English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act

The Local Government Association (LGA) welcomes further devolution to England. This is a core ask of our sector, and the LGA has long championed the genuine devolution of powers to local places. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act embeds that ambition into legislation.

Throughout the parliamentary process, we worked closely with and listened to our members in policy boards, during visits and webinars, and in wider engagement with our Special Interest Groups.

We also met regularly with officials and Ministers Fahnbulleh and Taylor. These productive discussions have led to the inclusion of several government amendments which represent key wins for our sector:

• adding culture and rural affairs to the list of Strategic Authority areas of competence
• softening the requirement for councils operating a committee system to move to leader and cabinet model
• removing the automatic publication of councillors’ home addresses
• strengthening strategic authority overview and scrutiny arrangements through establishment of Local Scrutiny Committees
• enabling licensing authorities to suspend licenses for taxis or private hire vehicles issued by another authority in the interest of public safety
• powers to take enforcement action against pavement parking
• establishing London Councils as a joint committee, enabling ministers to pay grant funding directly to councils in London for discharge of certain functions, for example, freedom passes
• awarding licensing authorities powers to publish gambling impact assessments, and then to reject applications based on the cumulative impact an additional gambling location would have.
• allowing councils to reuse existing list of assets of community value when the new community right to buy is introduced.

Next steps

While not every issue can be addressed in a single Bill, this legislation will empower our members to shape the future of their places.

Our focus now is on supporting the next phase of devolution. Officers will use feedback from members to refine the LGA’s priorities and positions. This will ensure our engagement with government on the design and implementation of devolution policy is informed by real local experience.