Part 3 of 3: Devolution cannot mean exemption from national priorities

For devolution to succeed, it cannot simply create a collection of powerful local Mayors able to disregard the priorities of Parliament. Burnham’s new model is based on a simple premise: Mayors will receive greater control and influence over money, transport, housing, skills, energy, innovation and public services. In return, they will be expected to align their growth plans with national strategy and demonstrate that devolution produces measurable results.

No. 10 North is central to this approach. It will bring regional leaders and Whitehall departments into the same decision making machinery, allowing local priorities to shape national policy while enabling the centre to intervene when delivery becomes blocked.

Under Burnham, devolution is therefore not about allowing each place to determine whether national objectives apply. It is to give regional leaders greater freedom to decide how these objectives are met and then hold them accountable for the outcomes.

More power and greater accountability

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 has created a standardised framework through which powers can be transferred to strategic authorities.

The Act establishes a stronger and more standardised framework for mayoral responsibilities covering strategic planning, housing, transport, regeneration and economic development. Depending on their statutory category, mayoral authorities can gain powers to intervene in strategically important planning applications, make development orders and establish development corporations.

The Act also introduces scrutiny arrangements intended to make mayoral decision-making and public spending more transparent. The Greater London Authority is already England’s most developed regional institution, and many of the powers now being extended elsewhere were modelled on powers exercised in London.

If the strongest and most established mayoral authority cannot, or will not, plan for assessed housing need, the Government will need to explain why extending the model elsewhere will produce better national results.

The Government cannot credibly tell councils across England that housing requirements are mandatory while allowing the country’s largest city to plan for only two-thirds of its assessed need without challenge.

Accepting London’s lower figure would inevitably encourage other authorities to argue that their own targets are unrealistic because of local infrastructure, environmental, market or viability constraints.

Many of those arguments would be reasonable. Collectively, they would make the 1.5 million-home target impossible.

The answer may well lie in the approach Burnham took in Greater Manchester. He has already indicated that he intends to go further than the current Act anticipates.

Fiscal devolution creates another tension

Giving mayors a financial interest in regional income tax receipts and business rate growth is intended to create stronger incentives for development and employment, but it will also require an equalisation mechanism: allowing already prosperous areas to retain all the additional revenue they generate would undoubtedly widen regional inequalities. To address this, Burnham’s model is not fiscal separatism but focuses on greater regional autonomy within an overarching national system.

Burnham’s belief that the settlement may ultimately require a written constitution underlines the scale of the restructuring he intends.

London Labour’s political position has changed

Until recently, Sadiq Khan had considerable freedom to pursue his own political course.

London remained Labour’s strongest electoral base, and the Mayor retained significant support within the party. Kier Starmer’s administration needed London Labour and lacked the political strength to force a decisive confrontation with City Hall.

The result was negotiation and compromise. The housing “emergency package” agreed under Starmer was presented as a response to London’s development crisis, but it did not fundamentally change the GLA’s viability framework. Indeed, City Hall secured additional flexibilities and support without accepting that its own policies required wholesale revision.

The political reality is now different. Labour’s vote in London fractured significantly in the 2026 local elections. The party remained the largest political force across the capital, but its vote share fell and it lost control of several boroughs.

Starmer has gone. Burnham achieved power by explicitly criticising the record and culture of the party he now leads. His political identity is rooted in the north of England and in the argument that Labour has become too London centric and detached from the concerns of voters elsewhere. Labour’s retention of the Greater Manchester mayoralty under Bev Craig strengthens the political authority of the model with which Burnham is associated. His early appointments and announcements have demonstrated that the centre of gravity has already shifted.

Khan remains influential, but the announcement of his peerage on the same day as the draft London Plan was published adds to the sense that the Plan will ultimately become a problem for the next Mayor of London and the national Government to resolve.

The test is whether Burnham can reconcile power with responsibility

It would be too simplistic to say that Burnham must choose between supporting devolution and imposing the Government’s housing target on London.

If he simply accepts the 558,000 figure, nationally assessed housing requirements will appear negotiable and other authorities will demand similar treatment. If he insists on 850,000 homes without addressing grant, transport capacity, land assembly and development viability, he risks replacing a deliverable spatial strategy with an aspirational number.

The challenge is to combine local power with national responsibility. London should be given the tools needed to build more: long-term affordable housing funding, transport investment, stronger land assembly powers and greater certainty for councils, housing associations and investors. However, additional power, must come with additional responsibility: City Hall cannot be allowed to benefit from the freedoms of devolution while treating national housing need as an optional aspiration.

For Burnham’s promise of “good growth in every postcode” to succeed, it cannot mean that every postcode keeps the benefits of growth while redefining its contribution to national priorities. Nor can central government impose targets without providing a credible route to meeting them.

The London Plan is therefore more than an early dispute over housing numbers. It is a test of the settlement at the heart of Burnham’s proposed model of government.

Places need the power and resources to deliver. The country also needs confidence that they will use them. Sadiq Khan’s London Plan has made that the first major test of Burnham’s devolution agenda.