Why Britain's Devolution Revolution Has Every Chance of Success

Reading Michael Bloomberg's bullish, upbeat take on Britain's devolution agenda last month felt like a rare and welcome treat amid the generally bleak UK economic commentary. Having held the New York City Mayor reins from 2002 to 2013, Bloomberg writes a compelling argument in that regional mayors with genuine authority can reverse decades of economic stagnation outside of London and the South East. The announcement of six new Mayoral Strategic Authorities, bringing 80% of England under devolution, represents exactly the kind of bold structural reform he advocates. 

His article highlights the frustration some feel about Britain's centralised governance structure. UK cities lag behind European counterparts by 20-30% in productivity, which has created a shortage of well-paying jobs and subsequent brain drain. The traditional approach of top-down planning from Whitehall hasn't addressed this gap, and there's broad political consensus that change is needed. Bloomberg's experience shows that when mayors have genuine autonomy over budgets and policy, they can implement ambitious initiatives that transform regional economies. Yet his template also reveals that even New York City, with its global status and massive tax base, couldn't operate in isolation. Success required coordination with state government in Albany, neighbouring jurisdictions in New Jersey and Connecticut, and countless civic and business partnerships. Building on his position of positivity, there may be one key ingredient that will determine whether these new authorities become engines of regional growth or expensive additions to an already complex governance landscape. That element is what we at Advance call Professional Collaboration.

Let's start with the story of Andy Burnham and Greater Manchester.
When Burnham became mayor in 2017, he inherited a combined authority of 10 local councils, each with its own priorities, political complexities and historical grievances. His devolved powers included transport, housing, and economic development. Burnham set about creating what has become known as the "Greater Manchester model", built on a distinctive philosophy of collaboration. This approach emphasises "names not numbers, and people not labels", developing personal relationships between public services and citizens rather than imposing top-down solutions. The model operates on a "whole place, whole system" basis, requiring collaboration across all sectors to tackle complex social issues. Greater Manchester’s collaborative approach has led to practical integration with health and social care services working as one, an integrated transport system, and a new relationship with the voluntary sector as equal partners rather than short-term contractors, showing that devolved powers work best when paired with deliberate investment in relationships and systems.

What does Professional Collaboration actually mean in this context?
At Advance, we've spent over three decades working in collaborative projects across oil & gas (less so these days!), power generation, utilities, defence, highways, civil engineering and rail. Collaboration has two components: relational (cooperation) and task (coordination). The question is whether both are present and effective. When they are, seven behaviours and propensities show up across the team. Trust. Being open to new ideas. Empathy for different perspectives. Working well with others. Courage to make difficult decisions. Planning with clear goals. Adaptability to change.

When both components are present and effective, teams possess the ability, licence and courage to openly discuss and resolve contentious subjects not only in a collaborative way but also as a mechanism to reinforce the collaboration between them. In devolution, this determines success or failure.

In the context of devolution, these are practical capabilities that determine whether regional governance succeeds or fails. And more specifically this means working effectively across four distinct dimensions: vertically with Westminster, horizontally with neighbouring mayors, internally with local councils, and externally with business and civic leaders. 

The psychologist Alfred Adler observed that all problems are fundamentally interpersonal problems. In devolution, could this hold true too? Technical solutions exist for most regional challenges, but implementing them depends on navigating webs of relationships between actors with different mandates, priorities, and political pressures.

The infrastructure sector proves the point.
In the delivery of major, complex programmes, collaboration is more and more a structural necessity. Advance have been active in the booming Canadian infrastructure market, where collaborative procurement and delivery models such as alliancing, progressive design build and integrated project delivery are increasingly adopted to address complexity, uncertainty and public accountability. These approaches align commercial interests, distribute risk and reward more equitably, and integrate owners, designers, contractors and critical suppliers into a single delivery system from the earliest stages. When implemented effectively, they enable earlier identification of safety and constructability risks, more informed decision making, and a reduction in adversarial behaviours that have historically undermined performance in infrastructure projects.

Similar lessons have been observed in the UK. HS2’s Rail Systems Alliance, for example, brings together design, access, resources and logistics functions within a shared governance framework to manage system interfaces and programme risk, drawing explicitly on learning from Crossrail’s recovery phase. At Advance, our experience across infrastructure and other complex sectors reinforces a consistent position: collaborative procurement creates the conditions for better outcomes, but it does not guarantee them. Value is realised only when contractual alignment is accompanied by sustained attention to the behavioural and organisational disciplines of collaboration through life, enabling teams to engage openly with uncertainty, resolve contested issues collectively and act in the long term interests of the programme rather than individual organisations.
 

