From Power to Pride: What Devolution Must Deliver for London

The English Devolution and Community Bill could be seen as bringing bigger changes for other parts of the country than for London, with the granting of some powers and arrangements that London already has. As one panellist put it, it’s about “levelling up” the rest of the country while keeping London in its current position.

But the Bill is still an important opportunity for London (as the Chair of our Conference panel Rob Anderson wrote about in a blog for London Funders last year). A key opportunity is the “right to request” new powers. This gives London a formal route to ask for additional responsibilities and flexibility, with government required to consider and appraise requests. For London, the question is not “what does the Bill give us by default?” , but “what do we ask for next, and why?” 

That matters because London’s challenges, including housing affordability, pressure on public services and unequal access to opportunity show up in people’s daily lives. If devolution is to mean anything, it has to translate into visible improvement at the scale residents can feel. The strategic test is whether London can use this moment to secure the powers and funding freedom needed to deliver real change. 

That is why the move towards a more flexible funding settlement, and the ability to align money to real priorities, matters as much as the powers themselves.

An integrated settlement for London

A key part of the English Devolution and Community Bill is the concept of an integrated financial settlement. Under this approach, multiple separate funding streams are brought together into a single multi‑year settlement for a mayoral authority. Rather than having money tightly ring‑fenced for specific programmes, local leaders would have greater flexibility to decide how funding is allocated across different priorities.

For London, an integrated settlement would sit with the Greater London Authority and the Mayor. The ambition would be to give London more freedom to align resources with the interconnected challenges residents face — for example, where housing, health, transport, safety and opportunity overlap in everyday life. This means fewer funding silos, more local discretion over spending, and clearer responsibility for outcomes. The real test will be whether this flexibility translates into positive, visible changes in people’s everyday lives.

From process to pride: why visible change restores trust 

Devolution is usually framed in the language of power. But for communities, it’s something they notice in their everyday lives.

One of the most practical insights and examples from the panel came from Greater Manchester. The panel described one of the most recognisable markers of successful devolution is not a policy paper, its buses turning up on time, at a fair price. This is something people can see, use and rely on. Material change has become proof that the system can deliver on its promises. 

This is where London’s challenge is sharpest. Panel members pointed to housing as the capital’s most persistent and high-stakes failure. If devolution is to be meaningful, it must help London build far more homes and improve the conditions that allow people to stay, settle and thrive. 

Participatory process still matters. It strengthens legitimacy, improves decisions, and helps create conditions for positive change to endure. But without visible improvement in everyday life, process alone rarely restores trust. People believe change when they can feel it. Yet delivering that kind of change depends on something more basic: whether London’s needs are being seen clearly in the first place. 

National funding debates often rely on measures that do not fully capture deprivation in a dense and unequal city. Indicators such as physical connectivity can make London appear comparatively well served, even where local capacity is hollowed out, and insecurity is growing. Parts of the city’s “silent centre” risk becoming statistically invisible, experiencing pressure and decline while the data suggests stability. This is not only a technical problem. It shapes political behaviour. When need is underestimated, long-term investment is harder to justify. In that space, short-term announcements can become a substitute for sustained change. 

The panel described this cycle as “announcement-itis”: the search for quick, visible initiatives that signal progress without reshaping underlying conditions. Low trust drives the search for rapid wins. When those wins fail to deliver lasting improvement, trust falls further. The cycle then repeats. 

Breaking that pattern requires a different timescale. Generational challenges such as housing cannot be solved within two- to three-year funding windows or five-year political terms. Devolution that genuinely restores trust demands a 20- to 30-year vision, continuity of practice, and the patience to invest in change that unfolds over decades. 

Within this longer view, “pride in place” becomes something concrete rather than nostalgic. It’s the lived experience of services that work, homes people can afford, and neighbourhoods that feel stable and hopeful. Pride grows when people can see progress around them, not simply hear that progress has been announced. 

Finding the ‘silent centre’ 

Housing debates often collapse into polarised conflict, framed as NIMBY versus YIMBY. The panel challenged this framing as politically convenient but strategically unhelpful. The majority of people sit in a 'silent centre', where they want stability, fairness, and a voice. People who are willing to compromise when they are treated as partners in the process, rather than obstacles to overcome. 

Participatory approaches can help to surface that centre, but only when they are designed for genuine power-sharing. The panel pointed to emerging tools in digital democracy, including trials such as “Waves”, as examples of how cities can engage the broader population in deliberation and trade-offs. 

What this signals to funders 

This panel’s core challenge was not simply about governance. It was about whether London can convert a new phase of devolution into material improvement and renewed trust. For funders, several practical implications follow: 

• First, advocate for devolution that delivers measurable improvements in daily life, particularly on housing and transport, not only changes in process 
• Second, support London to close the data gap by pushing for metrics that capture intra-city deprivation and the lived reality of neighbourhood capacity, not just aggregate prosperity or connectivity 
• Third, back long-term approaches that resist announcement cycles, including investment that supports participatory planning over a 20-to-30-year horizon 
• Fourth, invest in participatory and deliberative approaches that engage communities and create legitimacy for difficult decisions. 

Looking Ahead 

If this discussion focused on power, pride and the materiality of change through a period of further devolution, the final blog in the series turns to what collaboration means in practice, and what it would take for funders, communities and institutions to act together in ways that are durable, joined-up and genuinely shared.

Our thanks to the panel Chair and panellists for their generosity, insight and experience, including: 

• Rob Anderson, Research Director, Centre for London (Panel Chair) 
• Andrew Carter, Chief Executive, Centre for Cities 
• Anna Garrod, Policy and Impact Director, Demos 
• Rachel Rowney, Chief Executive, Local Trust