Written by Professor Amelia Hadfield and Megan Ward. Amelia is the Founding Director of the Centre for Britain and Europe, Director of CIFAL Surrey and Associate Vice President of External Engagement.
Introduction : Place-based Agenda
Andy Burnham’s early messaging as Prime Minister is replete with ‘must dos’.. but two goals emerge as vital: his explicit place-based agenda, prioritising growth, innovation, skills, and local regeneration, and another attempt at rebalancing power both geographically between north and south and structurally, between Westminster/Whitehall and regions and mayors. The creation of “No 10 North”, and related governance shifts highlights both opportunities and risks. The potential benefits include greater proximity to regional problems, faster local decision-making and an impetus for long‑term investment. But the challenges remain: questions about intergovernmental design, accountability, capacity, fiscal devolution and national cohesion. Drawing on a number of recent sources[1], the following brief read briefly explores Burnham’s place‑based goals and a ramping up devolution including the implications of ‘No 10 North’.
Place‑based endeavours: growth, innovation, skills and local regeneration
The first big change is a shift from largely symbolic ‘levelling’ initiatives to place-based economics. Burnham’s recent speeches and policy signals (People’s History Museum, 29 June 2026) indicate a broadly pragmatic transition from top‑down programmes and slogans to a demand for more measurable, regionally specific outcomes. The goal is on enabling places like regions, cities, towns and even villages to take a strategic approach to localism, and ensure that growth must be rooted in local ecosystems rather than sprinkling national funding with weak targeting. Easier said than done however: how do varied municipalities actually convert their local assets into sustainable jobs and productivity, in producing modern industrial capacity, housing and infrastructure, climate adaptation and green jobs?
The second change is recasting British industrial strategy at regional rather than purely national scale, starting with a far more regionally responsive industrial strategy. Here, Burnham’s approach rests on:
- place‑based, place-anchoring of jobs (supply chain localisation, clustering of green industries);
- the strategic use of public procurement and co‑investment to de‑risk private capital for first‑of‑a‑kind projects;
- a focus on local and regionally-based sectors that can scale products, and eventually exports, and command higher value‑added than national levels.
These goals mean moving away from one‑size‑fits‑all, off-the-shelf national policy instruments toward more regionally-tailored and sector-savvy interventions, including acceleration zones, investment corridors, targeted plant relocation incentives, and reworked inward investment offers that privilege local multiplier effects.
Next on the agenda? Skills: Burnham’s view a revamped skills policy explicitly embedded within local, civic infrastructure: skills developed more effectively at local training ecosystems (colleges, universities, employers, employment services) and then more intelligently aligned to sectoral pipelines, both public and private sector. In doing so, Burnham is likely to prioritise:
- employer‑led upskilling and mentoring, and modular CPD aligned to regional industrial plans;
- stronger alignment between further education (FE), higher education (HE) and apprenticeship routes to reduce NEETs (not in employment, education and training);
- providing a greater range of incentives for local skills providers to meet their own sectoral demand (e.g. in. green manufacturing, digital, care, construction, health and social care).
This suggests a move from national quota‑driven provisions to more localised labour market intelligence and commissioning, with outcomes judged by placements and employer take‑up.
As the progenitor of ‘Manchesterism’, Burnham is renowned for his emphasis on both urban regeneration and civic renewal. Regeneration is not merely bricks and mortar but embedded in the philosophy of civic renewal: mixed‑tenure housing, higher‑quality public services, and the concept of a ‘public realm’, retrofitting and an emphasis on local green infrastructure. Burnham is also keen on joined‑up delivery: so expectations are high regarding planning reform to speed up project delivery and finance mechanisms (e.g. local bonds, blended finance, targeted tax incentives) that aim to make redevelopment feasible, without excessive central grant dependence.
Burnham’s place-based agenda also reframes innovation as intrinsically distributed, or even co-locational, with innovation, R&D and skills all being rolled out as near as possible to sources of industrial demand. Burnham’s labour-oriented approach to reviving the Labour Government will also likely make use of revamped policy tools including innovation vouchers, place‑based R&D tax incentives, demonstrator projects and regional innovation networks that combine missions (e.g. net‑zero, advanced manufacturing, digital health) with local supply chains and skills. Again, the objective is to move from headline-grabbing national R&D spending to more impactful, demonstrable increases in local commercialisation and regional job creation.