Now let's look at where collaboration hasn't been prioritised.
The Northern Powerhouse illustrates this well. The idea was for mayors across the North to work together to create an economic counterweight to London. Individually the cities couldn’t match the capital’s scale, but together they represented 15 million people and huge economic potential. Yet the initiative struggled as political differences created tensions, competition over HS2 routing sparked conflicts, and Westminster’s habit of funding specific projects rather than providing block grants undermined collective planning. It’s often said that HS2 may well have been different had we started building from the North down, because local “hygiene factors” still loom large in our London-centric national politics.  It is through ongoing political collaboration from the Midlands and the North regardless of party colour that NPR is finally getting the attention it has long deserved.

So what does this mean for the future?
The English Devolution White Paper represents the most significant overhaul of local governance since 1974. Currently there are 317 councils in England. This could reduce to 138 Unitary Authorities and 46 Strategic Authorities. That's almost halving the number of local government authorities. Six "trailblazer" authorities have already been granted ability to negotiate even deeper powers: Greater Manchester, West Midlands, and West Yorkshire, plus three others.

The Bloomberg Philanthropies partnership with the UK government and the London School of Economics to train new metro mayors is a valuable initiative, focusing on building high-performing teams, using data effectively, and establishing clear metrics. And technical capacity-building alone isn’t enough — equal investment in collaborative capacity is needed, including having the human capital intelligence and the structural psychological safety to understand what is happening below the surface at a human-to-human level before developing an appropriate systematic method of working in Professional Collaboration that is reinforced by and reinforces appropriate culture and behaviours. Westminster’s role is particularly important. If funding continues to pit regions against each other, collaboration will remain secondary. The Tussell English Devolution Report highlights this risk: as devolution shifts responsibilities for transport, skills, and housing to local authorities, fragmented spending could reduce value for money unless neighbouring authorities pursue joint procurement strategies and bring consistency and scale (and predictability) to the market and supply chain, already stretched and sparce on skills.

An important caveat is that collaboration has a cost in time. If that cost is not consciously invested early, collaboration quickly becomes an excuse for inaction. Devolution will demand more joint working across boundaries, and it will also place greater responsibility on individual leaders to decide and move. Strong leadership, even when it creates friction, can at times drive progress more effectively than prolonged consensus building. Michael Bloomberg’s ability to act decisively was central to New York’s transformation, just as competition between regions can spur innovation. The aim is not collaboration for its own sake, but collaboration that supports timely decisions. The most effective mayors will be those who understand when to build coalitions and when to act, and who can hold both without defaulting to either delay or unilateralism.

The UK's devolution agenda represents a genuine opportunity.
The structural reforms create the conditions for success by giving mayors the autonomy and authority to shape regional economies. And the argument here is that necessary conditions aren’t sufficient on their own. What will matter most is whether these new authorities invest as much in relationships as they do in governance structures. For policymakers and investment decision-makers, that means funding collaborative capacity alongside technical capacity. For new mayors, it means recognising that the first 100 days should prioritise relationship-building as much as policy announcements. And for anyone watching, the powers these mayors receive matter less than how well they work together. And in the end, devolution will be judged by how well mayors, councils and communities work together in practice, and how well they collaborate professionally.
 

Primary Sources

1.    Michael Bloomberg's Telegraph Article (10 December 2025) 

• "Britain needs to supercharge the power of regional mayors"
• The Telegraph

2.    Greater Manchester Combined Authority 

• "The Greater Manchester Model" document
• https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/media/1676/greater-manchester-model.pdf
• Quotes: "names not numbers, and people not labels", "whole place, whole system", collaborative behaviours ("bravery, humility, honesty, flexibility, and tenacity"), "equal partners"

3.    Tussell Report 

• "The English Devolution Report" (May 2025)
• Data on Somerset Council merger (contract values, volumes)
• Statistics on council numbers (317 councils → 138 Unitary Authorities and 46 Strategic Authorities)
• Analysis of procurement fragmentation concerns

4.    The Advance Consultancy 

• "Suitability to Collaborate" psychometric framework
• Two decades of collaborative project experience across sectors
• Research on collaboration combining relational (cooperation) and task (coordination) elements
• Seven collaborative behaviours: trust, openness to ideas, empathy, working with others, courage, goal orientation, change orientation