Andy Burnham's devolution plan is the most structurally ambitious governance reform England has attempted in decades. The July cabinet paper proposes letting mayors retain a share of locally generated income tax and giving them real control over skills, transport, and public services. If executed well, this redistributes both money and decision-making away from Westminster for the first time. The ambition is genuine. But ambition without infrastructure is reckless. The article lays out a damning inventory of what no longer exists. The Audit Commission, abolished by David Cameron in 2015, once scoured every council's books annually. Nothing replaced it at equivalent scale. Since then, councils have gone on spending sprees — buying office blocks and shopping centres — while cutting services, with several declaring bankruptcy. The National Audit Office only arrives after the emergency. The proposed Local Audit Office is a start but hasn't materialised yet. The local media ecosystem that would normally flag these failures is in freefall. Reach, England's largest regional publisher, announced 220 further redundancies just weeks ago. The BBC's Local Democracy Reporting Service patches some gaps, and subscription newsletters are emerging in Manchester, Glasgow, and Birmingham, but these are lifeboats, not a fleet. The journalists who once sat through council meetings and parsed budget reports are largely gone. Civil society — the third leg of the accountability stool — is equally diminished. The cost of living crisis hasn't just squeezed household budgets; it has squeezed participation. Fewer people attend town council meetings, run as councillors, or show up to campaign groups. The outsourcing of public services to faceless providers has severed the direct relationship between residents and their local state. People have lost their stake. The plan to reorganise local government, currently paused, could make things worse. Two professors warned in the Guardian that the inherited scheme could eliminate up to 75% of England's existing councils, replacing close community ties with larger, more anonymous bodies. This is consolidation dressed as efficiency, and it runs directly counter to the democratic renewal Burnham claims to want. The structural tension is stark: Burnham is betting that devolution will renew faith in democracy, but faith requires visible, accountable institutions that people can see working. The scrutiny gap — no functioning audit, a gutted press, exhausted civil participation — means new regional powers would operate with less oversight than Westminster currently has, not more. Sarah Longlands of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies suggests citizens' assemblies as a corrective, but there is no mechanism in the current plans to mandate them. The 20-year question is whether this becomes generative devolution or a franchise model for local elite capture. The answer depends entirely on whether the accountability architecture is rebuilt before the money flows. Right now, the plumbing is being installed without the pressure gauges.