The implications of No 10 North
In its institutional symbolism and practical design, ‘No 10 North’ is both symbolic and functional – a physical and a programmatic shift signalling the new PM’s clear commitment to decentralisation from London, and regional proximity. Guardian reporting for example describes No 10 North as a ‘hub’ capable of pulling together elevated regional mayors, devolved ministers and local decision‑makers into a new forum for national policy design. Its key design elements could include:
- a permanent representation of metro mayors leading policy choices and championing investment pipelines;
- a standing mechanism for devolved delivery responsibility and shared policy accountability;
- oversight of coordinated ministerial and Whitehall functions as they are gradually repatriated or aligned regionally.
From a SWOT perspective, No 10 North offers a range of opportunities, including improved agility, legitimacy, and a better overall policy fit. More particularly, the potential benefits of the new design include:
- swifter prioritisation of investment projects that match local needs;
- improved legitimacy and buy‑in for policies, where local leaders can own their outcomes and be held more accountable;
- greater ‘co‑created’ policies, reducing the implementation gap between overall national design and local delivery.
However, No 10 North also raises a set of governance challenges, the most obvious being clarity of remit. Which powers will be transferred vs. those being delegated? In this shakeup of competence, what remains national, what regional, what municipal, what local? Without codified transfers, ad hoc arrangements risk confusion and litigation. Does No 10 North herald – or even demand – a wider constitutional shakeup? In addition, the new design raises questions about:
- fiscal devolution: genuine autonomy requires stable tax and/or revenue powers, or possibly long-term multi‑year settlements. Symbolic presence without fiscal tools risks frustrating mayors;
- capacity asymmetry: many localities still lack institutional capacity to absorb new responsibilities; uneven devolution risks exacerbating regional disparities;
- intergovernmental coordination: duplicated or parallel decision hubs aligning Westminster, Whitehall, No 10 North, mayors risk turf conflicts, incoherence and slower outcomes;
- democratic accountability: new mechanisms must preserve parliamentary oversight and ensure equitable treatment of non‑metro places.
Success for No 10 North will clearly hinge on institutionalised joint working (shared data, joint appraisal frameworks, devolved conditionality) rather than episodic meetings. In order to deliver, several mechanics are essential, from clear legal frameworks for transferred functions and dispute resolution to capacity building programmes for local civil service and mayoral offices, including secondments from Whitehall and universities. Overall – Burnham’s goals for transparent governance will hinge on published pipelines and shared evaluations at national level and citizen engagement mechanisms from a bottom-up perspective.
The promise of Burnham’s model is that by bringing decisions closer to the places that affect them improves overall policy fit, accelerates their implementation and strengthens civic trust and commitment to co-owned goals. But absent fiscal devolution, capacity investment and coherent institutional design, No 10 North – and Burnham’s attempt to translate Manchesterism nationally – risks becoming an additional layer that perversely complicates rather than improving delivery.
Concluding Observations:
Two observations from The New Statesman of 17-23 July make for interesting conclusions. First, from Tom McTague, suggesting the underlying rationale of No 10 North lies in Burnham balancing his views of north and south. On the one hand lies his ‘irritation’ regarding ‘the national imbalance that has grown since the 1970s; not the method of producing wealth in the country, but the approach which concentrated so much of it in the south’. On the other, prioritising an exclusively ‘northern account of Thatcherite destruction and abandonment… risks, inevitably, antagonising the south’. Burnham needs to find a way through, and use his newly-won power ‘to impose his own account of our national life. He must show the public that public life still has power and purpose; that it still matters (p.23). Second, from Anooth Chakelian, a caution that while Burnham’s ‘place first’ politics is based on hugely ambitious housebuilding targets (1.5. million homes), he needs to avoid building new forms of ‘Nowhereville’. In cities, nowherevilles take the form of ‘a generic skyline that is ubiquitous but out of reach to most’, while at the town level, new locales that merely fill the ‘spaces in-between’, colouring in a British map that is (citing Ian Nairn) ‘neither town nor country’. Places need to be purposeful too, to ensure that houses become homes (p.29).
[1] https://andyburnham.org.uk/2026/07/20/andy-burnham-speech-at-the-peoples-history-museum-manchester-29-june-2026/; https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/latest/news/letter-andy-burnham-following-his; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/23/number-10-north-growth-uk-andy-burnham; https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/23/regional-mayors-to-take-key-roles-in-uk-policy-decisions-as-part-of-no-10-north-plans?utm_term=6a62fe37034be7dbb0d797f781c5f2e6&utm_campaign=FirstEdition&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=firstedition_email;https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/21/andy-burnham-shakes-up-whitehall-new-government-department
