduce in further legislation. In particular it would support provisions that might require strategic authorities to operate local Public Accounts Committees with a focus on value for money across the wider area. This reflects a form of governance at combined authority level which is likely to need to focus more on the way the whole system operates rather than just the combined authority as a single institution .
c. To ensure accountability for mayoral commissioners, with powers for scrutiny committees in relation to people appointed to those roles (we do not suggest the introduction of pre-appointment hearings, however).
d. To introduce safeguards to manage risks relating to the introduction of majority voting, by requiring that certain (defined) decisions receiving only majority, rather than unanimous, consent be subject to being called in by the scrutiny committee.
e. To introduce, as originally promised in the English Devolution White Paper (December 2024), the role of local accounting officer to embed assurance and public accountability across the governance ecosystem.
f. To bring forward arrangements for remote meetings. Government has already made commitments to enhance governance in combined authorities through the introduction of remote meetings (also available to local authorities more generally), but has said that it intends to bring forward these measures in future legislation. Arrangements for remote meetings have already been tested during the pandemic (during which some limited hybrid working was also carried out), and have been operating under a different legislative framework in Wales for some years . Under the circumstances it would be reasonable to bring forward these provisions to this Bill.
17. As we have noted above such changes would not reduce the need for Government to legislate further on this subject in the near future.

B. Neighbourhood governance and community empowerment

18. Clause 58 (Part 3, Chapter 1) of the Bill requires all local authorities to establish neighbourhood governance arrangements. The drafting of the Bill (in particular the enabling provisions for Regulations at 58(3)) suggest strongly that Government preferred approach will be to require the establishment of neighbourhood committees. At CfGS, we understand neighbourhood governance as three interconnected activities: the design of place (building a shared vision), decision-making about place (enabling communities to shape the choices that affect them), and delivery in place (supporting communities to act directly through services and collective action).
19. The Bill’s aim of creating consistency across England is welcome. While some areas already have strong, inclusive neighbourhood governance, others do not. But consistency should not mean uniformity in this aspect of governance. Imposing a single-model risks ignoring the very different assets, histories, and needs of localities – and could inadvertently undermine what already works well. What is needed is balance: a national framework that sets out the scaffolding and is clear about the principle of involving communities effectively in decision-making, but leaves room for neighbourhood governance to be built around the strengths of each community.
20. It is regrettable that the Government has not shared its vision for the details of neighbourhood governance at this stage. More transparency on its preference for arrangements would allow for greater scrutiny. It would also allow the sector to consider adequate resourcing for these changes to be effective – and whether the cost of delivering these reforms should fall solely fall on local authorities, given their current constraints.
21. We would recommend that the Bill is amended to establish clear principles for neighbourhood governance so that councils and communities are supported to :
a. Validate locally – build on and strengthen what already works, rather than replace it.
b. Co-define with communities – work with residents to agree on “what good looks like” in their area, grounded in shared vision, accountability, and trust.
c. Develop grounded neighbourhood agreements – which would set out in writing how both formal and informal decision making at a neighbourhood level works. This can then feed into the local authority’s formal constitution.
d. Operate within clear scaffolding – with pathways and principles set nationally, but sufficient flexibility for places to adapt and innovate.
22. Taken together, these steps provide a pathway towards modernising democratic infrastructure, shifting cultures of power, and mandating collaboration between councils and communities.
23. This offers an opportunity to build a more resilient local democracy, linking community voice to strategic decision-making and ensuring that devolution is rooted in local legitimacy.

C. Council reorganisation and governance

24. Clause 57 (Part 3, chapter 1) and Schedule 12 together require councils to cease operating the committee system and transition to executive arrangements. Councils will also no longer be able to request the Secretary of State to operate “prescribed arrangements” based on novel governance proposals.
25. In 2000, most councils were required to adopt one of the new executive forms of governance, a decision based on a range of detailed assessments about the effectiveness of the committee system. Only a small number of councils with small populations were allowed to continue to use the committee system. Yet, despite councils being given the freedom to return to the committee system in 2011, CfGS is aware of 36 councils including 25 district councils that are using the system today. Reorganisation will abolish most of these councils.
26. The decision to remove choice and flexibility is nonetheless regrettable, when in our judgment councils have demonstrated that they can use the committee system effectively and efficiently. Today’s committee system looks very different to that of twenty-five years ago. Then, reviews carried out by the Audit Commission and Government described large, cumbersome systems following a model for committee operations that is not replicated in councils operating the system today.
27. Councils facing abolition through local government reorganisation could also be forced to change governance arrangements in their final years, adding unnecessary burden. Councils that have changed their governance model very recently would face further disruption. In Sheffield, the adoption of the committee system was part of a broader civic settlement with local communities and reversing it risks undermining hard-won trust and stability .
28. We believe that if Government is to require councils to make these changes it should:
a) Require that councils compelled to change their governance arrangements because of the Bill to undertake that change in such a way that meaningfully consults local people on the design and development of a new model.
b) Recognise the requirement to change governance option as a new burden (particularly in light of the requirement above), and provide funds to councils accordingly (we recognise that this is not a matter for the face of the Bill).
c) Amend the Bill to put in place a defined date by which councils must have completed their transition, which should be five full municipal years from the commencement of the Bill.
d) Amend the Bill to allow this timescale to be extended where a council is subject to reorganisation.
D. Robust oversight and local audit
29. CfGS welcomes provisions for a new Local Audit Office (LAO). This, and connected action, will go some way to meeting the recommendations made in the Redmond Review. CfGS has supported for some time a “system leadership” body for audit, including in oral evidence given to the HCLG Select Committee in 2023 .
30. The remit and focus of the LAO in the Bill, however, does not take account of its role in relation to value for money, or in wider sector stewardship. We understand that this is likely to be part of a more explicit role set out in Ministerial directions and guidance, but think there is a case for greater detail on the face of the Bill itself.
31. In particular, the Bill should:
a. Make explicit the role of audit (and by extension the LAO) in assurance on the governance risk and resilience of the sector and of individual councils.
b. Identify how the work of the LAO will feed into the way that the Secretary of State will exercise their judgment with regard to local authorities’ Best Value duties.
c. Provide a framework for operation of the LAO to limit the risk of “mission creep” – by requiring that changes to the core role of the institution be subject to amendment to primary legislation. A criticism made of the former Audit Commission prior to its abolition was that the breadth of its remit moved it away from the tight focus reflected in its original establishment in 1983. We note Government’s assurance in the White Paper that the work of the LAO will be initiated and managed to avoid this eventuality but do not consider – as currently drafted – that the provisions in the Bill satisfy this assurance.

Conclusion

32. CfGS welcomes the ambition of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill to create a system of local government that addresses place governance for communities at neighbourhood, council and mayoral level. However, the Bill will only succeed if reforms are designed and delivered with communities across these three layers of mayoral governance.
33. The changes we have recommended would help to ensure that the Bill not only devolves power but also safeguards legitimacy, trust and effectiveness in local democracy.