Devolution must give local authorities the powers, funding and accountability to deliver, says Executive Mayor of Croydon Jason Perry.
Local government has spent years asking Whitehall to let go. Now that the Government has placed devolution at the heart of its plans, we need to be clear about where that power should land.
The direction of travel is welcome. England remains far too centralised, with decisions taken too far from the communities they affect and councils constrained by short-term funding and inflexible national rules. Strong local authorities must be the bedrock of any attempt to change that.
The risk is that too much of the discussion becomes focused on regional mayors and strategic authorities. Transferring decisions out of Whitehall is progress, but it will make little difference to communities if the funding and freedom attached to them stop one tier above the councils doing the work.
London illustrates the problem particularly clearly.
The Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority have important strategic responsibilities. Transport, major infrastructure and issues requiring coordination across the capital need leadership at that level.
Boroughs, however, carry many of the duties and financial risks that residents encounter every day. We are responsible for services including social care, housing, homelessness, waste collection, planning and much of the work required to support local businesses and regenerate our town centres.
When a family needs temporary accommodation, or a business wants help bringing a site back into use, they do not begin by debating which tier of government ought to respond. They come to the Council and expect us to act.
I say this as a directly elected Mayor who believes strongly in visible executive leadership. Mayoral government can provide clarity and accountability, but only when authority rests with the person or institution expected to deliver. Responsibility without the power or resources to act is a recipe for frustration.
The Mayor of London should have control over the resources needed to discharge genuinely strategic functions. Where responsibility sits with a borough, the funding and freedom should reach that borough. Otherwise, councils risk becoming delivery agents for another tier of government.
This question will arise well beyond London as strategic authorities expand across England. Different areas will settle on different structures, but the same basic test should apply everywhere: are decisions being taken at the closest effective level to the people affected by them?
Local government should agree a common position on this before the Government’s White Paper is settled.
The starting point should be that powers follow responsibility. Where Parliament has made a council legally and democratically accountable for a service, that authority needs sufficient control over how the service is provided.
Funding must follow the same route. New responsibilities without adequate resources amount to delegation, not meaningful devolution. Sub-regional partnerships can help where there is a clear case for councils working together, but they should not become an additional administrative tier that top-slices funding or makes accountability harder to follow.
We must also address who benefits from local growth. Councils create economic value through planning, infrastructure, regeneration, business support and the everyday services that make places attractive to investors. Yet too little of that value is retained and reinvested in the communities where it is generated.
Greater business-rate retention and meaningful fiscal devolution could give councils stronger incentives to pursue growth. For that to work, the proceeds must reach the authorities whose decisions and services helped to create it. Moving revenue to a regional body whilst leaving local councils to carry the costs and risks would miss the point.
Croydon shows what could be achieved with a better settlement. We are London’s largest borough, with significant brownfield development potential, a strong entrepreneurial economy and a strategic position between central London and Gatwick. More than £1.2 billion of inward investment has been secured since 2022.
Greater freedom to retain and reinvest the value created locally would help us turn more of that investment into homes, jobs and stronger public services. Croydon is ready to test reforms that could then be applied elsewhere.
Temporary accommodation provides a less comfortable example of what happens when responsibility and funding are pulled apart.
For many households in temporary accommodation, the Housing Benefit subsidy available to councils remains restricted to 90% of the January 2011 Local Housing Allowance rate. We are paying the cost of accommodation in today’s housing market whilst being reimbursed according to rental values set more than 15 years ago.
In Croydon, the gap between the cost of providing temporary accommodation and the subsidy we can recover is approximately £45 million a year. That money has to be found from the same budget that pays for services such as street cleaning, social care, community safety and homelessness prevention.
Outdated national rules also make it harder for councils to acquire or lease their own accommodation, reduce reliance on expensive nightly-paid placements and offer families greater security. Giving councils more freedom here could improve outcomes for those in need of it and provides better value for taxpayers.
This is the practical test of devolution. It is not the number of powers listed in a White Paper, but whether councils have the freedom and resources to solve problems for the people they serve.
I am asking the Government to make that principle explicit. Ahead of the White Paper, I would like to see council leaders and our representative bodies agree a short, shared test for every devolution proposal: do responsibility, funding and accountability sit at the level best placed to deliver?
Whilst we will not agree on every boundary or governance model, if councils make the case collectively, we have a better chance of shaping a settlement that works in practice. If we approach the reforms as hundreds of separate institutional negotiations, the system will be designed from the top down and we will spend years trying to correct it.
Croydon stands ready to help the Government deliver its aspirations. Power leaving Whitehall is welcome. It must now reach the councils capable of putting it to work.
This was first published on The MJ on 29th September 2026.
