The shift of power from local Councils to regional Mayoral Combined Authorities Part 2

Original Post >> Birmingham Against the Cuts

Part 1 (BATC December 9) argued that the powers of Councils are declining for two reasons: Government cuts in their budgets, and the increased powers of Mayoral Combined Authorities over Councils, which will cover the whole of England, and which have only one directly elected member, the Mayor. This represents a further stage in the ongoing neoliberalisation of local government in England.

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill raises two defining issues of power in local government: the relationships between Whitehall and regional Mayoral Combined Authorities, now known as Unitary or Strategic Authorities, and between Unitary Authorities and local Councils and their communities.

The Bill has 3 broad sections:

“Devolution: describing devolution structures, outlining and expanding powers for Mayors and authorities through the new Devolution Framework and explaining routes to devolution for places that don’t have it.
Local government: ensuring the process for local government reorganisation supports the ambition in the White Paper, outlining changes to local authority governance, reforming accountability and introducing effective neighbourhood governance structures to amplify local voices.
Communities: giving more power to local communities to purchase assets of community value and making reforms to commercial leases.”

The Bill will introduce a “Strategic Authority” – similar to the West Midlands Combined Authority – for every area in England, with powers over the following areas:

transport and local infrastructure
skills and employment support
housing and strategic planning
economic development and regeneration
environment and net zero
health, wellbeing and public service reform
public safety

In addition “The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will introduce a requirement on all local authorities, in England, to establish effective neighbourhood governance.

The main goal of neighbourhood governance is to move decision-making closer to residents, so decisions are made by people who understand local needs. Additionally, developing neighbourhood-based approaches will provide opportunities to organise public services to meet local needs better.”

“Evolution or disempowerment? How the English Devolution Bill undermines local government”

This is a critique by Nick Kemp published in North East Bylines, 1 August 2025, that is worth quoting in some detail.

“This Bill does not devolve power; it recentralises it – outsourcing Whitehall control to regional figureheads and sidelining the councils that know their communities best.

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill is being sold as a landmark reform, a bold new chapter for local democracy. Ministers present it as a chance to “give power back to the people” and “strengthen local leadership.” But scratch beneath the surface and a very different reality emerges.

This Bill doesn’t restore power to local councils; it strips it away. Far from being a revival of local self-determination, it represents something more troubling: the franchising of central government, dressed up as devolution.

As someone who has worked in and led in local government, I can say this plainly: unless we challenge it, this Bill will weaken local democracy for good.

This new Bill goes further than any previous measure. It entrenches a model that prioritises strong mayors over strong councils. It claims to decentralise power, but in reality moves it from local councils – the institutions closest to people – into new structures that answer upward to Westminster, not outward to communities.

Centralisation disguised as localism

Under this Bill, strategic authority shifts decisively to Combined Authorities headed by executive mayors. While these mayors are elected, their real role is to act as single points of contact for Whitehall.

Local councils, once the strategic leaders of their places, are being repositioned. They are no longer at the heart of decision-making but reduced to delivery agents for policies shaped elsewhere. Funding flows through the mayor, not to councils. Planning powers can be overridden by Mayoral Development Orders, sidelining local planning committees and elected members.

In practice, that means decisions about housing, transport, or regeneration can be made without meaningful local accountability. The mayor becomes the brand, the figurehead, the story, while the councils, stripped of strategic power, become invisible in the democratic process.

This is not devolution. It’s centralisation outsourced regionally, wrapped in the comforting language of localism.”

The North East shows another way

There is, however, one vital exception – and it’s right here in the North East. When the North East Mayoral Combined Authority (NEMCA) was negotiated, local council leaders fought hard for a different model. They refused to accept the “strong mayor” template imposed elsewhere.

Instead, NEMCA operates with statutory collective governance. That means big decisions on transport, housing, and economic growth must be taken collectively by the cabinet of council leaders. The mayor cannot act unilaterally. There is no casting vote. Power is shared. Local knowledge matters. Accountability remains plural.

This wasn’t gifted by government, it was won through negotiation. Elsewhere, in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, the “strong mayor” model dominates. In those places, mayors have sweeping executive powers while councils play a supporting role.

If the North East remains an exception, the erosion of local leadership elsewhere will become the norm. And that matters, because what happens here will shape what happens next everywhere.

So, what can we do?

