Andy Burnham’s Trying to Fix a Car Engine with a Hammer – It Just Won’t Work
Andy Burnham has arrived in Downing Street promising to change the way Britain is governed. His message is ambitious: power should be taken away from Westminster and handed to communities across the country, allowing local leaders to make decisions closer to the people they affect.
It is an attractive idea.
But there is a serious problem with the way Burnham’s government is trying to achieve it.
You cannot claim to be giving power to local communities while simultaneously removing the very local institutions that allow those communities to make their voices heard.
That is why the government’s approach to local government reform risks looking less like careful engineering and more like trying to repair a complicated car engine with a hammer.
It is blunt.
It is disruptive.
And it could easily make the problem worse.
Burnham has promised a more collaborative style of politics, arguing that Britain needs to move away from Westminster control and give regions greater responsibility. His experience as Mayor of Greater Manchester gives him a strong political argument for devolution. He knows first-hand that decisions made closer to communities can sometimes be more effective than decisions imposed from the centre.
But decentralisation should mean giving communities more power, not simply reorganising the map.
That distinction appears to be getting lost.
The Great Council Shake-Up
The government’s plans to redraw local government boundaries could result in district and county councils being replaced by larger unitary authorities.
Ministers argue that the existing system is inefficient. Having multiple layers of local government can create duplication, bureaucracy and additional costs.
There is a reasonable argument here.
Britain’s local government system is complicated, and residents can struggle to understand which authority is responsible for which service. Housing, planning, roads, social care and other responsibilities can be divided between different organisations.
Streamlining the system could therefore produce genuine benefits.
But efficiency is not the only consideration.
Local government exists not merely to administer services but also to represent communities.
A small district council may not have the financial power of a large unitary authority, but its councillors often have detailed knowledge of individual towns, villages and neighbourhoods. They know which roads are causing problems, which developments are unpopular and which local facilities matter most to residents.
Remove those institutions and something else disappears with them: local knowledge.
That is the danger Burnham’s government needs to recognise.
Bigger Does Not Always Mean Better
The argument for larger councils is straightforward.
A bigger authority can pool resources, reduce administrative duplication and coordinate major projects across a wider geographical area.
Greater Manchester is an obvious example of where regional government can work effectively.
But Britain is not made up entirely of major metropolitan areas.
A large urban authority may benefit from regional planning and coordinated investment. Rural communities can have completely different needs.
A village in a remote part of England does not necessarily have the same priorities as a major city centre.
The bigger the administrative area becomes, the greater the risk that smaller communities feel invisible.
That would be particularly ironic for Burnham.
His entire political message is based on the idea that people have become disconnected from Westminster and that government needs to listen more carefully to communities outside the political centre.
If his reforms create larger institutions that feel even further removed from residents, he could undermine the very principle he is trying to promote.
The Planning Problem
The government’s argument is partly driven by the need to build more homes and improve infrastructure.
That is a legitimate objective.
Britain needs more housing. Major infrastructure projects can take years to approve. Planning disputes can delay investment and increase costs.
Local opposition can sometimes prevent developments that are nationally or regionally important.
But there is a difference between reforming planning and eliminating local democratic voices.
A planning system should not be designed simply to make objections disappear.
Residents should have the right to challenge developments that affect their communities.
The solution is to make the process faster, clearer and more consistent—not necessarily to remove another layer of local representation.
If councils are obstructing necessary projects for petty reasons, ministers should have mechanisms to intervene in exceptional cases.
That would be a scalpel.
The current approach risks becoming a hammer.
Burnham’s Own Philosophy Creates a Contradiction
This is where the political contradiction becomes particularly interesting.
Burnham has said he wants to move power away from Westminster.
Yet the restructuring of local government is being driven from Westminster.
That does not automatically make the policy wrong. National government sometimes has to make structural decisions that local authorities cannot make themselves.
But Burnham needs to explain how the process is consistent with his broader philosophy.
If the government decides which councils should disappear, which authorities should merge and how local boundaries should be redrawn, communities may reasonably ask whether they are really gaining power—or simply receiving a different form of centralised administration.
The Prime Minister needs to answer that question convincingly.
