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It seems clear the shockwaves emerging from the Rewiring the State document's desire to shake up the way the UK works will be felt for years to come.This summer's landmark Cabinet paper has pledged to make the new No10 North the ‘engine room' for good growth.This new nerve centre of a more decentralised government will work in partnership with local leaders in driving forward a place-based approach to policy.Rewiring the State includes a commitment to look at whether the responsibilities and funding of individual arm's-length bodies (ALBs), should be transferred to local leaders or returned to ministerial departments ‘unless ministers proactively decide that it is necessary to retain them externally'.The Cabinet will also look at cutting the number of ‘duplicative policy, communications and strategy teams' in ALBs, ‘which are not reporting into accountable local leaders or ministers'.Andy Burnham is determined to get those devolutionary ducks lined up quickly. Civil servants are to be seconded to every mayoral authority in the country.This week, the Prime Minister announced mayors would be allowed to take over large-scale planning applications for housing schemes, offices and tall buildings in towns and cities. Homes England, an ALB which controls much of the Government's cash for social and affordable homes, will still lead on the biggest projects, but its funding and expertise will be focused on the priorities agreed by local mayors.A recent report from think-tank Re:State proposed four core structural units for No10 North, with one focused on decentralising and increasing local accountability for national quangos and public bodies.One well-placed sector expert told The MJ Homes England had not been able to operate in a place-based way. ‘The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government [MHCLG] is set up with silos of different types of money, and therefore Homes England receives that money, but has to spend it as it is told to by the silos in MHCLG.'Re:State's director of policy and research Simon Kaye told The MJ the position in Re:State's No10 North report was to ‘use it as a kind of a tool to get stuff like this quango revolution done'.A report last year from his think-tank on Homes England had said it could probably be abolished.Speaking ahead of the Homes England announcement, his advice to civil servants and ministers was: ‘They need a big, visible, obvious example of the rewiring that they're currently talking about in quite abstract terms. They need to do it in this Parliament'.He added: ‘It'll be a heck of a lot easier to do that by addressing challenges with a couple of ALBs than it will be by trying to reform a bunch of government departments. That'll be much more visible, much more doable within a couple of years.'One well-placed sector expert told The MJ Homes England had not been able to operate in a place-based way. ‘The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government [MHCLG] is set up with silos of different types of money, and therefore Homes England receives that money, but has to spend it as it is told to by the silos in MHCLG.'With Will Garton in place as interim permanent secretary at the MHCLG following the departure of Dame Sarah Healey for the Department of Work and Pensions, finding the right person to replace her is one of the most important appointments in the period ahead, they added.‘Sarah was not a place individual. She was very much a centrist Treasury brain. For Burnham to really accelerate both his devolution, his housing [agenda] and place growth in every postcode the permanent secretary of MHCLG will have to have that kind of mindset. And I'm not sure who that could be other than Tom Riordan,' the source added.Riordan, a former chief executive at Leeds City Council, is Northern Growth Envoy at the Treasury and second permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care.Jackie Sadek is independent chair of the UK Innovation Corridor. She said: ‘I would marry up the disbanding of the arm's-length bodies together with a delivery unit in No10, which had a brief to be across Whitehall and across the devolved authorities to progress chase, make sure people were meeting their targets, putting support where it's needed, and generally be on people's cases about getting housing delivered.'But would the Treasury bow to the wishes of No10 North? ‘My suspicion is that, as ever, civil servants and indeed some ministers will not relinquish their hand.'According to Jonathan Werran, chief executive of think-tank Localis, there is an argument for saying that Homes England has only recently matured to become a potent force for increasing housing delivery.While he acknowledged there would be a ‘strong wish' from strategic authorities to have Homes England on a regional footprint, he added: ‘Would its breakup and regionalisation come at an ironically cruel and counterproductive time, having finally played itself into bat as a national institution capable of scoring big innings on the pitches of the revised National Planning Policy Framework and Spatial Development Strategies?'Making a radical shift from delegation from Whitehall to genuine devolution is at the heart of Rewiring the State. The Government has promised the full reform programme will be fleshed out in the devolution White Paper due to be published alongside October's Autumn Budget and the fiscal devolution roadmap.And, the forthcoming Mike Emmerich Independent Review of Growth-Capable Devolution, also due to report in October, promises a practical review of the institutional capability, leadership and partnerships required to turn devolution into sustainable economic growth.Werran said making the agencies of central government accountable and responsive to sub-regions and localities ‘pre-supposes the organisational maturity, capacity and desire of the strategic state to manage them'.Labour Mayor of the West Midlands Richard Parker told The MJ public resources can be used more effectively if they are devolved, ‘and when we do that we'll deliver better outcomes'.He said that in the first year of devolution under the first single settlement the West Midlands outperformed the metrics given to the region by government by ‘20, 30, 40, 50%'.Asked if there was a strong case for devolving the powers and responsibilities of arm's-length bodies, Parker said: ‘One hundred per cent, and it's great we've got a Prime Minister that believes in it too.'He believes ‘quangos have created an unnecessary level of bureaucracy and I think with mayors in place it delays decision-making' and that there is a cast-iron argument for devolving the powers of Homes England to the regional tier.In his view, arm's-length bodies often lack agility, with processes frequently misaligned with local opportunities.‘Homes England's decision-making is often made with reference to a narrow set of metrics designed by them, not necessarily to look at ways they can align their investment with a more ambitious regional agenda.'Parker also believes that government-owned public financial institutions (PuFins), the National Wealth Fund and British Business Bank are ‘just too remote and distant'.While he believes these PuFins are ‘quite new and are working through some of these requirements', he would ultimately like to have an allocation of resources from them. He said it is crucial to ensure that ‘what they do, and their priorities and own metrics make sense to people like me, because if they don't, they might as well not exist'.Parker would fully support a decision to abolish the ‘too centralised and too London-centric' Arts Council and devolve its responsibilities.Werran's take on how the regional Arts Council funding programme could be devolved, was to ask: ‘Would it be localised decision-making or exchanging one unaccountable national set of panjandrums for a sub-regional one? It's for these kinds of reasons that one could argue for the merit of the resurrection, even as a "think layer", of the Lord Heseltine-created Government Offices for the Regions Network to bolster relationships and knowledge-sharing.'And in his view, having the Environment Agency on a more locally responsive footprint ‘would be, inherently a "good thing"'.Independent consultant and director Michael Palin believes there's an argument to still have technically capable arm's-length bodies ‘but only if empowered to use their technical capability'.‘If they are hamstrung by the rules of a government department or create layers of internal bureaucracy rather than allowing the frontline to get things done then there is little point in having them.'Re:State's Kaye believes that ‘basically you can look at any arm's-length body with the word England in it and think, well, should it be "such and such England", or should it be something that's handled at that regional strategic scale?‘I think that is a kind of a fun parlour game you can play. I challenge anyone to name one of those that you really shouldn't break up or think about at least operating in a more regionalised way.'

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DEVOLUTION

Quango conundrum

By Ann McGauran | 27 August 2026

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