Andy Burnham, widely tipped to be the next prime minister following Kier Starmer’s announced resignation, has unveiled plans to bring about the “biggest council house building programme since the post war period”
In his latest housing announcement, Burnham outlined a 10-year mission to raise living standards across the country, as well as create a new nerve centre in Manchester called ‘No 10 in the North.
The plans also include measures aimed at increasing youth employment, with a particular focus on encouraging more young people to pursue careers in the construction industry..
Below, we’ve rounded up reactions from industry experts to Burnham’s proposals and what they could mean for the housing and construction sectors.
Lawrence Turner, director at Boyer
Could Andy Burnham’s “circuit breaker” plans for devolution expose the biggest contradiction in housing policy?
Today’s reports that Andy Burnham wants a “circuit breaker” to transfer significant powers from Whitehall to regional mayors and local authorities raise an interesting question for planning.
For decades, governments of every political colour have gradually taken more control over housing numbers, for example through regional strategies, the Standard Method, Housing Delivery Tests and local plan examinations. This is because of a long-held belief that local politics, left entirely to its own devices, rarely plans for enough homes.
The reason isn’t difficult to understand. The people who object to development live there today and vote today. The people who need somewhere to live often don’t. So increasingly governments have stepped in, not because they know every community better than local politicians, but because housing need rarely stops at local authority boundaries.
Andy Burnham is encouraging us to imagine a more devolved England. If regional mayors are given greater control over housing, skills, transport and economic growth, who decides how many homes a region actually needs?
If Whitehall continues to set the numbers, is it really devolution?
But if Whitehall steps back completely, what happens when regional leaders face the same political pressures that councils have wrestled with for decades?
Every mayor will want economic growth. Every mayor will want younger people to afford homes. Every mayor will also hear from thousands of existing residents who would rather development happened somewhere else.
That isn’t a criticism of devolution, it’s simply the political reality of planning.
Perhaps an answer might be for Government to continue to set the standard method housing target but on a regional basis, while devolving responsibility for deciding where those homes should go.
Regional mayors and combined authorities could then distribute that requirement across their local authorities, with each council responsible for planning for and delivering its share.
My suggestion is that national government decides how many homes are needed and regional leaders decide where they go. To me, that feels like a better devolution without losing sight of tackling our housing crisis.
Harry Bolton, head of Manchester Office and NW head of Planning and Development at Carter Jonas
The success of Manchesterism
Greater Manchester is frequently cited as an example of successful devolution – to the extent that the term “Manchesterism” has come to describe a model in which regional powers and public and private investment combine to support economic growth.
A key part of Greater Manchester’s success was collaboration between ten authorities which do not always share the same politics but have coalesced around a common model for economic growth. The next step was to apply that model more directly to commercial and industrial development. Offices, laboratories, factories, logistics buildings and grow-on units are not simply outputs of economic growth. They form part of the enabling infrastructure which makes growth possible.
Businesses, supply chains and labour markets do not stop at council boundaries. A strategic approach can move the debate beyond how much employment land each authority should provide towards the combination of locations the wider economy needs.
A city-centre office market, a life-sciences cluster, an advanced-manufacturing campus and a motorway-linked logistics location respond to different market requirements. They need different buildings, skills, transport and utility capacity. A spatial development strategy can help give places complementary roles rather than encouraging every authority to pursue the same sectors and opportunities.
Greater Manchester’s Integrated Pipeline illustrates the opportunity. It brings together projects intended to support 175,000 homes and five million square metres of employment space over ten years, alongside six Growth Locations and strategic transport investment. The purpose is to sequence land, housing, infrastructure and commercial development so that one enables the other.
This broader view can also help protect productive employment land where it is under pressure from higher-value uses. Some older industrial areas need renewal, but affordable workshops, small units and well-located estates often support the supply chains that underpin larger clusters.
Greater Manchester has identified advanced materials and manufacturing, digital, cyber and AI, health innovation and life sciences and low-carbon industries among its priority sectors. It has begun to connect those strengths to places and investment: advanced manufacturing at Atom Valley, digital activity in the central innovation districts, life sciences around the Oxford Road Corridor and clean-energy opportunities in the Western Gateway.
The city region’s £160 million Investment Zone for advanced materials and manufacturing is expected to support 32,000 jobs and leverage £1.1 billion of private investment over ten years. More recently, £50 million was allocated to innovation projects covering Atom Valley, AI, retrofit technology, health data and wearable devices.
