Who Decides Where You Live? A Field Guide to England's Mayors and Combined Authorities

Ask a resident of almost any English city region who is responsible for the buses, the new housing target or the adult skills budget, and the honest answer is often that they do not know. That uncertainty is not a failure of civic interest. It reflects a governance map that has been redrawn repeatedly, unevenly, and largely without a public explanation of what changed.

England now operates several distinct arrangements at once. Some places have a metro mayor with a named portfolio of powers. Some have a combined authority without one. Some have a county-based body created under more recent legislation. Others have no strategic authority at all and remain governed by the older two-tier or unitary pattern. Devolution in practice is less a single settlement than a series of separately negotiated deals, each with its own annexes.

The building blocks, in plain English

A combined authority is a statutory body through which neighbouring councils take decisions jointly. It has a board, usually of council leaders, and it exists to do things that make little sense within a single council boundary — strategic transport, economic development, skills. Where a mayor exists, they chair the body, appoint a cabinet from among constituent council members, and hold certain functions individually.

Since the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, a second model has spread: the combined county authority. These are formed by upper-tier councils — counties and unitary authorities — rather than by every district within an area. The distinction matters to residents because a district council may sit inside the footprint of a strategic body without being a voting member of it. Many combined authorities also include non-constituent members and associate members: councils that participate and receive some benefit but do not vote on the board.

That leads to the first practical question for any resident: is my council a constituent member with a vote, or merely a partner sitting in the room?

What has actually been handed down

The powers are real, but narrower than the rhetoric of a 'devolution revolution' implies. In transport, mayoral combined authorities can pursue bus franchising under the Bus Services Act 2017 — a genuine transfer of control over routes, fares and standards, used most conspicuously in Greater Manchester. They coordinate strategic transport planning and, in some areas, hold powers over key routes and the ability to establish mayoral development corporations with planning functions.

In planning, some deals include a spatial development strategy, allowing a mayor to set a strategic framework across council boundaries, alongside powers to support land assembly and brownfield development. Housing investment powers have generally arrived as funding programmes with conditions attached rather than as open-ended discretion.

In skills, the adult education budget has been devolved to mayoral combined authorities, giving them influence over provision for adults who do not hold a first level 2 or level 3 qualification. Deeper 'trailblazer' deals, agreed first with Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, added single settlements, consolidated funding streams and a role in shaping skills provision locally.

In policing, the mayors of London, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands also exercise police and crime commissioner functions. Elsewhere those functions remain with a separate commissioner, sometimes covering a boundary that does not match the combined authority's.

What has not moved is equally important. Social care, schools, most of the NHS, and the bulk of local taxation remain where they were. The mayor of a city region cannot redirect the council's budget, override a planning committee, or compel a district to build.

Following the money

Most devolved funding arrives through a small number of channels: gainshare arrangements under which an area retains a share of growth in business rates; investment funds allocated over multi-year periods; city region sustainable transport settlements; devolved adult education budgets; and ring-fenced capital pots for brownfield land and housing. Deeper deals have replaced some of these with a single settlement and longer funding horizons.

The recurring criticism, made repeatedly by parliamentary committees and by the bodies that represent local government, is not that the money is missing but that it is short-term, ring-fenced and conditional. A five-year settlement allows planning; an annual one does not. Where funding is awarded through competitive bidding rounds, the strategic choice sits with Whitehall rather than with the mayor who is accountable locally.

The scrutiny question

Combined authorities are required to maintain an overview and scrutiny committee, and those committees publish agendas and minutes. In practice, scrutiny is widely regarded as the weak point of the model. Committees are typically small, thinly staffed compared with council scrutiny, cannot compel the mayor to reverse a decision, and depend on constituent councils for their membership and political balance.

There are structural reasons for this. The mayor appoints the cabinet; the cabinet sets the budget; the board, which the mayor chairs, approves the strategies. Decision records are published, but they are often technical and rarely covered by local media operating with reduced resources. Turnout in mayoral elections has generally been modest, which weakens the electoral check that is meant to do the heavy lifting.

The consequence for residents is that influence before a decision often counts for more than scrutiny afterwards.

Mapping your own area

Start with the decision, not the institution. A planning application is almost always a district or unitary council matter, even where the mayor has a strategic plan. Highways, social care and education sit with the county or unitary. Strategic transport, the adult education budget and investment priorities sit with the combined authority.

Then check three documents. First, the combined authority's constitution, published on its website alongside its schedule of meetings, decision notices and register of members' interests. Second, the devolution deal itself, including its technical annexes, published on gov.uk — this is where the specific powers are listed. Third, your council's constitution, which sets out which committee takes which decision and how public questions are handled.

Useful secondary sources include the authority's annual report, its scrutiny committee agendas, the Local Transport Plan, and the local plan documents held by the planning authority. Where something remains opaque, a freedom of information request to the combined authority is usually answered within 20 working days.

Getting in before the decision is fixed

Consultations on local plans, strategic transport plans, bus service improvement plans and skills strategies are the points at which options are still open. The general legal principles governing consultation are well established: it must occur before the decision is taken, provide enough information to allow a considered response, allow adequate time, and be conscientiously taken into account.

Three practical points follow. Respond through the formal route, so that your submission is registered as a representation rather than absorbed into a general conversation. Answer the specific questions asked, because summaries of sentiment carry less weight than reasoned responses to defined options. And ask, afterwards, for the consultation statement, which sets out how responses were handled — a document that is more revealing than the press release announcing the outcome.

For planning documents, representations made at the consultation stage can carry through to examination, where an independent inspector considers the soundness of the plan. That is a slower process, but it is one where individual evidence genuinely shapes the outcome.

The promise of devolution is that decisions are taken closer to the people affected by them. That promise is only kept where residents can see who decides, on what basis, and with what opportunity to object. Making the map legible is not a peripheral concern. It is the precondition for everything else.