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With the Budget and Labour's Rewiring the State White Paper inevitably pointing the nation further down the route of devolution and powerful strategic authorities (SAs) there is a warning for councils to prevent adversarial models emerging in regions.Little guidance currently exists on how to build a successful SA and those involved in the development, management and scrutiny of existing authorities point to the importance of collaboration and consensus.Despite much of the country moving to a more polarised political make-up, Mark Rogers, interim chief at the Sussex & Brighton SA and the previous boss at both the Hull & East Yorkshire and East Midlands Combined County Authority, warned that they do not work like councils.Arguing councils were built around a parliamentary-style adversarial model, he maintained strategic authorities do not work like that and if an adversarial approach is taken, those involved will be ‘screwed'.‘But if you look for where you've got agreement, then that creates the kind of understanding and behaviour you need to succeed,' he added. ‘After that, everything else flows more naturally and more successfully from it.But despite Prime Minister Andy Burnham encouraging us to imagine a Manchester-style success story for every new SA, other mayoral authorities have faced scrutiny over their initial development.‘The most important thing you can do is to create the conditions for collaboration. There has to be an active attempt to create an inclusive, collaborative and consensus-driven culture.'Cambridgeshire CC chief executive Stephen Moir, whose authority sits on the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority (CA), pointed to the importance of understanding boundaries.‘While you want really clear governance, you want people to understand what are decisions for mayors to make versus decisions for the board,' he said.‘The key thing for me is about setting the behaviours right about inclusion, about recognising that while people bring in different perspectives, their voices should carry equal weight in that environment.'But despite Prime Minister Andy Burnham encouraging us to imagine a Manchester-style success story for every new SA, other mayoral authorities have faced scrutiny over their initial development.Tees Valley CA remains with a ‘best value' question mark over it and Hull & East Yorkshire CA has faced accusations of slow progress and of being a ‘toxic' workplace.The lack of a rigid rulebook on how SAs should be set up could prove both a blessing and a curse. The potential for regions to soar is as pronounced as the risk of slipping on proverbial banana skins.Adele Gritten, chief executive of Local Partnerships, a public sector consultancy and delivery organisation and a member of the independent advisory board sent by government into Tees Valley, said: ‘The good ones are the ones that know what they are there to do.‘They know what problems they need to solve, and that will be slightly different in every area. So, there can't be a complete blueprint that is unanimous across the piste because each area does look and feel different.'This rather laissez-faire approach by government means progress is likely to vary from region to region and residents may need to prepare for periods of trial and error.While Rogers recognised that Greater Manchester has built a ‘really good combined authority' he emphasised that it took the region decades of practising the three essential ingredients he identifies for success: inclusion, collaboration and a consensus-driven culture.He added that it is important for new SAs to avoid creating an overly rigid structure early on, allowing them flexibility to change as the authority matures.And Gritten argued those that do not race ahead may not necessarily be on the wrong tracks.‘I think there are different arguments about whether some of them are more successful because they're kind of building the aircraft as they're flying it,' she said.‘They're hiring those people very quickly and their tails are spinning. Then there are a couple who pause, pick one, two or three things they're going to focus on in the next 24 or 36 months and they build teams and staff around that.‘Maybe it's easier at face value with the glossy, good chief executives and good mayors to think there's a load of stuff happening in some of those fast-growing, fast staff-hiring areas. But, actually, there may be more going on that is long-term and sustainable work with the ones that are taking smaller baby steps, so let's see how that plays out in time.'Yet the lack of a clear road map on how to ensure council officer structures – which currently feed into SAs in a fairly vertical manner – should operate with new bodies means relationships remain key to success.‘It's done through negotiation among the key players,' said Rogers. ‘They kind of thrash it out and there are different ways of thrashing it out.'Moir said: ‘It's about trust and it's about relationships and that takes time to mature. And you've got to recognise you need to keep working at it.'Considering the experience of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, he added: ‘I think things that work really well for us are frequent meetings that are not formal decision-making meetings. We have what we call our leader strategy meeting. It's a bit like how informal cabinet meetings in a council would be.‘I think those informal spaces for proper debate, proper discussion… are actually really important.‘I wouldn't underestimate the focus on behaviours, values, building trust, recognising that you're there to do collective work on behalf of the region and not simply on behalf of your own authority. We must keep coming back to the fact it's not about win-lose, it's not about political debate in the normal way. It's about trying to leverage benefits and outcomes that benefit the whole place, the whole region.'Yet this does emphasis that where political differences and visions for a place are splintered the challenge for regions to succeed as the Government attempts to rewire the state becomes more acute.So little wonder Whitehall is believed to be gathering ‘learnings' or even developing a ‘blueprint' for how regions can give themselves the best chance of success in a new devolved world.Rogers said the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has recently started seeking advice on a ‘blueprint'.‘Blueprint is not the wording in Rewiring the State, but it's coming through the wording of the White Paper,' he added.But Gritten suggested the guidance is likely to be looser.‘Nobody will have a coherent, unique, consistent set of answers,' she said.And while she argued it is fine ‘on one level' for government to leave it up to individual areas to figure things out collectively, she added: ‘Some kind of strategic framework or some kind of guidelines would be particularly useful and they may or may not be forthcoming as part of iterative Rewiring the State papers and documents.'She said MHCLG is ‘at the stage where they are pulling bits together from different parts of the system' to gather learnings but cautioned: ‘I very much think there's not going to be a cascade of template/blueprint rollouts. There'll be best practice case study learnings, but I think it's going to be very much for individual regions to figure out how they want to best work together.'For all the certainty the Burnham Government projects about the potential for success from a nation of strategic authorities, the variables from political disconnect to differing strategic outlooks could lead to some regions scoring C- rather than A+.Many will welcome the freedom for regions to take charge of their own destinies, but with soft skills such as collaboration being apparently essential ingredients to success, even a fully formed blueprint is unlikely to elicit a guarantee of ‘Manchesterism' emerging everywhere.

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DEVOLUTION

Strategic authorities: Swerving the 'screw up'

By Paul Marinko | 13 October 2026

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