The Devolution Act achieves Royal Assent: but is it too weak to devolve power to the East of England?

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act has now received Royal Assent, turning one of the Government’s biggest constitutional and local government reforms into law. In simple terms, it gives ministers a firmer legal framework for creating strategic authorities, devolving powers more quickly out of Whitehall, and strengthening the role of elected mayors in transport, planning and housing.

What the Act actually does

Mayoral strategic authorities and lower-tier ‘foundation’ authorities are now established in law. Areas with elected mayors stand to gain the most, especially over transport, planning and housing. The Act also strengthens the formal role of town and parish councils in neighbourhood governance.

However, the Government made several late concessions to get the Bill through Parliament. Most notably, it removed the immediate power for ministers to direct the creation of combined authorities or impose a mayor on a non-mayoral area. Instead, ministers will have a “backstop power” for exceptional cases, but they say it will not be used for four years after Royal Assent. That matters politically, because it means the Government has stepped back, for now, from the charge that it was trying to force devolution structures onto unwilling areas.

What this means in the East

The East of England is already deep into the practical politics of reorganisation and devolution. However, Norfolk has already stepped away from the devolution process indicating that it will no longer support the statutory changes needed to create the planned mayoral authority after the Government’s election U-turn.

The Act does not force Norfolk back into the old deal since the Government has removed its immediate power to direct or force the creation of a mayoral strategic authority. So, in the near term, Norfolk is under less immediate pressure than it would have been if the original powers had stayed in the Bill.

But Norfolk is not entirely “off the hook”. Local government reorganisation is still happening separately. Norfolk may have stepped away from the mayoral deal for now, but it has not stepped away from the broader state-led restructuring of local government.

The bigger shift: devolution tied to reorganisation

In March, the Government confirmed major local government reorganisation in Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, replacing existing county and district structures with new unitary councils by 2028.

That creates opportunity, but also risk.

The opportunity is obvious enough. The East has long suffered from a mismatch between its economic significance and its strategic voice. Greater Cambridge, Essex logistics and manufacturing, East Anglia’s energy coast, the Norwich research cluster, the ports economy, and the region’s housing pressures all point to the need for stronger institutions operating above district level. The Act gives that strategic layer more legal clarity and, potentially, more policy heft.

But the risks are also clear. New structures do not automatically solve old problems. Local arguments over council boundaries, fiscal fairness and who benefits from new arrangements are already intense. More fundamentally, there remains a deeper tension between devolution and parliamentary accountability: Whitehall wants to devolve, but it also wants to keep control over spending, reporting and value-for-money rules. That can make devolved government look more powerful on paper than it feels in practice.

The East’s real challenge

The region continues to sit awkwardly on the edge of the devolution agenda. The legal framework is now in place. Strategic authorities are part of the system. The Government has made clear that devolution is to become the normal model of English sub-national governance, not a series of one-off deals. But there is no compulsion to do anything, at least not for the next 4 years until the back stop kicks in.

Consequently, this legal change is ultimately a weak compromise that will not guarantee immediate devolution. If the East’s new institutions are too weak, too cautious, or too constrained by central oversight, Royal Assent may prove to be a constitutional milestone without becoming a genuine transfer of power.

The Act opens the door. Whether the East of England can walk through it is now the real political test.