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What next for devolution to Scotland's city regions?

Writer: David Marlow
David Marlow
Sep 3
6 min read

Most significant regional policy tools operating in Scotland today arrived second-hand. City Region Deals, Growth Deals, Innovation Accelerators, Investment Zones, and Freeports: each were designed and announced for England, then worked through later, and usually modified, in Scotland.


Glasgow skyline at dusk

It matters now because the latest English policy drive is one that might not travel comfortably, if at all. Rewiring the State, published by the Cabinet Office on 31 July, offers mayors a share of income tax from 2028 and greater business rates retention, with detail promised alongside the 28 October Budget. Both levers are already devolved to Holyrood. A Prime Minister who champions Manchesterism cannot hand Glasgow what he can hand Manchester, because it is not his to give.


For an expert take LEDC hosted David Waite, Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow, working on second-tier city-region economies. He has just co-authored an Academy of Social Sciences piece with Graeme Roy (University of Glasgow), James Mitchell (University of Edinburgh) and Stuart McIntyre (University of Strathclyde) on what a Burnham premiership means for Scottish regional development, and led last December’s Next steps for city region policy, which responded to a deceptively simple question — you have had a deal, what comes next?


David is our fourth Scottish guest in nine months, after Liz McAreavey of Edinburgh Chamber, Sarah Murray of Forth Green Freeport and Alex Plant of Scottish Water. That is not a coincidence. There is not enough collaborative learning and policy development across the UK’s four nations. It is not something LED Confidential can cure alone but it is something we will continue to address. Since we recorded our chat with David, Glasgow and Edinburgh Chambers of Commerce have written jointly to the Prime Minister, and the Programme for Government (PfG) was published on 1 September as Holyrood reconvened after summer.


At least five things are worth pulling out of the episode and pushing further.


1. There is no model for devolution to Scotland's city regions, but there is the basis of one and it starts with local growth plans, not governance structures


David Waite's central proposition inverts the sequence that most of England is now following. Rather than settling institutional form and then asking places what they would do with it, let regions articulate what their economies face over the next ten to fifteen years and derive functions and autonomies from that.


Greater Manchester did it David's way. The Manchester Independent Economic Review reported in 2009, AGMA published its scheme for a combined authority in March 2010, the GMCA followed in April 2011, although all of this built on twenty-five years of voluntary collaboration. What most of England is doing now is the other thing: a standard three-tier template, universal coverage mandated by the end of 2028, priority given to places willing to take a mayor, and adopted Local Growth Plans most likely after designation rather than before it.


As with GM in England, which acted as a trailblazer for other English city regions, David’s way is slower. Starting with debating, agreeing and then articulating local needs may make analytical sense. But it is going to be competitively risky when English strategic authorities are being handed multi-year fiscal certainty. The episode does not resolve that tension, and neither should we. It is notable that the PfG does not contain a commitment to introducing local growth plans with timetables, flexibility and resources for delivery.


2. The tripartite architecture is not a complication to be worked around: it is the variable that determines everything else


Scotland’s regions must work with local authorities, Holyrood, and Westminster with overlapping responsibilities and blurred accountability. David is careful not to treat this as simply a problem. It is the governance fact from which everything else follows, and it is why the transmission mechanism that served Scotland reasonably well for a decade now needs refreshing in the face of fundamental ‘Rewiring…’.


The Constitution Society’s reading of Rewiring the State is that it is really rewiring England:  that it gestures at involving the Scottish Parliament, Senedd and Northern Ireland Assembly but doesn’t say how. Which returns us to David’s four-nations point: the UK has never had a proper public dialogue about what regional development means where a devolved tier already exists, and a decade of city deals did not generate one.


3. Caution on the mayoral model is understandable given the governance realities but the challenges (and opportunities) facing city region leaders remain


David Waite's reason for keeping mayors on the table but not rushing to them is challenging: a directly elected figure for a city region of 1.84 million, inside a devolved administration of 5.5 million, creates a rival mandate with unpredictable consequences for the tripartite settlement. His research consulting four Scottish city regions found no overwhelming appetite for one.


But Mike’s framing will keep coming back: when an outside investor wants to engage Glasgow or Edinburgh, who do they call? That is not a question about mayors. It is a question about whether an accountable interlocutor exists with a mandate and a budget. Scotland has argued about the mayoral model while underspecifying the leadership question that lies beneath it.


4. City regions across the UK should learn from Glasgow City Region’s intelligence hub


Asked what the rest of the UK should look at, David goes first to Glasgow City Region’s Intelligence Hub: a decade of internalised analytical capacity letting the region understand its own sectoral and technological change rather than commissioning someone else to explain it. Programme management offices and intelligence functions built during deal delivery are assets for whatever comes next, in all four regions studied.


Set that against Rewiring the State’s commitment that all of England should have a strategic authority by the end of 2028. Most will have nothing resembling this capacity and no route to building it at speed. If Scotland has something genuinely transferable, this is it, and it was a by-product of deal assurance requirements rather than a design choice. Treat capacity as an object of policy, not a happy accident.


5. The Chambers’ letter is the sequencing problem made visible, and the Programme for Government has to answer it


Edinburgh and Glasgow Chambers of Commerce have asked the Prime Minister for direct engagement with Scotland's city regions, for English combined authority funding mechanisms (starting with pre-selection for multi-annual Local Innovation Partnership Fund money), and for a meeting at No 10 North. They frame it as alongside the Scottish Government's plans, not instead of them, and cite Centre for Cities' estimate of a £7 billion annual underperformance in Glasgow City Region.


The framing does not disguise what is happening: two business networks representing city regions with economic output of roughly £100 billion per year have gone to Westminster because that is where the movement is. Even an asymmetric answer, which David rightly argues for, still leaves Tayside, Aberdeen and rural Scotland. Asymmetry designed through a framework is not the same thing as asymmetry produced by who can secure a meeting in Downing Street.


The First Minister's May statement committed to "rethinking the structures of the state, with more strategic regions empowered." One sentence, in a speech dominated by cost of living, the NHS and the constitution. Ivan McKee's Public Service Reform portfolio is the obvious vehicle, but he also carries a £4.7 billion fiscal gap by 2029-30. Regional empowerment framed as an efficiency measure is a very different animal from regional empowerment framed as better triple bottom line strategy and outcomes.


Concluding remarks


David Waite's central recommendation is a joint UK–Scottish framework, functionally akin to the English Devolution White Paper, so localities know what is on the table . At LEDC we think this is the right ask, and a modest one. It needs no new money. It needs two governments that disagree profoundly about the constitution to agree some contours for regional development within it.


The Programme for Government hints at devolution from Holyrood but does not commit to local growth plans with capacity funding, and it does not answer the accountability question.

David’s warning about the limits of muddle-through governance is the line I keep returning to. Scotland has muddled through rather well for a decade, largely because instruments designed for English city regions kept arriving and could be adapted. The latest push on devolution from Westminster to English mayors cannot be. That is either the moment the framework argument lands, or the moment Scottish city regions start losing ground they will not easily recover.


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