Andy Burnham plans significant civil service cuts to boost regional devolution

LONDON — Andy Burnham will make “significant” cuts to Britain’s civil service staffing in order to funnel officials into councils and mayoral bodies in England, the official leading the U.K. prime minister’s devolution unit has indicated to POLITICO.

Caroline Simpson, Burnham’s deputy chief of staff in “No. 10 North,” the Manchester outpost that he opened last month, said the office will draw up plans in the coming months to “transfer” civil service resources into mayoral authorities as they are handed more power.

Speaking to POLITICO Magazine for a major profile of Burnham’s project in her first interview since taking the role, Simpson said England remains “one of the most centralized countries in the Western Hemisphere. We have very little true devolution.”

Burnham’s Cabinet signed a statement last month which said No. 10 North would oversee a “major transfer of powers, resources and functions” from central to local government before the next general election, due by 2029. It promised to “build new career paths between central government and the wider public sector” and make the civil service “smaller and more strategic.”

Britain’s civil service has ballooned by 100,000 people in six years to around 550,000 following the Covid-19 pandemic and the U.K.’s exit from the European Union.

Simpson declined to say to what extent the overall headcount of civil servants will be cut to increase staffing in regional government. “I am not going to put a figure on what that is going to look like,” she said.

However, she added: “The intent behind [the Cabinet paper] — really moving significant resource from Whitehall and from the civil service into regions, into local areas — is absolutely part of our plan, our ambition, our mission here in No. 10 North.”

Burnham has said he wants all areas of England to have mayoral authorities in place by the end of 2028, and they are set to be offered the expertise of Whitehall officials where it is relevant and desired.

It is not yet clear how this movement of staff will work in practice. Officials plan to outline more detail in a paper alongside the Oct. 26 budget, which — as with a spending review in 2027 — will make clear the impact on Whitehall budgets.

Simpson said: “We’re going to develop that plan with the mayoral authorities over the coming weeks and months. It is going to be something that evolves, because the pace of devolution has happened quicker in some areas than others.”

Elsewhere, Simpson appeared to leave the door open to the possibility of councils using incoming economic freedoms to pay “rebates” directly to residents.

The idea from Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, prompted a rebuke from Burnham, who said a mayor could not be a “mini-chancellor of the exchequer.” However, Houchen told POLITICO this week that he had discussed the idea with Treasury officials since Burnham made his comments and believes it will be possible unless the government directly outlaws it.

Simpson said: “The PM is absolutely right — there’s going to be no ability to sit outside of the tax framework at a local level. That’s not what fiscal devolution is about. But flexibility about how that money is spent in a local area is going to be there … the absolutely technical ‘what does that flexibility look like?’ is going to have to be worked through.”

Asked if that flexibility could include handing money back to residents if local leaders decide it, she replied: “We are working through some of those practicalities at the moment.”

Simpson — who Burnham poached from her job as chief executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, where he was mayor for nine years — spent more than two decades as a nonpartisan public servant before taking her first political role as his deputy chief of staff.

She said becoming a political staffer was a “change” for her personally, but said she and the prime minister had decided it was necessary. “I’m really enjoying it,” she said. “It brings an ability to be even more directive and … get things done that I think is absolutely needed with the pace of change that the PM wants.

“The best way to deliver that, I felt and he felt, was to move into a deputy chief of staff role.”

Simpson said Burnham had never discussed the idea of No. 10 North with her as mayor. Recalling her appointment, she added: “It all happened very, very quickly.”

No. 10 North now has around 50 civil servants, said two people with knowledge of the planning, both of whom were granted anonymity to speak frankly. Several are still living out of hotels in Manchester and returning to London or elsewhere on the weekends. The office is expected to expand to up to 150 civil servants.

The office is based out of Heron House, a refurbished 1980s office block in Manchester city center, on a floor previously prepared for the cyber intelligence agency GCHQ. However, this is only a temporary base.

Burnham previously said he wanted to base the office at the Manchester Digital Campus in the city, but this will only be fully open in 2032. No. 10 North is unlikely to stay based at Heron House that long, said one of the two people with knowledge of the planning, so it will be looking for another base in the next few years.