Future Local Lab
Local Government ExplainedLooking to 2050: The future of local government in England
This research – the inaugural project with our new strategic partners, Local Partnerships – captures the perspectives of individuals working within combined authority areas to understand what does and doesn’t work now in order to determine how structures, relationships and frameworks must evolve and develop in the years ahead.
The report draws on a sector-wide survey of 67 respondents across all current combined authority areas and 10 in-depth interviews with senior officials, leaders and mayors.
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Executive summary - Introduction
England’s governance landscape is undergoing profound change. When the Government’s reforms reach their conclusion, the whole country will, for the first time, operate under a single tier of local government, while combined authorities—now evolving into strategic authorities—are being extended nationwide. These reforms represent a once-in-a-generation opportunity to move power closer to people, strengthen democratic accountability and create a more coherent system capable of meeting the challenges of the next 25 years.
But opportunity does not guarantee success.
Even after the Bill becomes law, and if the Government meets its clear ambition to introduce mayoral strategic authorities across every part of England, the country will retain its status as one of the most centralised large democracies there is. Our ambitions should go further, to unlock growth and revitalise local and regional democracy across the country.
This report, supported by Local Partnerships, draws on a sector-wide survey of 67 respondents across all current combined authority areas and 10 in-depth interviews with senior officials, leaders and mayors. The message is consistent: the potential of strategic authorities is widely recognised, but their strategic purpose remains undefined. The system lacks clarity, coherence and a long-term plan.
Our problem is not just a shortage of evidence about what works and what doesn’t work today. It is a lack of strategic clarity about what this system is for and how it should evolve. Local leaders clearly tell us:
- There is strong support for a strategic regional tier.
- But there is no settled understanding of its core purpose or how it should differ across geographies.
- Existing Strategic Authorities have raised the profile of their regions and secured investment, but have not yet become the strategic system leaders many hoped for.
- The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill offers greater consistency, but provides limited new powers and does not articulate a long-term destination.
There is a clear pathway forward if we choose to take it: powers should be built from the bottom up, not handed down as rewards or withheld as punishment. The starting point should be that frontline, people-centred services sit with local authorities by default; strategic authorities focus on the things that require scale and coordination; and central government sets broad frameworks, standards and long-term funding, stepping in only where necessary.
We can build a model of governance that improves regional economic outcomes, strengthens climate resilience, supports housing growth, tackles inequality and embeds fiscal sustainability. But doing so requires a purposeful design of roles, responsibilities and long-term direction.
This report proposes a reframing of England’s emerging settlement around three strategic imperatives underpinned by two enabling frameworks.
Executive summary: Strategic imperatives
1. Clarify the core purpose of strategic authorities
Strategic authorities cannot fulfil their potential if their purpose remains implicit or ambiguous. They require a clear role, understood nationally and locally, within a system of empowered unitary councils. Based on extensive sector insight, we outline five core strategic functions of this tier of government:
Strategic convenor
Bringing together stakeholders to plan and pursue genuinely regional priorities: transport networks, spatial planning, housing growth, economic development and climate resilience.
Prosperity engine
Coordinating investment, aligning innovation, capital funding and skills development for the regional labour market, and taking responsibility for long-term regional economic strategies.
Collaboration platform
Providing a platform for evidence gathering and sharing, building understanding of the regional economy, supporting cross-boundary planning, and enabling coherent and collaborative transport and infrastructure decisions.
Regional champion
Acting as a visible, democratically accountable voice for the region, strengthening public participation and institutional trust.
Bridge between local government and the centre
Negotiating devolution settlements, mediating tensions, aligning national and regional goals, and helping reshape how Whitehall works with places.
Crucially, strategic authorities should not deliver day-to-day services. Their purpose is strategic, connective and enabling.
2. Establish a clear, functional division of responsibilities between strategic authorities and unitaries
The next phase of reform must provide a clear and lasting allocation of responsibilities. England needs to move from deal-based pragmatism toward a functional settlement guided by a simple principle:
Local by default, regional where it adds value, national only where necessary.
In practice, this means:
- Local (councils) lead on frontline, people-centred services: adult social care, children’s services, housing allocations, community wellbeing and local public health.
