Combined Authorities for more sub-regions? – Learning the adverse lessons from England beyond the metropolitan conurbations

The paper presents an analysis of the latent need for further Combined Authorities across England and finds that there are many potential functional areas, like the Cambridge and Peterborough Authority, which merit them on grounds of size or growth. They often correspond to Local Enterprise Partnership or past Multi-Area Agreement areas and stand among many abortive devolution proposals of the last four years. Their travel-to-work areas frequently conflict with shire counties’ present boundaries, a problem which provides the strongest obstacle to new ‘larger-than-local’ governance arrangements. The present government’s abandonment of the requirement for new non-city Combined Authorities to have a directly elected mayor would remove a main barrier to establishing new devolution agreements across England, which is delayed by the need for a promised policy paper from government.