Joseph Lewis is Head of Policy at the Institution of Environmental Sciences, working to promote the use of the environmental sciences in decision making. Joseph leads the delivery of the IES Policy Programme, standing up for the voice of science, scientists, and the natural world in policy.
Joseph has ten years of experience in public policy, including in Parliament and the charity sector. He is particularly passionate about science communication and the role it can play in shaping environmental decisions.
This month, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (or ‘the Devolution Bill’ in shorthand) made its long-awaited appearance in Parliament. One of the main goals of the Bill is to put devolution across the country on the same page, standardising the approach while creating a new tier of ‘strategic authorities’.
Devolution is more than just a balance of power between the national and local levels: devolution is a system of implementation, which can work well or badly depending on how it’s designed. There are lots of ways to ‘do local government well’, but only if we look at the risks and opportunities so that we set them up in the right way.
So, are these proposals set up to deliver? Will they help empower communities or will they leave policy falling apart before it reaches local communities? Looking at the Government’s Devolution Bill, we are going to pick apart the details to make sense of what it all really means for environmental delivery.
At the same time, the IES is moving from challenges to solutions. This week, our Environmental Policy Implementation Community published new guidance to support environmental implementation by local authorities. Read the guidance for more information.
What is covered in the Devolution Bill?
The Devolution Bill is a key policy for delivering commitments in the Government’s 2024 election manifesto, including its pledge to “transfer power out of Westminster, and into communities, to ensure those places have the strong governance arrangements, capacity, and capability to deliver, providing central support where needed.”
It applies to England only (with the exception of some clauses about voting systems for Police and Crime Commissioners and the disqualification of candidates, which also apply in Wales).
After the election, the Government published a Devolution White Paper setting out its intended approach. Some of the proposals in the White Paper have been taken up in the Bill, whereas others have not. Highlights from the Bill include:
- Strategic authorities: This new tier of local authority would cover all of England, with the entire nation having either a Mayoral Strategic Authority (i.e. the places that have combined authorities under a Mayor now, including Greater London), a Foundation Strategic Authority (i.e. a combined authority that does not have a Mayor), or an Established Mayoral Strategic Authority (as a category of Mayoral Strategic Authorities that have been in place for at least 18 months with accountability and financial stability)
- Unitary restructuring: The Government wants to reorganise local government to restructure all two-tier areas of England, leaving the country entirely covered by unitary authorities. The intention is that new unitary authorities will cover a population of 500,000+, with the goal of delivering high quality public services, meeting local needs, supporting devolution, and strengthening community empowerment.
- Standardising devolved powers and functions: Unlike previous devolution agreements, which often involved negotiations between the Government and local communities, the intention of the Devolution Bill is to create greater parity between all authorities at the strategic level. Areas of competence would include transport and local infrastructure, skills and employment, housing and strategic planning, economic development and regeneration, environment and climate change, health and wellbeing, and public safety (though not all of these areas receive new powers from the Devolution Bill).
- Environmental powers: In the 2024 white paper, the Government proposed new environmental powers for strategic authorities, including responsibility for warm homes and public sector decarbonisation grants. The Bill does not provide these powers, but the Government has noted its commitment to “the importance of local leadership in these areas” and its intention to continue exploring opportunities.
- Planning powers: The Bill proposes to provide strategic authorities with development management powers similar to those held by the Mayor of London, such as the power to ‘call in’ applications that have strategic significance. The objective is to move towards a universal system of strategic planning where Mayors have significantly greater control. You can find out more about the future of the planning system by watching the recordings from EPIC’s 2025 Annual Conference, which focused on planning.
- Integrated settlements: The Bill includes new powers for strategic authorities to gather funding, including through council tax precepts, transport levies, and permitted borrowing, with the Government’s intention still to move towards integrated settlements as the default route for grant funding (i.e. funding for Mayors principally comprising a single block, rather than multiple distinct sources).
- More power for Mayors: Across the board, one of the key themes of the Bill is the transfer of power towards Mayors, including issue-specific powers, as well as broad strategic powers including increased convening powers and the ability to conduct big strategic reforms with only a simple majority of votes (including the Mayor). Mayors would also be able to propose new powers and receive a public response from the Secretary of State, effectively opening the door to innovative approaches and pilot schemes for new devolved powers.
For more information about the Devolution Bill, read the Government’s summary of the Bill and the House of Commons Briefing Paper on the legislation.