Clearly the built environment has a key role to play in achieving this. Public investment in universities and innovation centres creates commercial demand when it helps ideas become businesses and businesses become credible occupiers. A spin-out may begin in shared laboratory space, move into its own fitted unit and later require pilot-production or manufacturing premises. The weak point is often the stage between incubation and full production. Without suitable grow-on space, a region can create a successful company only to lose it when it expands.
Large clusters should also create opportunities for local suppliers, contractors and service businesses. That requires a range of premises, supported by transport and skills policies which help residents access new jobs.
The opportunities attached to devolution for other areas
Devolution is most valuable when it resolves the barriers between an allocation and an investable site. Industrial development may depend on a grid connection, water capacity, highway works, public transport, land assembly and a trained workforce. These matters are usually controlled by different organisations with different timetables.
A mayor’s formal convening power cannot manufacture electricity capacity or compel an agency to fund a road. It can, however, require specified partners to respond and create a more formal process through which constraints and timescales are addressed. Combined with transport, skills, land and planning powers, that creates a better chance of producing a shared delivery programme.
Mayoral Development Orders (as defined in the recently published English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026: Devolution Framework Explainers) could provide advance planning permission for defined forms of development in a specific area. Used carefully, this could reduce risk for an innovation district or industrial cluster. Mayoral intervention in strategically important applications may provide similar clarity. Both powers need restraint: an additional decision-making tier is useful only where it improves or accelerates a regional outcome.
The same caution applies to a Mayoral Community Infrastructure Levy. Strategic infrastructure needs funding, but any new charge must reflect the different economics of offices, laboratories, logistics and manufacturing. There is little value in creating another source of revenue if the cumulative burden makes development less viable.
Having observed Greater Manchester’s experience of devolution, I am enthusiastic about the potential for wider devolution across the country. But the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act is a framework rather than a cure-all. Regions will benefit only if their authorities can agree a clear vision, define complementary roles and maintain that agreement when political leadership changes. Scaling collaboration upwards is harder than devolving responsibilities downwards.
However, Greater Manchester has had more than a decade in which to build the relationships and establish the delivery capacity required. It has also benefited from a shared aspiration for regeneration, a clearly defined regional centre, substantial opportunities to improve public transport and committed stakeholders. Other areas will start from a much earlier position and without the same advantages.
The practical test will be whether strategic authorities turn their new powers into compelling and workable investment programmes. Success should be judged not by the number of strategies produced but by whether businesses of different sizes can establish themselves, expand and remain within the region over the long term.
Browne Jacobson:
Laura Hughes, partner and head of Public Law, said: “Deeper devolution that gives mayoral combined authorities genuine control over powers and finances relating to portfolios such as further education is a core Andy Burnham policy.
“It reflects what he’s built in Greater Manchester, where he has acknowledged prevention is better than cure. He understands that unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds is a major reason for escalating welfare costs and tackling this issue begins with better early years education.
“However, while it’s absolutely right that other areas should benefit from the additional powers given to Greater Manchester as part of the trailblazer devolution deal it secured, Sir Keir Starmer’s government had already introduced a process to enable the wholesale rolling out of these powers to strategic authorities via the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act.
“Burnham may be able to accelerate the granting of additional powers to existing strategic authorities – and the creation of new ones – but questions remain on whether he is prepared to remove ringfencing around budgets so that mayors are given flexibility to make health interventions via education spending, for example.
“Real fiscal autonomy holds the key to devolution delivering meaningful change in areas such as transport, skills and housing. Without genuine control over taxation and revenue, local areas remain fundamentally dependent on the centre – and that dependency undermines the very accountability that devolution is supposed to create.
“The Treasury was already developing a roadmap for fiscal devolution ahead of the Spending Review 2027, including proposals to let localities retain more benefit from local economic expansion.
“Burnham should accelerate this work and be explicit that it extends beyond England. The asymmetry between the devolved nations remains a structural problem – Wales and Northern Ireland do not enjoy the same degree of fiscal devolution as Scotland, and that imbalance creates real tensions in the intergovernmental landscape that no government has yet resolved. Burnham has already ruled out reforming the Barnett formula.
“A genuine fiscal devolution settlement has to be a whole-UK conversation, not an English one conducted in isolation. Having spent a decade arguing that the centre holds too much power, the new Prime Minister is better placed than most to make that case. But he will need to grapple with the structural questions that have been ducked for too long.”
