Aisling Byrne is a Senior Public Affairs Officer at the Royal Town Planning Institute.
On 10 July 2025, the Government introduced its long-awaited Bill on devolution – newly named the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.
The main purpose of the Bill is to transfer power out of Westminster and into the hands of local leaders with the aim of delivering growth, strengthening the foundations of local government, and empowering communities. We’ve made a note of some of the areas of interest within this Bill that we’ll be keeping an eye on.
Strategic authorities
Strategic authorities (SAs) will be the centrepiece of the new devolution architecture for England. Combined authorities, combined county authorities, the Greater London Authority and in some cases single local authorities will be able to become SA’s. This will result in three tiers of strategic authority; foundation strategic authorities, mayoral strategic authorities, and established mayoral strategic authorities. These new SA’s will have responsibility for strategy development and programme delivery over larger functional economic areas.
The creation of strategic authorities links in with powers we have already seen introduced within the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which will require mayors of strategic authorities in areas outside of London to prepare a spatial development strategy (SDS). To support the implementation of these SDSs, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will extend the Mayor of London’s development management powers to SA mayors.
The development management powers that will be handed to SA mayors by the Bill include:
- A duty on local planning authorities to consult the mayor on applications of potential strategic importance. The mayor can then intervene by directing a refusal of the application, or taking over and determining the application themselves.
- The power to make a mayor development order.
The Bill also amends sections of the Planning Act 2008 to enable mayors of combined authorities and combined country authorities to be community infrastructure levy “charging authorities” in addition to local planning authorities.
Mayoral development corporations
Our Planning Premium report identified that the success of recent development corporations demonstrates that a fully integrated town planning process is compatible with delivery at scale and that an investment in town planning through these vehicles is good value for money. Given those findings, we were pleased to see measures in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill seek to expand the remit of mayoral development corporations to include development, so that they can deliver new settlements in addition to urban regeneration.
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill amends the Localism Act 2011 to confer mayoral development corporation functions on all mayoral strategic authorities.
Duty to collaborate – enhances the need for a National Spatial Framework
Clause 22 of the Bill provides a formal process where mayors of neighbouring strategic authorities (SAs) can make and respond to requests for collaboration.
This formal process can only be used for collaboration with neighbouring SAs and only if the requesting mayor thinks that the collaboration would be likely to improve the economic, social or environmental wellbeing of people who live or work in their area (or also in the neighbouring area).
The detail and wording of this clause brings up some questions for us, such as how a Mayor would know the request is appropriate? What metrics/indicators are being used to assess the likely improvement to economic, social and environmental wellbeing? Will these requests for collaboration be in line with the national spatial priorities we expect to come through as part of the 10-year infrastructure strategy? Place-based business cases, which will bring together different projects that are needed to achieve the objectives of a particular place, are also a key feature of the 10-year infrastructure strategy – how will the mayoral duty to collaborate tie into place-based business case proposals and should they be a factor considered within the requesting process?
At the RTPI, we believe that to inform decision-making and collaboration, a National Spatial Framework, would be the essential tool in providing the strategic direction and evidence base to enable mayoral bodies to discharge such duties.
