Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016

The Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 (c. 1) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that allows for the introduction of directly elected mayors to combined authorities in England and Wales and the devolution of housing, transport, planning and policing powers to them. The bill was introduced to the House of Lords by Baroness Williams of Trafford, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, on 28 May 2015.

The United Kingdom (UK) is a unitary state consisting of four countries. Devolution has been enacted for three of these countries (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) providing each with its own legislative assembly or parliament. However, this has not happened for England which continues to be administered by the Government of the United Kingdom and legislated for by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Proposals for the introduction of devolution to English regional governments were made at various points during the twentieth century. However, after a proposal for devolution to an elected North East Assembly was rejected in a referendum in North East England in 2004, the regional government approach was abandoned. Instead, the idea of devolution to smaller English "city regions" gained predominance, giving rise to calls for enabling legislation.

The main provisions of the Act are:

The provisions in the Act are generic (applied by government order to specified combined authorities and their areas). It is expected to apply primarily to England's largest city-regions (the Core Cities Group). However, there could be instances where the devolution of powers could be agreed to "a single county" or other local government area where a combined authority is not in place, provided all the councils in that area are in agreement. Additionally local government reorganisation may be facilitated by the bill if local authorities in an area are willing and the proposal is agreed by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

The legislation allowed Transport for the North to be put on an statutory footing and allowed for further sub-national transport bodies to be created.^{[citation needed]}

A clause added to the bill in the House of Commons in December 2015 confers general powers on National Park authorities for National Parks in England, along similar lines to those conferred on other local authorities by the Localism Act 2011.

A number of amendments were passed in the House of Lords despite opposition from the UK Government, but were partly overturned by the House of Commons. These included:

In July 2015 the Communities and Local Government Committee announced that it would undertake an inquiry into the Bill during the autumn of 2015. The committee examined the lessons that could be learned from City Deals arranged in 2012–14, whether the GMCA devolution proposals provided a model for other areas, and how local accountability could be improved. The committee's report was published in February 2016. It proposed: