Will voters back more devolution?

We are now on our third government of the year. Rishi Sunak has become the country’s new prime minister - and his administration is faced with a worsening cost of living crisis, a looming recession, and increasing levels of public anger over the action - or lack of action - the government has taken to help keep people’s bills down.

Neither of the two most recent Prime Ministers - Sunak or Truss - focused much of their energy campaigning on “Levelling Up” - previously the government’s flagship campaign to reduce regional inequality and improve economic prosperity. This, however, does not mean that Levelling Up is no longer important to the public - we continue to see lots of dissatisfaction with the decline of town centres and the relative lack of high-paying jobs outside of London. Many of these concerns are also wrapped up with a sense of unfairness that many decisions on ‘local’ issues are taken by politicians in London, who simply don’t understand (at best) or don’t care (at worst) about the problems faced by towns outside of the M25.

Recent attention has turned to local government reform as a way to resolve this issue and boost the Conservatives’ popularity - new, powerful ‘metro mayors’ have been proposed to be created across England as part of a bid to help deliver a ‘levelling up’ programme and, presumably, continue to push for funding even when - like now - the political debate has moved on.

We wanted to see whether these proposals are popular with the public. Firstly, it is clear that the public believes local governments - district and county councils - are better placed than Westminster to successfully level up the country. 47% of adults in England - rising to 53% in the North West - think that their local governments are best placed to improve their area.

Which of the following do you think is best placed to “level up” your local area?

Despite the championing of ‘levelling up’ by the UK government, most English voters do not actually think they are best placed to deliver it. Just 31% of English adults thought the UK Government was best placed to level up their area. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Conservative voters were far more likely than supporters of other parties to trust Westminster with levelling up, although even in this case, more Conservative voters think local governments are better placed to level up their areas than Westminster.

Would you support or oppose having a directly-elected mayor in your local area? (Respondents who answered “My area already has a metro-mayor” have been excluded).

Thinking about local government reform, the primary intervention of the Levelling Up White Paper were proposals to create directly-elected mayors in every English county, modelled on the Mayor of London or Mayor of Greater Manchester. But Westminster still has some work to do on convincing the public that creating new Sadiq Khans and Andy Burnhams is a good idea. While English adults are more likely to support (34%) than oppose (23%) this idea, far more didn’t express an opinion either way or simply didn’t know what they thought (43%). 

Attempts at regional devolution in 2004 highlighted the fact that trying to create new government bodies without a lot of public appetite can cause problems. Of course, it is not the early 2000s anymore. There is a growing appetite for devolving power away from Westminster in England, even if voters are not really sure exactly who or what should be devolved.

We presented our participants with a series of policy areas, and asked them whether they thought their local government, a new regional government, or the UK government would be best placed to deliver on those areas. The policy areas that most voters were keen to see devolved were public transport (68%), housing (66%), jobs (57%), crime (53%) and education (50%). 

While public transport, housing and crime are already under the control of local governments to varying degrees, Whitehall may be surprised by the appetite for meatier areas of public policy to be devolved to the cities and counties of England.