Andy Burnham's government is preparing the most significant transfer of fiscal power to English regions in modern history. From 2027, mayors will retain business rates; from 2028, they'll keep a share of income tax. IPPR North wants that share set at 5%, which would shift £3.8bn a year out of Whitehall and roughly double mayoral budgets. A tourist tax adds further revenue. The white paper lands alongside the autumn budget on 28 October. The thinktank's 30-page report is an unusual document: a vocal supporter of devolution spending most of its pages worrying about what goes wrong. The core fear is blunt — one corruption scandal or funding mismanagement episode in any single authority could turn public opinion against the entire programme. In a country where political trust is already low, the margin for error is thin. IPPR North proposes regional audit offices, senior accounting officers modelled on Whitehall's permanent secretary system, and beefed-up accountability committees for the largest authorities. The language is pointed: guards against "misuse of funds, corruption and elite capture by lobbying interests." This isn't boilerplate governance concern — it's an explicit warning that concentrated local power without oversight invites capture. The capacity problem is real and underexamined. Greater Manchester and London have decades of institutional depth. But Reform UK-led authorities in Hull, East Yorkshire, and Greater Lincolnshire were founded last year. Several planned authorities spanning millions along the south coast and in north-west England don't exist yet. Handing identical fiscal powers to a mature institution and a year-old one is a recipe for uneven outcomes. Jim O'Neill, the former Treasury minister who advised Burnham, frames this as a bet: give the most populated areas the greatest powers, assuming they have "the capacity to cope, the desire to be accountable and, of course, just like Greater Manchester has had, the aspiration to be bold." That's a lot of assumptions stacked on top of billions of pounds. The structural logic is sound. Over-centralisation has measurably damaged regional economies, and fiscal devolution creates feedback loops where local investment decisions have local fiscal consequences. But the implementation sequence matters enormously. Pushing money before building oversight is the classic governance failure mode — and the report essentially says: we're about to do exactly that. Aditi Sriram, the lead author, captures the tension precisely: "The devolution agenda cannot afford to fail." The stakes are asymmetric. Success would be gradual and hard to attribute. Failure — a single high-profile scandal — would be immediate and lethal to the project. The accountability infrastructure needs to arrive before the money does, not after.
