Mayors, Skills and the Burnham Devolution Agenda

Since taking office last month, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has made devolution the defining theme of his premiership. His government’s first major statement on the subject promised the “biggest transfer of power from Westminster in a generation”: mayors will gain a share of income tax receipts for the first time, retain a greater share of business rates, and get new freedom over major transport investment and 16-19 technical education, a responsibility previously reserved to central government. 

Devolution has always mattered to our work, and this autumn our All-Party Parliamentary Group for Skills, Careers and Employment will host a roundtable on Mayors, Metro Mayors and Skills Devolution. Ahead of that, it’s worth setting out what devolution currently looks like, what it means for education and skills, and what Burnham’s announcements change. 

The basics of devolution  

Devolution is the transfer of power from Westminster to sub-national government. It has existed for the devolved nations since the late 1990s, with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland holding both executive devolution, the power to run public services, and legislative devolution, the power to pass laws. Devolution within England has developed more gradually, beginning with the Mayor of London, a position created following a 1998 referendum and first filled in the 2000 election. 

England now has 14 mayors, each chairing a Mayoral Strategic Authority, sitting above tiers of local government that range from unitary authorities to parish and town councils. 

Devolution and skills 

These authorities were placed on a firmer legal footing by the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, which also made skills and employment support a statutory area of competence for strategic authorities, one of the standard responsibilities that now comes with devolved status. 

In practice, this works through two linked documents. Mayors produce ten-year Local Growth Plans setting out local economic priorities in line with the national industrial strategy. Delivery is then grounded in Local Skills Improvement Plans, employer-led plans introduced under the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022. Skills England approved a new cycle of 39 of these plans in July, running to 2029 and bringing together employers, strategic authorities, education providers, Jobcentre Plus, and trade unions to match local training to local need. 

Under Burnham’s newest announcements mayors will retain a share of business rates and income tax, rather than relying on grant funding, giving mayors a longer-term settlement with fewer Whitehall conditions attached. And where mayors previously had responsibility only for post-19 education, they will now also control 16-19 technical routes, a significant expansion given how central colleges and sixth forms are to local skills delivery. 

The response to devolution  

The UK remains one of the most fiscally centralised countries in the developed world, and devolving further has been framed as a way to sharpen local growth incentives, unlock investment and strengthen accountability, with knock-on benefits for social mobility. Our own reports have long emphasised the value of skills devolution. The Skills Commission’s Earning or Learning report (May 2026) treats devolved delivery within a clear national framework as central to reducing youth disengagement, while our earlier Skills 2030 report (April 2024) called for exactly the kind of “no-strings-attached” funding settlements emphasised by Burnham, alongside a stronger mayoral role in 16-18 education. The Higher Education Commission’s Trained for Tomorrow (July 2026) report makes a related case for NHS training, recommending that regional workforce planning is built around the same Local Skills Improvement Plans rather than run in parallel to them. 

However, questions remain about the upcoming skills devolution agenda. The government has not yet said what proportion of tax revenue mayors will actually retain, with more detail expected when Chancellor John Healey delivers his first Budget on 28 October. Nor has it committed to providing more funding overall, which raises the question of how weaker local economies, and councils already carrying debt and funding gaps, are meant to keep pace. And devolving responsibility only works if local government has the capacity to exercise it: concerns have been raised about whether authorities have the technical expertise to take on new responsibilities, and whether local audit arrangements are robust enough to hold newly empowered mayors to account. Given how much now rests on Local Skills Improvement Plans and Strategic Authorities, that capacity gap matters directly for how well local skills systems can be expected to perform. 

These are among the questions we’ll be discussing at our roundtable this autumn. They will also run through two inquiries getting underway this year, the Skills Commission’s work on apprenticeships and the Higher Education Commission’s work on university regional connections, both of which will look closely at what devolution means for their local skills systems. 

For more information on our upcoming events and research contact Rhiannon Tuckett-Jones (rhiannon.tuckett-jones@policyconnect.org.uk).