On renationalisation of energy, water and transport
Zoe Stollard, partner specialising in energy, said: “Andy Burnham’s commitment to reform of essential utilities as part of his 10-year mission signals that energy policy will remain a central pillar of the government’s agenda, regardless of who sits in Downing Street.
“For investors and developers operating in the energy sector, the emphasis on long-term thinking is welcome. The industry needs policy stability and a clear direction of travel to unlock the capital required for the energy transition. What will be critical, however, is the detail behind the rhetoric.
“Reform of essential utilities can mean many things, and the market will be watching closely to understand whether Burnham’s vision translates into concrete regulatory and legislative action. Combined with his devolution agenda, there is also a real opportunity to accelerate regional energy projects by giving local authorities and mayors greater decision-making power, but that will only work if it is backed by the right funding mechanisms and planning frameworks.”
Anja Beriro, partner specialising in public procurement, said: “Andy Burnham’s instinct to bring key services such as transport and utilities back under public control will inevitably reshape the procurement landscape.
“Whether that means full nationalisation or the Greater Manchester ‘public oversight’ model – where private operators run services under tight public control – the legal architecture of how those contracts are structured, awarded and managed will be central.
“What’s encouraging is that the tools to drive local benefit are already here. The Procurement Act 2023 and the National Procurement Policy Statement published alongside it place a greater onus on contracting authorities to prioritise local supply chains, social value and community wealth-building when awarding public contracts.
“This is further supported by the Procurement Policy Note 024, published last month, which introduces a mandatory public interest test for all government service contracts above £1m that goes beyond cost to weigh up multiple factors including social value, accountability and in-house capabilities before deciding to outsource to the private sector.
“Burnham’s government will almost certainly double down on these expectations, making it even more important that public bodies understand how to use those levers lawfully and strategically. The question isn’t whether to embed local supply chain requirements, but how to do so in a way that withstands legal challenge and actually delivers on the ground.”
On public-private partnerships and infrastructure investment
Craig Elder, partner specialising in public procurement, said: “Andy Burnham appears to recognise the importance of infrastructure renewal but, given the challenging economic environment he will have to operate in and the need to prove fiscal responsibility to the markets, one option will be to turn towards public-private partnerships (PPPs) – potentially in tandem with his drive for greater regional devolution.
“Having overseen the use of PFI in a hospital building programme while Health Secretary under Tony Blair’s government, Burnham is familiar with PPPs and as Greater Manchester Mayor also worked cross-party with ex-West Midlands Mayor Andy Street to explore how private finance could revive the HS2 link between Birmingham and Manchester.
“The good news is that reformed PPP models have been delivering worldwide since the UK scrapped PFI without a replacement, with Scotland and Wales pressing ahead with their own non-profit distributing and mutual investment models respectively to fund schools, hospitals and roads.
“These include features that learn lessons from some of PFI’s perceived drawbacks and can be built into modern PPPs, such as proportionate risk allocation, auditable social value and strengthened accountability. In what may be music to Burnham’s ears, there is also a significant role for mayors in creating the long-term project pipeline that gives investors the certainty they need.
“With the UK having the lowest investment in fixed assets within the G7 over the past 20 years – an issue that can’t be fixed through public spending alone – it’s time to finally reopen the PPP conversation.”
On place-based growth
Peter Ware, Partner and Head of Government, said: “Freeports are one of the most underappreciated tools available to any incoming Prime Minister serious about regional growth and inward investment, and Andy Burnham should make an important part of his economic vision.
“Across the 12 designated English, Scottish and Welsh freeports, the evidence has been quietly accumulating with billions in landed investment, thousands of hectares of brownfield land brought back into productive use, and a pipeline of clean energy, advanced manufacturing and logistics projects that would have seemed implausible a decade ago.
“The government’s extension of the tax relief window to 2031 in England, and 2034 in Scotland and Wales, was an acknowledgement that the model works.
“Burnham’s instincts around place-based growth, devolution and levelling up the regions make him a natural champion of freeports. The alignment between freeport governance structures and the emerging local growth plans under the devolution framework is an opportunity to hardwire long-term investment ambition into regional spatial planning.
“Burnham should bring freeports back into the centre of the growth conversation, and articulate a joined-up vision in which freeports, devolution, planning reform and public infrastructure investment reinforce one another.”
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