Draft Cheshire and Warrington Combined Authority Order 2026
Draft Cumbria Combined Authority Order 2026
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Cheshire and Warrington Combined Authority Order 2026.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Cumbria Combined Authority Order 2026.
Miatta Fahnbulleh
The draft orders were laid on 18 December 2025. For both the Cheshire and Warrington combined authority and the Cumbria combined authority, I will hereafter use the term “strategic authority”, unless there is a reason to be specific.
Devolution is critical for delivering growth and prosperity for local communities, as mayors and local leaders are best placed to take decisions that benefit their communities. This Government were elected on a manifesto commitment to widen and deepen devolution across England, and the English devolution White Paper, which was published in December 2024, sets out our plans to achieve that. Much of the White Paper is now being taken through Parliament via the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.
The White Paper also launched the devolution priority programme to provide a fast track to establish a new wave of mayoral strategic authorities. Following an expression-of-interest process in February 2025, we announced six places on the programme, including Cheshire and Warrington and Cumbria. These statutory instruments will establish those two mayoral strategic authorities and provide for their mayoral elections. In doing so, they will represent substantial progress towards fulfilling our commitment to move power out of Whitehall and Westminster and back to those who know their patch best.
The Government have worked closely with the constituent councils in Cheshire and Warrington and Cumbria on the instruments, and all constituent councils consented to the making of their respective instruments. I personally thank local leaders and their councils for their support in getting us to this critical point. If Parliament approves them, the instruments will be made under the enabling provision in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. Both strategic authorities will be established on the day after the day on which the instruments are made. The inaugural mayoral elections are due to take place for both on 6 May 2027, and their elected mayors will take office on 10 May 2027 for a four-year term.
The instruments make provision for the governance arrangements of the strategic authorities. In each case, each constituent council appoints two of its elected members to be members of the strategic authority, with the mayor also a member once in office. The strategic authority can also appoint non-constituent and associate members to support its work.
The instruments provide some functions in relation to transport and economic development, but there is a strong interrelationship with the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. Subject to Royal Assent to the Bill, these strategic authorities will be classed as mayoral strategic authorities, and the functions reserved for their tier will automatically be conferred on them. That is why the instruments confer fewer functions than previous instruments establishing strategic authorities. The provisions in the Bill will give these strategic authorities functions on transport, strategic planning and housing, adult skills and employment support, economic regeneration, and the environment and climate change, ensuring that they can deliver for their residents even before a mayor is in place.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government consulted on the proposals to establish these strategic authorities between February and April last year. The purpose of the consultation was to gather evidence and information on the effects of establishing the strategic authorities and to ensure that we had local consent. We considered the responses, and on 17 July we confirmed to Parliament that the statutory test for establishing strategic authorities both in Cumbria and in Cheshire and Warrington had been met.
Subject to these instruments being made, both strategic authorities will receive devolved funding, including for transport and adult skills. They will also receive capacity funding to support setting up the new institutions. Furthermore, they will receive a 30-year mayoral investment fund to kick-start local economic growth and support key local priorities.
These instruments represent clear progress in our mission to widen and deepen devolution in England, and will make that a reality in both Cumbria and Cheshire and Warrington. They will empower local leaders to deliver for their communities, improving the lives and opportunities of their residents. I hope that the Committee will join me in supporting these instruments.
Miatta Fahnbulleh
I thank the shadow Minister for his points and for the cross-party support in getting these important statutory instruments through. I will take his questions in turn.
We have made a clear commitment to the 30-year investment fund, and it is worth saying that this is a commitment that the previous Government made with our established mayoralties. There has been a change of Government, and we have upheld that commitment. I intend, and imagine, that our Treasury and future Governments would do that. The key for us is that there is a clear pipeline that areas are putting in place and that there is Government support for that pipeline. In the way we have approached that with our established authorities for nearly a decade now, I hope and intend that that is how we as a Government and our Treasury would approach it, and how any future Government would approach it, too.
The shadow Minister asked an important question about data sharing, which a huge amount of work is going on to enable and support. There are obviously some technical barriers, as well as some safeguards that we need to put in place. Clear protocols govern the way in which different public institutions share data; that is one of the reasons why it can be quite slow and painful, but we will adhere to those protocols. My experience is that when it works well, it is because partners recognise that there is a common use and that there are opportunities and benefits for their particular area of service or investment, and because they are willing to work together. That is the way mayors have done it in other areas and the way I imagine it will continue to be done, supported by Departments where there is a common agenda and a common landing zone.
On the critical question of the level of the precept, central Government grants will always be part of that. I draw the hon. Member’s attention to what we are already doing with established mayoral authorities. There is investment from the Department for Transport into things like Northern Rail and particular transport schemes, alongside co-investment from mayors, which may come from the precept or from work they are doing with the private sector to invest in their place. I imagine that the set of mayors that these instruments will create will take a similar approach, but ultimately it will always be a partnership between central Government and our mayoralties and regional strategic authorities. There is no intention on our side to undercut our strategic authorities or not to work together to ultimately drive the infrastructure that we both care about because it unlocks growth and improves living standards.
Finally, on the important question that the hon. Member raised about Warrington, we are acutely aware of the challenges that it faces. The Minister for Local Government and Homelessness is working with all the places where a debt burden needs to be managed. The Department is working actively to support them to do so. There is no intention that the specific challenges faced by Warrington will be ported on to the combined authority—not least because a lot of the funding pressures apply to local services, and this is about economic development functions. We have made a clear commitment to work with constituent authorities where there is a challenge around their public finances and debt to resolve it.
Having responded to those questions, I thank the Committee for its support. These instruments deliver on an important commitment that we made to Cheshire and Warrington and to Cumbria on devolution. It is the next stage of our journey, as we progress more places towards becoming mayoral strategic authorities. I thank the Committee and look forward to working with the areas to take the instruments forward.
Question put and agreed to.
DRAFT CUMBRIA COMBINED AUTHORITY ORDER 2026
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Cumbria Combined Authority Order 2026.—(Miatta Fahnbulleh.)