Making Counties Count: Weaving a New Tapestry for Local Government

Henham Strategy were commissioned by the County Councils Network to make the case for the role of counties in the Government’s devolution agenda: a report that then formed the basis for some recommendations within the final Levelling Up White Paper in 2022.

In 2020, the current structure of local government in England was not fit for purpose. Ahead of the Levelling Up White Paper, this report made the case that county areas should be at the heart of simplifying and strengthening local devolution, and that the White Paper should have the principles of clarity, consistency and fairness at its heart. Given counties are the natural and fundamental local government structures across large parts of England, they are the most obvious building blocks upon which the Government could build its devolutionary agenda and achieve its levelling up ambitions. To do this, the report makes the case that  counties require strengthening and empowering to achieve their full potential in delivering economic growth – a challenge that has become all the more urgent in light of COVID-19. 

The report made the following recommendations:

• Counties to be backed by the Government as a principal mechanism by which to level up the economy. 
• Counties to be provided with the necessary powers and resources to make good on their potential and to fulfil their part in the mission to level up the economy. They have missed out on the major benefits of devolution for too long. 
• The Government to be clearer and more consistent in its approach and set out a national framework for devolution, outlining the powers it is willing to devolve and the structures it wants to see.
• The Government to set out its preference for unitary authorities and set out a new clear and consistent set of criteria for how unitary proposals will be judged and taken forward. 
• More joint working between upper-tier authorities to deepen collaboration. 

The report was quoted word-for-word by the then-Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, in his announcement of the Levelling Up White Paper, and some of the report’s content was reflected in the paper itself.