Rewiring the state: Shock treatment for councils?

Much has been said about the rewiring of the state promised by Prime Minister Andy Burnham. In our recently published Localis think-tank paper we have raised the question Will English Local Government Blow a Fuse in a Rewired State? We ask this because of crossed wires between the positive messages about local government in Head North, the PM's book with Steve Rotheram, and the more negative announcements by Andy Burnham since becoming PM.Those crossed wires become a wiring spaghetti junction when we consider the Cabinet Office paper published on 31 July and what it says, or doesn't say, about local government.Head North is positive about place, community, local loyalties and identity and about local government. It even provided encouragement that local government reorganisation (LGR) would be reconsidered. But on becoming PM, Andy Burnham appeared to scotch that hope when commenting in a BBC interview that LGR in the remaining counties would go ahead and would be completed by 2029.Worse still he said he was looking at a ‘structure of local government which is the same across the land'. In heaven's name why? If the PM looked at local government in Germany, about whose Basic Law he has expressed enthusiasm, he would find anything but a system of local government that was the same across the land. He'd also find that looking across most of Europe and beyond.Another wiring misconnection is the conflation of devolution and decentralisation present in the current policy debate and the Cabinet Office paper – but that has always been the case. Devolution is what occurred to Scotland and Wales in the late 1990s. What is being offered to English local government and even strategic authority mayors comes nowhere close to the transference of power and authority that happened to Scotland and Wales – quite apart from the glaring absence in the debate of consideration of an English Parliament.But, did the PM fulfil his promise to ‘look again' at LGR when secretary of state, Angela Rayner, announced a pause and review of the current round? There is a suspicion that the pause and review is not to be a fundamental part of a major rethinking of the relationship between local government and the centre, which needs to be a part of any rewiring. Rather, the pause and review is so the centre can check the legal position, and when clarified, carry on with decimating the number of councils across England.The review team would do well to read Head North and remind themselves, and the PM, of the importance of local government and its link to real communities of place, community identity and place loyalty.Another wiring misconnection is the conflation of devolution and decentralisation present in the current policy debate and the Cabinet Office paper – but that has always been the case. Devolution is what occurred to Scotland and Wales in the late 1990s. What is being offered to English local government and even strategic authority mayors comes nowhere close to the transference of power and authority that happened to Scotland and Wales – quite apart from the glaring absence in the debate of consideration of an English Parliament.Rather, we have the continued fixation on artificial English regions – well, if LGR is to produce even more artificial units of local government, why not artificial regions too? What is on offer to local government and strategic authority mayors is decentralisation of tasks, functions, some decision-making and some budgets, not devolution of power and autonomy on a par with the rest of the UK.It is necessary to understand the distinction between devolution and decentralisation if the promised white paper is not to be yet another trip of the circuit breaker towards a rewired state.What should worry all in local government is its marginalisation, which is reflected in the Cabinet statement and the preference in government thinking for strategic authorities and elected mayors. That marginalisation is evident throughout the Cabinet Office statement, which, in contrast to Head North's more positive approach to local government must have been drafted with the PM's blessing.We look at the statement in some detail in the Localis paper for the crossed wires that appear between promises of devolution and some centralist thinking. It is also apparent that local government is not seen as an independent politically representative, governing institution and more for what it can contribute to the success of strategic authorities and their mayors. There has been little in any of the PM's statements or the Cabinet Office paper that indicates local government is to be a junction box in the rewired state and have a role in the government of communities – and in the overall governance of England – that is commonplace for much of local government in other nations.If the PM and the pause and review team took a glance at overseas systems of local government, they would find much of value to rewiring that is currently being overlooked and, we can only conclude, deliberately so. What is required is not a quick pause and review to check the legality of the process of LGR, but a more fundamental, independent inquiry into the role of local government, its powers, functions, autonomy, freedoms and need for constitutional protection.If the centre did that it would be in for a bit of a shock; if it doesn't and LGR and the current devolution policy continues as is, it will be local government, and all in it, that is in for the shock.Colin Copus is emeritus professor of local politics at De Montfort University, visiting professor at Ghent University and visiting fellow at Localis and Steve Leach is emeritus professor of local government, De Montfort University

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LOCALIS

Rewiring the state: Shock treatment for councils?

By Colin Copus, Steve Leach | 01 October 2026

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