The Inner Circle View on English Devolution - Insights From the 2026 Mais Lecture
By Blair Parkinson, Managing Consultant
English devolution has developed unevenly over the past decade. New institutions have been created with more responsibility, more visibility and more expectation, but only partial control over the resources needed to meet them. The deeper question has remained unresolved: how far is national government really willing to go in letting places shape their own economic futures?
Rachel Reeves’ announcement at the 2026 Mais Lecture draws this question into the open. A roadmap for fiscal devolution points to something more substantial than another incremental shift in powers. It suggests places having a stronger role in shaping the resources, choices and incentives that sit behind growth, with a better chance of translating that growth into better lives: well-paid work, decent homes, and places where people feel safe and proud to live. The signal is important, but the detail will matter. A good next step would give places a clearer stake in the growth they generate, more certainty over the resources they can plan around, and a model of accountability strong enough to support meaningful local choice, while also being sustainable and workable across very different kinds of place.
Previous rounds of fiscal reform have shown that when places have a stronger stake in the outcomes of growth, they tend to think and act differently: shaping more active investment strategies, building stronger business cases, and approaching growth as something to be stewarded over time.
Alongside the roadmap for fiscal devolution, the new City Investment Funds signal a more tangible shift in how government is thinking about growth and local economic leadership. By putting additional long-term capital behind major city regions, and linking that to greater local control and business rates retention, the government is pointing towards a stronger role for places in shaping investment over time. That reinforces a wider point on the symbiotic role of cities and regions in generating and sharing prosperity across the country.
Our view is that England works best when both cities and regions are able to play their fullest role. Cities are powerful engines of growth, innovation and investment. Regions are the scale at which that growth can be connected, coordinated and shared. In a polycentric England, prosperity is built by helping different places succeed on their own terms, while strengthening the links between them so that the whole country is more productive, more resilient and more prosperous.
If this marks the start of a more substantive phase of fiscal devolution, places will need to turn devolution deals into functioning delivery systems, build institutions that can handle greater autonomy with confidence and credibility, and tell a growth story strong enough to attract investment, justify further freedom, and show how local success contributes to national prosperity. We will be exploring those questions in a short series over the coming weeks.