Otherwise, his promise of devolution could begin to look like a branding exercise.
Rural Britain Cannot Be an Afterthought
Another concern is the effect of reform on rural areas.
Large authorities can make sense in densely populated cities where communities are economically connected.
But rural areas often have more dispersed populations and distinct infrastructure problems.
Public transport, healthcare access, broadband, roads and housing can all require highly localised knowledge.
A giant administrative authority may struggle to understand those differences.
There is also a democratic issue.
The larger the constituency and the larger the authority, the harder it can become for individual councillors to maintain a meaningful relationship with residents.
People want to know who is responsible when something goes wrong.
If a road is not repaired, a planning application is rejected or a local service disappears, residents should know which politician to contact.
A system that becomes more efficient on paper but less understandable to the public would not necessarily represent progress.
The Cost Could Be Greater Than Expected
There is another question that ministers will need to answer: how much will the restructuring actually cost?
Government reforms are often sold as ways of saving money.
But reorganising local government can initially require significant expenditure.
New authorities need new systems, new management structures, new branding, new administrative processes and potentially new buildings and technology.
Employees may have to be transferred or made redundant.
Existing contracts may need to be renegotiated.
Information systems may need to be integrated.
All of this costs money.
The government therefore needs to demonstrate that any long-term savings will justify the disruption.
Otherwise, taxpayers could end up paying for a large-scale reorganisation without receiving meaningful improvements in services.
That would be a particularly difficult outcome for a Labour government campaigning on economic responsibility.
Burnham Needs to Listen
There is still time for the Prime Minister to change course.
He does not need to abandon reform.
He needs to improve it.
Rather than treating every local authority as an obstacle, the government could work with councils to identify where restructuring would genuinely improve services.
Some areas may benefit from mergers.
Others may need stronger regional government.
Some may require additional powers for combined authorities.
Different parts of Britain could receive different solutions according to their circumstances.
That would fit much better with Burnham’s philosophy of devolved government.
Devolution should not mean imposing one model on the entire country.
It should mean giving different communities the ability to find solutions that work for them.
The Bigger Political Battle
The council reforms also matter because they could shape Burnham’s wider political reputation.
His supporters see him as a leader capable of transforming the relationship between central government and the regions.
If he succeeds, he could create a lasting political legacy.
Greater regional autonomy could become one of the defining achievements of his premiership.
But if local government reform becomes associated with disappearing councils, angry residents, confused responsibilities and expensive administrative upheaval, his opponents will seize upon it as evidence that the Burnham government talks about empowering communities while doing the opposite.
That would be a damaging accusation.
Especially because Burnham’s political identity is so closely connected to regional empowerment.
The Prime Minister therefore needs to be careful about what he breaks in the process of trying to fix Britain.
A Hammer Is Not a Strategy
The temptation in politics is always to make dramatic changes.
When a system is inefficient, politicians want to reorganise it.
When planning is slow, they want to remove barriers.
When local government is complicated, they want to simplify it.
But complicated problems rarely respond well to blunt instruments.
Britain’s local government system has evolved over decades. It contains weaknesses, but it also contains expertise, relationships and democratic structures that cannot simply be recreated overnight.
Burnham should remember that.
His vision of a more devolved Britain is potentially one of the most important parts of his political programme.
But the way to achieve it is not by bulldozing local institutions and hoping something better emerges.
It requires consultation.
It requires experimentation.
It requires allowing successful models to develop locally.
And above all, it requires listening to the communities that government claims it wants to empower.
Burnham has promised to take power out of Westminster and carry it into every postcode in the country.
That is an ambitious promise.
But if he wants people to believe it, his government must demonstrate that local voices actually matter.
Otherwise, the political irony will be impossible to ignore.
A Prime Minister who promised to decentralise Britain could end up centralising decisions about local government more aggressively than the politicians who came before him.
That is why the government should put down the hammer.
The engine may be broken.
But it does not need smashing.
It needs careful diagnosis, the right tools and a mechanic who understands which parts are worth keeping.
If Andy Burnham can remember that, his devolution revolution could become a genuine success.
If he cannot, the very reforms designed to give communities more power could leave them feeling more powerless than before.
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