This matters for all of us, not just councillors and officers, but residents, campaigners, and community groups. If we want decisions made by people who understand our towns, cities, and villages, we need to act. That means:

Raising awareness, because most people have never heard of this Bill, let alone its implications.

Pressuring MPs and peers, to amend the Bill so that power genuinely flows to communities, not just to a single figurehead.

Speaking out locally, through councils, combined authority meetings, and civic forums.

Real devolution should mean real accountability. It should empower communities, not concentrate power in a single office branded as local leadership but operating on Westminster’s terms.

Devolution or disguise?

Let’s be honest: this Bill is a political construct. It creates visible, media-friendly mayors who serve as intermediaries for Whitehall, not champions of local democracy.

If we fail to challenge this now, the last vestiges of true local government will disappear. And when that happens, it won’t just be councillors who lose, it will be the communities they represent.

Real devolution means power returned to communities; not rebranded, recentralised, and spun for optics. It’s time to make that clear, before it’s too late.”

Are Citizens’ Assemblies the answer?

The North East Mayoral Combined Authority model is an improvement on all the other Combined Authorities, but Councillors are still not directly being held to account. Could the answer be Citizens’ Assemblies?

Citizens’ Assemblies are increasingly being used in devolved administrations across the UK. The Scottish Government has already commissioned two – on climate and on the country’s future – and is committed to more. In 2024 the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority held the biggest regional Citizens’ Assembly in the UK so far. 100 people discussed climate change and made 14 proposals.

How does this apply in the West Midlands? Currently the Chief Executive (Interim) of the WMCA is Ed Cox, having been Deputy Chief Executive for the previous 5 years. He was also the national Chair of Involve until July last year. ‘Involve’ describes itself as “the UK’s leading public participation charity. Creating a vibrant democracy, with people at the heart of decision-making. Our mission is to make public participation and deliberation an everyday part of our democracy, and help solve the big challenges of our time.” During Cox’s period of office the WMCA’s Greener Together Citizens’ Panel brought together a representative group of 32 residents to deliberate and provide actions for the WMCA to take. The panel met for two years (2022 – 2024) and helped to shape the Energy and Environment team’s work. But this seems to be the only example of Ed Cox organising a Citizens’ Panel, and he has never arranged any public elected Assembly for the WMCA.

Community assemblies are a form of what Raju J. Das, Aram Eisenschitz and Jamie Gough call “associationism” in their book The Challenges of the New Social Democracy: Social Capital and Civic Association or Class Struggle?, published in September 2025. Here are three extracts. The first is from the Introduction:

“This book provides a Marxist critique of the dominant contemporary Left strategy for local economic and social development, which we term ‘the new social democracy’. It discusses how key elements of this strategy – community ties, cooperation, social capital – can better be taken forward through a locally-based socialist strategy.” (p1)

The second extract is from Chapter 2 Associationism: the New Social Democracy from Below:

“The ideal form of state decision-making for associationists is the citizens assembly. Citizens chosen at random meet for weeks or months, advised by experts, to make recommendations on a particular question. ‘Polarised’ debate between political parties is avoided, participants are encouraged to listen to each other, and issues can be considered in depth.” (p34)

The third extract returns to the Introduction:

We present strategic ideas and specific politics for socialist politics at the local scale through class struggle against capital and against the state where it channels capitalist power. This contrasts with the approach of associationists and proponents of social capital who seek class collaboration at the local scale.” (p18)

The strategy of associationists and promoters of social capital, because it does not confront capital, is largely confined within the locality. In contrast, a central aspect of our proposed strategy is to develop links between local organisation and larger spatial scales of struggle. (p19)

What structure of local government can best serve working-class interests in England today?

This is a question about which most of the Left has little or nothing to say, even though it raises fundamental class issues. It is an issue that Your Party will have to rapidly get to grips with and develop a radical vision and alternative policies for how local government at Council and Combined Authority levels, whether Tory or Labour-led, currently works.

The West Midlands Combined Authority does not have a WMCA Assembly democratically accountable to the citizens of the West Midlands. In fact there is no WMCA Assembly at all. There is only one directly elected member of the WMCA Board or Cabinet – the Mayor. All the other 27 members are not directly elected to their position – they are Councillors who are appointed to the Board by the Leaders of their local Councils. And in fact 11 of them represent neighbouring Councils outside the WMCA itself. Nor do they regularly report back to their local Councils about WMCA policies or receive mandates from their local Council Committees – let alone from local citizens – on what policies they should be promoting within the WMCA Board and committees.

