Greater Manchester devolution offers a model for UK growth, BBC Verify finds

The UK government signed a deeper trailblazer deal for Greater Manchester in March 2023, extending a devolution experiment that now offers one of England’s longest records for comparing promises against results. Andy Burnham and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority say the region is the UK’s fastest growing economy after a decade of devolution, and they point to faster productivity growth and stronger investment flows. The harder question is whether those gains came from shifting power outward, or whether devolution mainly gave a political label to trends that might have happened anyway.

How Greater Manchester built its powers

The region did not gain control in one step. Greater Manchester’s first directly elected metro-mayor deal was agreed in 2014, the first devolution deal was signed in November that year, and a second deal followed in February 2015. That second agreement included health and social care and brought a £6 billion budget under local oversight.

A July 2015 deal widened the settlement again, adding further transport devolution, social housing reform and control over EU funding. Later deals in March 2016 and November 2017 broadened local powers further, and the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 received Royal Assent on 28 January 2016.

The trailblazer package gave the mayor and combined authority influence over transport, skills, employment, housing, regeneration, trade, investment, innovation, business support and finance. The region now has far more control over the policy tools that shape jobs, access to care, housing supply and the daily journey to work.

What the evidence says about growth

Greater Manchester’s own case rests on the claim that devolution has coincided with stronger economic performance. The region says that in the decade since devolution it has become the UK’s fastest growing economy, and backers also argue that it has attracted more foreign direct investment than any region outside London.

The Northern Powerhouse Partnership puts Greater Manchester’s rise in GVA per hour worked at 31% between 2004 and 2023, the biggest increase of any UK region or mayoralty. Supporters also argue that public transport and infrastructure investment helped deliver that performance, linking devolved powers to the physical systems that make labor markets function.

Even so, productivity data alone cannot prove causation. Greater Manchester’s growth record has to be read alongside its industrial mix, its population size, its links to national rail and road networks, and the fact that it has had a succession of deals over more than a decade. The evidence shows correlation between devolution and stronger performance; the open policy question is how much of that performance depends on the powers themselves.

Why transport, housing and care sit at the center of the model

The model turns on whether local leaders can coordinate housing, transport, skills and care in a way Whitehall often cannot. That is why the February 2015 deal that folded in health and social care, and the July 2015 deal that added transport and housing powers, matter as much as the later headline-grabbing trailblazer arrangement.

In Greater Manchester, those functions were designed to work together. Transport devolution can make a labor market larger by cutting travel friction; housing reform can shape where workers can live; and health and social care control can affect whether people stay in work or fall out of it. The social equity case is built into that structure: better buses, more accessible housing and integrated care are practical supports.

The government’s December 2024 devolution package named Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Liverpool City Region and the North East as the first areas to receive new integrated funding settlements, covering housing, regeneration, local growth, transport, skills, retrofit and employment support. Whitehall now sees devolved local leadership as part of the growth strategy, not a side project.

What the national government is trying to export

The policy case has moved beyond Greater Manchester because ministers are building the same model elsewhere. The 2016 Act was meant to give local areas the levers to boost productivity and improve and integrate public services, and the December 2024 package extends that logic through integrated settlements. Devolution is now central to the government’s growth strategy, but the precise operation of some new fiscal tools still has not been worked out.

A mayor may be handed more responsibility for transport, housing or employment support, but the impact depends on whether funding is stable, rules are clear and local institutions can coordinate across departments. Without that, devolution risks becoming a brand attached to partial control rather than a true transfer of power.

Burnham’s wider pitch goes further still. He wants more devolved power for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London, and to use a new “No 10 North” style structure to push what allies describe as the biggest transfer of power out of Whitehall in modern times.

What travels, and what does not

The parts of the Greater Manchester model most likely to transfer are the practical ones: joined-up transport, control over skills and employment support, and integrated funding that lets a local authority align housing, regeneration and retrofit. Those are the policy levers ministers are already extending to other combined authorities.

What will not transfer as easily is the specific political and institutional history behind Greater Manchester’s rise. It has had six devolution deals, a long-running metro-mayoral structure and a dense urban economy large enough to absorb new powers. Other places may copy the framework, but they will not automatically copy the scale, leadership or existing infrastructure that made the Manchester case so persuasive.