Designing Devolution Around Relationships

England is entering its biggest wave of devolution since the creation of the first metro mayors. New Strategic Authorities are emerging, existing mayors are gaining powers and ministers are promising that decisions will move closer to communities. Yet one question is almost entirely absent from the debate; how will these new institutions rebuild relationships between generations?

For many people, devolution can feel like another constitutional reform. In practice, it is much more tangible. It means giving places greater control over decisions on transport, housing, skills, culture, health, regeneration and economic growth, allowing local leaders to shape services around the realities of their communities rather than around national departments. Done well, it replaces one-size-fits-all policymaking with locally accountable leadership.

Intergenerational Music Making has delivered in Greater Manchester for close to the lifetime of its mayoral devolution settlement and in Surrey, which is only now beginning to shape what its own devolution deal will mean in practice. Intergenerational England sits across both as the policy and research partner, giving us a unique perspective on how the same questions are answered at different stages of England's devolution journey.

That experience matters because England's devolution agenda has entered a new phase. The Government's English Devolution White Paper sets out an ambition for more Strategic Authorities with broader responsibilities, longer-term Integrated Settlements, and a greater emphasis on neighbourhood governance and prevention. Alongside wider local growth missions, the ambition for decisions to be made closer to communities, with places given greater freedom to join up services around local need rather than national silos. The question now is not whether power should move out of Westminster, but what principles should shape its use once it arrives.

The North got there first because it had to. Decades of deindustrialisation left many northern towns and cities facing economic and social challenges that could not be solved through central government alone. English devolution was, in part, a recognition that places like Greater Manchester needed greater freedom to rebuild their economies, reshape public services and respond to local priorities.

More than a decade on, those institutions have naturally matured. Relationships between combined authorities, commissioners, voluntary organisations and local providers have evolved alongside devolved powers, creating established ways of working.

That evolution has also helped shape a broader national conversation about what devolution should achieve. Andy Burnham, whose success in Greater Manchester has made him one of the country's most prominent advocates for English devolution and a politician frequently cited as a future Prime Minister, has been a strong advocate for placing people and communities at the heart of public policy. Reflecting on Intergenerational England's work, A Divided Kingdom report, he said:

"We're living in increasingly divided times – including division by age. This new report from Intergenerational England sets out a hopeful vision. We need a different way of living, where people contribute together and are valued, and it must be intergenerational."

The South is entering that journey at a different point. Surrey is now beginning to explore what devolution means for services that have long operated through county and district structures. Working across both the North and South, Intergenerational Music Making and Intergenerational England have seen first-hand how devolution evolves over time, and how local systems develop the relationships, confidence and partnerships that enable them to work differently.

That difference matters more than it sounds, devolution moves money and decisions closer to places. It does not, on its own, move them closer to people. A Strategic Authority can hold responsibility for housing, health, transport, culture and economic development and still commission each in isolation, with separate outcomes, separate budgets and separate accountability.

Every major challenge facing local government has an intergenerational dimension: loneliness, housing, healthy ageing, skills, volunteering, community safety and social care. Yet they continue to be designed and funded largely through age-based systems. For decades, the structures organise services for children, working-age adults and older people separately, despite the fact that people's lives, families and communities are interconnected.

This is where intergenerational policymaking offers something different. It places relationships between generations at the centre of change. Rather than treating age groups as separate policy problems, it recognises that wellbeing is relational, shaped through the connections between people at different stages of life. Housing, health, employment, culture and regeneration are not isolated challenges but interconnected systems, where stronger relationships produce stronger outcomes.

This is not another policy silo competing for attention. It is a relationship-centred way of thinking about the systems we already have. By designing policy around connection, reciprocity and shared responsibility, devolution has the opportunity to become more than the transfer of powers between institutions. It can become a way of strengthening the social infrastructure that allows communities to flourish.

Britain remains one of the most age-segregated countries in the developed world, and that is not simply an accident of culture. It is the product of systems designed, funded and measured generation by generation rather than community by community. Devolution gives places the opportunity to rethink those systems, but only if the people holding the new powers are encouraged to think in terms of relationships and belonging, not simply budgets and boundaries.

"Pride in Place", now central to regeneration and local growth policy, is ultimately about more than physical investment. Places become somewhere people are proud to call home because of the relationships within them. Those relationships are often intergenerational, whether policy chooses to recognise them or not.

Our case to whoever is shaping the next phase of English devolution - north or south, mayoral or county - is simple. Build relationship-centred, intergenerational policymaking into the architecture from the beginning. The opportunity presented by this new wave of devolution is not simply to move powers out of Westminster, but to design systems that connect rather than separate.

The ambition behind the Government's local growth missions must include every generation, not just the working-age population the system was originally designed around. Success should be measured not only by economic growth or institutional reform, but by whether local systems strengthen connection, belonging and resilience across generations.

The missing generation in today's devolution debate is not young people or older people. It is the relationships between them. If devolution is to fulfil its promise, those relationships should be treated not as a by-product of good policy, but as one of its defining purposes.

As the secretariat to the APPG on Tackling Loneliness and Connected Communities, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss what this means in practice with colleagues from across the political spectrum, in both the places furthest into devolution and those only just beginning the journey.