NEWS

As Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister today, Chief Executive Jamie Ollivere examines his plans for a legally underpinned transfer of power, and why delivery, collaboration, and fairness across the whole North will be the true test.

By Jamie Ollivere, Chief Executive, RTC North

I've spent a long-time championing devolution for the North. I’ve watched the Northern Powerhouse launch with fanfare and fade into a branding exercise and Levelling Up arrive with genuine ambition, only to leave us with a patchwork of trailblazer deals, mayoral combined authorities at different stages of maturity, and a growing sense that some places are pulling ahead while others are being left behind. So when Andy Burnham used his first major speech since launching his leadership bid to set out a new vision for devolution, my first instinct was caution, but having looked properly at what's being proposed, I think there's something genuinely different here, and it's worth explaining why.

The Northern Powerhouse gave us a phrase, some transport investment, and a sense of momentum, but no legal or fiscal underpinning that outlasted the political cycle that created it. Levelling Up gave us a White Paper full of good intentions and a competitive bidding system that, in practice, rewarded the places with the capacity and resources to write winning bids, not necessarily the places with the greatest need. Both initiatives pointed roughly the right way, but neither one legislated for it, resulting in a two-tier system with a handful of mayoral combined authorities with deepening powers and funding certainty, and a much longer list of areas still negotiating, still waiting, and uncertain about what devolution means for them, creating a landscape that feels unfair and economically self-defeating.

You can't build a coherent industrial strategy, a credible skills pipeline, or long-term investment confidence in a system where the rules of the game depend on which deal your area happened to sign and when.

Importantly, what’s different about Burnham's announcement is that it borrows a mechanism from Germany. Germany's Basic Law contains a constitutional commitment to working towards equivalent living conditions across all its states, not identical, but equivalent, with formal fiscal equalisation and institutional machinery built to deliver it over decades. Burnham has said his new ‘No.10 North’ operation, based in Manchester but tasked with channelling power into every region, including London, would carry a similar mission for Britain.

If this is followed through with the legislation to match, it would be the first time a UK government has put a legal duty behind the rhetoric of rebalancing the country, rather than a discretionary scheme that can be easily wound down or reprioritised when budgets tighten, or ministers change. The difference between what Burnham announced and the Northern Powerhouse and Levelling is durability; it survives changes of government, changes of minister, changes of political fashion in a way that a strategy document never can.

In practice, this should mean funding settlements that aren't reopened and re-litigated every spending review, devolved powers that don't have to be won back through fresh negotiation with every new Secretary of State, and a basis in law for places to hold government to account when investment doesn't materialise.

There is a second part of this that matters. Devolution will only deliver its full potential if places work with each other, not simply alongside each other. The North's real strengths are regional, not local. Energy expertise, advanced manufacturing supply chains, life sciences, and space technology all draw on capabilities scattered across the whole of the North, rather than sitting neatly inside one mayoral boundary.

Burnham's reference to ‘Manchesterism’ suggests partnership across public, private, academic, and community sectors as an operating model. If that philosophy is extended across the North, so combined authorities are encouraged to pool ambition, capacity, and resources rather than compete for them, then the real economic gains begin to look credible. The biggest opportunity for ‘The Great North’ is not one city region outcompeting its neighbours, it is the whole of the North acting with enough scale and coordination to compete on the global stage.

But this is also where the caution needs to sit. Many places across the North already feel that economic development has become too Manchester-centred, with peripheral towns, rural economies, and smaller city regions asked to orbit around a success story that is not always theirs. If the purpose of devolution is to break the gravitational pull of London, it cannot simply create a London of the North effect, where power, attention, and investment are decentralised from Whitehall only to be recentralised in Manchester.

I want to be clear, I'm genuinely encouraged. The ambition is bigger, the mechanism is more serious, and the language of legal entitlement is exactly what this agenda has lacked. But I've watched enough devolution announcements land with confidence and fade into disappointment to know that the test isn't the speech, it's in the action that follows it.

Northern Powerhouse and Levelling Up both promised a new relationship between Westminster and the regions, yet both fell short, not because the diagnosis was wrong, but because the policy and the action never matched the rhetoric. If Burnham’s government wants this to be different, the legislation needs to come quickly, the fiscal architecture needs to be real, and the collaborative mechanisms between regions need to be designed properly rather than bolted on as an afterthought.

The North has been patient; we've backed the direction of travel before and ended up disappointed. This time, the prize on offer is a genuine, legally underpinned shift of power and resource, built around places working together rather than competing for scraps. We'll be watching closely, and we'll be ready to play our part, but the headlines now need to be matched by policy and action.