When the Government made its commitment to transfer power out of Westminster, the IES called for an approach that champions local authorities to deliver for the environment, including:
- Devolving powers to communities and local authorities for sustainable & active transport, air quality management & wood burning, and nature, with the capacity and resources needed to use them
- Providing long-term non-competitive funding for environmental schemes, allowing local authorities to operate under greater certainty
Read our message to the Government: ‘Our shared mission for sustainable wellbeing’ for more information.
Risks and opportunities: What does it mean for you?
As with most policies, the benefits and costs of the Devolution Bill will come down to the details of its implementation and what it looks like in practice. This is especially true for the topic of devolution, where national plans for local empowerment need to strike a balance between effective coordination and working with the context of local communities.
- The big opportunity: If the Government fulfils the promise of its manifesto, not just reorganising but actually empowering local authorities and communities, it would provide significantly greater potential to deliver environmental ambitions locally and tackle big issues like climate change. Local authorities have access to lots of crucial levers for change and work closely with their communities, but they often lack the funding, resources, or powers needed to deliver to their potential. Strategic authorities could be a tool for bridging that gap, as long as restructuring genuinely increases empowerment.
- The big risk: These proposals cannot be separated from their context. Nationally, economic conditions have been tightening, so there are real concerns that reorganising local government could become an excuse to cut costs or reduce capacity, leading to disempowerment and going against the intentions of the Bill. If local authorities are reorganised to the strategic level, they could lose expertise across staff teams if roles are combined or repurposed. If two local authorities due to be combined into a single strategic authority each employ a contaminated land officer now, reorganisation cannot become an excuse to move to a single officer who has a wider remit, covering a larger area, but with less capacity and resources. Money doesn’t always mean more power, but taking away staffing and budget will never lead to greater empowerment.
- The wildcard: One of the goals of the Bill is a clearer and more unified strategic picture. Shifting the weight of local governance to a different strategic position in the system of policy implementation could be a blessing or a curse, depending on whether strategic authorities are given the right position of leverage within big delivery systems. We have already seen that, where local authorities have the right power and position, they can link up big challenges like air quality and climate change to better deliver on both agendas.
- Standardisation: a risk and an opportunity? Standardising the approach to local authorities across England could be both a risk and an opportunity. The risk of standardisation is that local authorities no longer align with the local context, while the opportunity of standardisation is that a single approach increases the clarity and consistency of procedures, which is particularly challenging for consultants or delivery organisations working in different parts of the country.
Lessons to learn: Empowering local environmental action
One of the main objectives of devolution is to empower places to carry out action on their own, contributing to a network of more efficient and effective government while also doing things that work in the context of a local area and in line with a community’s wishes.
At the IES, our work with local authorities has produced an excellent case study: the Environmental Policy Implementation Community (EPIC), which has been working at the forefront of empowering and delivering local solutions for the past two years.
In October 2025, EPIC published guidance for local authorities to support better environmental implementation. The new guidance follows a guide produced in 2024, giving local authorities insights into a combined approach to clean air and climate action.
Commenting on the Devolution Bill, Ellie Savage (Policy Officer for the IES and EPIC), said:
“Local authorities are at the forefront of environmental leadership and action. They know their communities and their places, and work tirelessly to deliver real improvements on the ground.
EPIC supports a devolution process that will genuinely strengthen local delivery and we will be carefully watching the Devolution Bill as it goes through Parliament. It is vital that this process of devolution does not slow down, confuse or weaken the good work being done by local authorities across the country."
Get involved: if you want to support the work of the IES to stand up for science and nature, become an affiliate, or if you’re an environmental professional, join the IES.
- Find out more about the Environmental Policy Implementation Community and how you can join the IES
- Learn more about the Devolution Bill in the latest House of Commons briefing paper
- Read EPIC’s guidance on environmental implementation for local authorities and its guide to integrating air quality and climate change
- Find out more about local approaches to environmental policy, including how a local authority can use citizen science to support air quality action, in our collection of case studies, ‘Speaking up for science’
- Read more articles from Essential Environment to stay ahead of policy developments across the environment
If you want to find out more about environmental policy or the training we offer for members, please contact Joseph Lewis, Head of Policy (joseph@the-ies.org), or our local environmental policy expert, Ellie Savage (ellie@the-ies.org).
Image credit: © teamjackson via Adobe Stock