And of course there are no “Regional/local permanent citizens assemblies integrated into regional decision-making”.

The London Assembly

London, like Birmingham, has a Mayor who is elected. The big difference between London and all the Combined Authorities, including of course the WMCA, is that London also has an elected Assembly. But it is very small, with only 25 Members. The Assembly’s 25 Members represent 9 million Londoners. By comparison, Birmingham has 101 councillors to represent 1.3 million residents. 14 of the 25 London Assembly Members are elected by constituencies and 11 are elected by proportional representation by the whole population of London to represent the whole capital. PR has increased the representation of smaller parties and of women in the Assembly.

The London Assembly was designed by Tony Blair when he was the Prime Minister. As Mario Washington-Ihieme says in her 2021 article ‘How the London Assembly scrutinises the Mayor’, “It was the intention of government to conceive a lean and strategic Assembly, to avoid recreating the mightier and highly political Greater London Council (92 seats) or its predecessor, the London County Council (150 seats).“ (quoted in Link. It is the source of other quotes below.)

What does the London Assembly do?

The “primary responsibility of the Assembly is to scrutinise the Mayor’s actions – this includes the budget, the London Plan and other strategies, and the bodies under mayoral control: Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police, the London Fire Brigade, development corporations and The London Economic Action Partnership”. The Assembly questions the Mayor ten times a year at Mayor’s Question Time. These meetings are public. The Assembly has set up 12 issue-based committees, but this is far too large a workload for the 25 Councillor members to carry out effectively.

The London Assembly members have very little power over the Mayor

Whatever the results of the scrutiny processes, the Mayor of London is largely immune to Assembly members’ criticisms and proposals. “For the Assembly to oppose or amend mayoral strategies, and to amend the GLA Group Budget, it has to reach a two-thirds majority – making the odds of winning a vote very low.” “The London Assembly cannot veto on the London Plan yet the Secretary of State has the power to direct changes in cases of inconsistency with national policy.” One consequence is that “Most Londoners are hardly even aware of who the Assembly members are, let alone their responsibilities”.

The example of the Metropolis of Lyon

The Greater Lyon metropolitan area has a population of over 2.3 million, making it France’s second-largest urban zone after Paris, and slightly larger than the population of the WMCA.

Greater Lyon’s government is the Metropolis of Lyon (Métropole de Lyon), a unique French territorial authority that combines city and departmental functions for Lyon and 58 surrounding communes, governed by a directly elected Metropolitan Council led by President Bruno Bernard, focusing on urban planning, transport, economy, and ecological transition.

The Metropolis of Lyon manages a wide range of public services and areas, including: Urban planning and development, Public transport (e.g., Lyon metro, trams, cycle lanes), Economic development, Social action and policies, Infrastructure management, Ecological transition and environmental preservation, Waste collection and other local public services.

Greater Lyon is governed by its own metropolitan authority, made up of 150 metropolitan councillors elected at the same time as the municipal councils by direct universal suffrage ^[4] within the framework of 14 electoral constituencies. The Executive has 84 Members, of which by far the largest is Europe Ecology – The Greens, with 58 Members, followed by the Socialist Party (14), the French Communist Party (6), La France Insoumise (3) and GRAM (3).

The Metropolis of Lyon is an example of local regional government that we should advocate for England. The West Midlands should be governed by an elected Assembly of at least 100 members. The members should be elected on a proportional geographical basis in each of the 7 LAs. That would make Birmingham the largest Council group with 40 members.

There needs to be an element of proportional representation in each LA-based election to ensure that small parties are represented, and also to ensure gender and ethnic representation. At present the Councillors on the WMCA Board consist of 18 men and 8 women. There is no official data available on ethnicity.

The elected Members of the West Midlands Council need to be both actively representative of their views and informing their views in a dialogic relationship. There should be regular open meetings in each Local Authority (ideally hybrid in-person and online) for issues to be raised and discussed with its local Assembly members. There should also be thematic LA-wide open meetings (again hybrid in-person and online) with Assembly members to discuss specific issues. In addition there should be digital platforms for citizen participation and discussion with Assembly members.

Part 3 of The shift of power from local Councils to regional Mayoral Combined Authorities will look in more detail at what we can learn from how democracy in Grand Lyon works. It will be posted on Birmingham Against The Cuts on Thursday 8 January.