Less than two-weeks into the new Andy Burnham premiership the Cabinet Office issued a document ambitiously called “Rewiring the State”.
Most people who know anything about it would agree the British state is in severe need of rewiring. Like the ancient variety found in the Palace of Westminster, the wires of the British state are old, sub-standard, botched together in places and liable to fail or catch fire.
The new statement from the cabinet is not entirely new, though. Many of the proposed structural changes were already the policy of the Keir Starmer government and some have been put on a statutory basis in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026. This moved English devolution towards a general statutory framework and toward codifying areas of competence for strategic (combined) authorities.
Nevertheless, there are some headline-grabbing new elements in the cabinet statement – not least the plans for fiscal devolution in the form of localities retaining some of the income tax generated in their areas. There are also some potentially dramatic extensions of the scope of devolution to local governments. The statement commits to:
align key public service boundaries […]. This will include new local police units aligning with local authorities, and regional police forces, fire and rescue services and Integrated Care Boards aligning with the boundaries of strategic authorities by the end of the Parliament. Where there are strong financial, strategic or operational reasons for larger organisations, this alignment may be to the boundaries of multiple, rather than just one, strategic authority.
Along with some other public services that appear to be being swept up in this fairly drastic reorganisation of English governments (plural), this would constitute the largest such restructuring in decades.
This article will concentrate on these latter proposals – the fiscal devolution and the impact of these changes on Whitehall and the civil service deserve separate analysis elsewhere.
England only?
Careful readers will have already noticed that the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 applies only to England. And much of the “Rewiring” statement also only applies to England and the relationship between Whitehall and town halls, or mayoral offices. So, this is less “rewiring the state” and more “rewiring England”.
Although the statement does go on to say that “elected officials at all levels of government in all nations have a role to play” and it “will include consideration of how best to engage and involve representatives in the Scottish Parliament, Senedd and Northern Ireland Assembly” it doesn’t really say how.
It is worth pausing here to consider what exactly is going to be rewired and who these “elected officials at all levels of government” actually are?
There are just under 150,000 such elected officials across all levels of government in the UK, in about 12,500 elected bodies.
Map of elected bodies
[These numbers may be slightly dated but the broad picture is correct]
In England alone there are over 120,000 such elected officials in over 300 local authorities, 10,000 parish and town councils and assorted mayors and commissioners. The rewiring statement notably says nothing about the lowest tier of local government, which, admittedly, is currently very weak.
Of course there are also many unelected centres of power. If we take my current locality – Bedfordshire – we have an integrated care board that covers the county but also extends to include Milton Keynes (not in the county). We also have several criminal justice, education, transport and other public authorities and organisations that do not correspond to local political boundaries.
The list of public authorities and services that will be regrouped under what are now mainly called mayoral strategic authorities (MSAs – although some may not have mayors) is not entirely clear. However, they appear to include: local transport; housing; innovation; local energy; cultural investment; education (post 16 or 14 is not clear) and employment; policing; fire and rescue. Nor is it clear where authority over these will reside – at the mayoral (MSA) level or with individual local authorities. Although when the rewiring statement proposes the creation of “deputy mayor roles with responsibility for key public services” it strongly implies it will be mainly at the mayoral level.
There are currently just over 300 local authorities in England. But the government has already embarked on a process of restructuring which will potentially reduce this number considerably. It has expressed a preference for local authorities with a population size of not less than half a million, three times the current average size of 170,000. So that would imply reducing the number to slightly over 100. A level up, mayoral combined authorities would presumably include at least two local authorities. Some are already much bigger – London has 32 and Manchester 10. However, these are on current local authority sizes. Consequently, it’s hard to estimate, but the reorganisations proposed could result in perhaps 40 or so mayoral combined authorities.
While the numbers are a little ambiguous, though, the overall picture is clear enough. There will be, in England, two main tiers of local government – mayoral and local. With a further third tier – community, parish and town councils – with an as yet unclear role.
Mayors, deputies and accounting officers
One notable feature of the statement is that government policy has retreated somewhat on the issue of imposing mayors. This became a controversial issue when George Osborne, as Chancellor, imposed the directly elected Greater Manchester Mayor post as a condition for Manchester’s devolution deal.
Mayors will now not be imposed, but they are still the government’s preferred option:
elected mayors [will be] uniquely placed to align national, regional and local priorities and tailor growth, investment and public services to local needs in their area. Mayors also provide a single point of accountability to the residents who elect them, meaning better responsiveness to what local people need and stronger scrutiny and transparency of decision making.
Further “deputy mayor roles” will be established “with responsibility for key public services”. These deputy mayors, we must presume, will be like the already existing roles in London, Manchester and elsewhere, i.e. unelected appointees. They are an unusual feature in British public administration, not elected like MPs or councillors who hold cabinet roles and responsibilities in Whitehall or local government, but neither are they permanent civil or public servants.
One further and highly significant innovation is that “chief executives of mayoral strategic authorities will become Local Accounting Officers, accountable for the use of public money”. In central government accounting officers are usually the permanent secretary of a government department. They can be held directly accountable to Parliament, through the relevant select committee or the Public Accounts Committee, for the proper use of public funds and value for money.
In the English Devolution and Local Empowerment Act, the Government introduced:
Local Scrutiny Committees, which will replace existing overview and scrutiny committees within MSAs and take on much of their remit. They will examine mayoral decisions and actions, undertake thematic inquiries, and produce reports and recommendations on the value for money of MSA spending. (National Audit Office, July 2026).
The National Audit Office went on to say of local accounting officers that “it is not yet clear … how Parliament would hold Local Accounting Officers to account in a way that reflects an MSA’s local needs and priorities. Under existing arrangements, Parliamentary select committees may call MSA chief executives or mayors to give evidence on the delivery of Integrated Settlements.”
This is clearly an area that needs further clarification – particularly as there are potential tensions between MSA chief executives being held to account by both Parliament and local scrutiny committees.
Policy tensions and paradoxes?
Underneath this rapidly developing policy prescribing a substantial rewiring of English local government, and its knock-on effects on central government, there seems to lie an unresolved tension.
On the one hand policy is pushing towards more efficient, effective and much larger, in size and scope, local institutions. The main driving unit is clearly going to be mayoral strategic authorities, which will be much larger by several orders of magnitude than existing local authorities, which themselves will probably, on average, triple in size. MSAs and perhaps local authorities will also have powers and control of funding for a much wider range of services and policy areas.
On the other hand, though, there is a clear push towards ‘localism’ and moving power closer to localities and people. There is a conflict brewing then, as power moves further away from smaller, organic, localities and communities towards much larger strategic units that in many cases will have little in common, or shared interests within, their enlarged areas.
Power, then, may move away from Whitehall and Westminster, whilst simultaneously moving away from localities. Whether it moves closer to people remains to be seen.
Colin Talbot.
Colin is Emeritus Professor of Government, University of Manchester. He also has relationships with Cooperative News and the Federal Trust. Colin has worked extensively with all levels of British government and public services, including being an advisor to two House of Commons Select Committees and appearing as an expert witness over two dozen times in both Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh Assembly. He has also advised more than a dozen other governments, from the USA to Japan.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.