England’s mayors should face much greater official scrutiny to avoid Andy Burnham’s devolution agenda being “derailed by one bad decision”, a thinktank has said.
Ministers will set out plans next month to give regional leaders control over potentially billions of pounds of additional funding under a “transformational” shift of power outside Whitehall.
From 2028, mayors will be able to keep a share of income tax generated in their areas – giving them greater scope to borrow for major infrastructure projects – as well as retain business rates from 2027 and raise further funds through a “tourist tax”.
IPPR North, whose researchers have worked closely with Burnham’s government, welcomed the “bold and ambitious” plans as a step towards “reversing decades of damaging over-centralisation that has held the country back”.
It called for mayors to be allowed to keep a 5% share of income tax, which would move an extra £3.8bn a year out of Whitehall and roughly double the funding under their control.
However, the thinktank said increasingly powerful mayors should be subject to much tougher oversight.
In its 30-page report, IPPR North warned: “A bad decision or mismanaged funding from any one authority risks turning public opinion against devolution and undoing progress.”
Its proposals include establishing new regional audit offices to scrutinise how money is spent and what it delivers. It is also proposed that each region should be overseen by a senior accounting officer, similar to the model of permanent secretaries running government departments.
Larger mayoral authorities, such as London, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, should be overseen by beefed-up accountability committees to guard against any “misuse of funds, corruption and elite capture by lobbying interests”, the thinktank said.
Burnham, a former Greater Manchester mayor, has placed the transfer of power outside Whitehall at the heart of his government, establishing No 10 North in Manchester to act as the engine room of rapid devolution.
Proposals outlined in a Cabinet Office paper in July, weeks after Burnham became prime minister, would represent the most dramatic shift of authority to the English regions in modern times.
There are concerns, however, about the capacity of newer and smaller combined authorities to take on these expanded powers, which include employment support, local transport, housing, innovation, local energy and cultural investment.
While some mayoral authorities are well established, others, such as the Reform UK-led bodies in Hull and East Yorkshire and Greater Lincolnshire, were only founded last year. Several other planned mayoral authorities, spanning millions of people along the south coast and in north-west England, have not yet been established.
Ministers are due to set out a timeline for fiscal devolution to the English regions in a white paper to be published alongside the autumn budget on 28 October.
Aditi Sriram, the lead author of the IPPR North report, said Britain was at a “defining moment” in how it is governed and that accountability was essential to the success of devolution.
“For too long, mayors have been expected to drive growth with one hand tied behind their backs, reliant on Whitehall for the money and permission to get things done,” she said. “Critics are loud, political trust is faltering, and the public wants to see action, so the devolution agenda cannot afford to fail.”
Jim O’Neill, the former Treasury minister who advised Burnham before he became prime minister, said in a foreword to the report that critics would dismiss devolution as an “irrelevance and a probable source of wasted taxpayers’ money”.
But he said the best answer to those “cynics” would be to hand mayors of the most populated areas the greatest powers. “This is assuming they have the capacity to cope, the desire to be accountable and, of course, just like Greater Manchester has had, the aspiration to be bold,” he said.