Regional (strategic authorities) take on the functions where scale matters: transport integration, strategic planning, housing growth, skills pipelines, regional climate and nature policies and regional economic development.
National government provides long-term frameworks, fiscal architecture, regulation and oversight, not micro-management. - This division of labour must be supported by practical mechanisms between strategic and local authorities:: memoranda of understanding, shared accountability frameworks, joint evidence bases, transparent decision-making protocols and agreed methods for resolving conflicts when regional and local priorities diverge.
- A functional settlement also requires a serious funding and accountability framework. Integrated settlements, multi-year budgets and clearer statutory fiscal powers across each level of government will be essential if strategic authorities and unitaries are to plan with confidence and take responsibility for outcomes.
3. Create a long-term pathway to 2050: three future-state scenarios
If devolution is to be more than a series of piecemeal reforms, we need a shared view of where this journey leads. We set out three credible scenarios that illustrate how strategic authorities and unitaries could evolve:
a. Integrated regionalism
Strategic authorities with stronger statutory powers, fiscal flexibility and coherent regional strategies, working with streamlined unitaries.
b. Localist reset
Enhanced subsidiarity: unitaries remain the primary leaders of services and place, with strategic authorities acting mainly as convenors and brokers.
c. Connected governance
Joint service platforms, pooled budgets for cross-cutting challenges, shared accountability and formalised cross-tier collaboration.
These scenarios do not predict the future; they define the choices ahead. The Government now needs to articulate its long-term ambition for devolution and the route for achieving it. Crucially, the strength of local, and regional, government is in its diversity, and it is perfectly possible that a “one size fits all” approach based on the current powers of established strategic authorities – those based in large metropolitan areas – will fail to make best use of the opportunities present in other geographies. Whatever pathway we define should take into account the importance of regional variation.
Executive summary: Enabling frameworks
The three strategic imperatives – clarity of purpose, division of responsibility and vision of the future – must be underpinned by these essential enabling frameworks, which will give them the best chance of success.
Strengthen governance, relationships and institutional resilience
The first decade of devolution has relied heavily on goodwill, political consensus and individual relationships within the new authorities. That is not a sustainable operating model in an era of political change. The next phase requires:
- Clear, collectively agreed regional priorities
- Regular, structured cross-tier leadership forums for officers and politicians
- Transparent accountability arrangements
- Shared metrics for public outcomes
- Robust mechanisms for public participation between elections
- Clear dispute-resolution processes
- Governance structures capable of withstanding political turnover
This is how we build a system that endures beyond electoral cycles and continues to deliver for residents.
Equip areas with practical collaboration tools
To support implementation, this report proposes a light-touch Collaboration Toolkit including:
- Templates for joint strategic plans
- Model governance arrangements for shared services
- Partnership maturity indicators
- Joint accountability and dispute-resolution protocols
- Minimum standards for collaboration
- Shared outcomes metrics and principles for data sharing
This is not a prescriptive manual, but a practical foundation for making collaboration real.
Executive summary: Conclusion - a system ready for 2050
England now has the building blocks of a more coherent governance model. But the long-term impact of these reforms depends on intentional design. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill provides the starting point. The question is whether we use it to build a system that is clear, resilient and capable of meeting the country’s long-term challenges.
Our message is straightforward. Strategic authorities must be empowered and expected to lead where scale matters. Unitaries must be equipped to lead where proximity to communities makes the difference. The Government must provide the clarity, funding and frameworks that enable both to succeed.
This report sets out how that system can be built — with 10 clear recommendations for the Government on how, by 2050, England can develop a governance framework that is coherent, durable and genuinely capable of delivering for citizens.
- Define a clear, national strategic purpose for all Strategic Authorities.
- Map a functional division of responsibilities that endures.
- Modernise Whitehall around devolution.
- Establish a statutory Mayoral Council for England.
- Roll out integrated funding settlements nationwide.
- Consolidate growth and investment programmes under strategic authorities.
- Build shared regional–local governance and accountability frameworks.
- Strengthen institutional resilience and system stability.
- Develop a shared Collaboration Toolkit to support consistent practice.
- Set a clear pathway to 2050 using a sliding scale of ambition.
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