Devolution Act needs to deliver improvements for rural communities - Yorkshire Post Letters

Re: 'Rural affairs' responsibilities added to mayors in Devolution Act, Ralph Blackburn, April 30, 2026.

As Gavin Lane, President of the Country Land and Business Association, notes in your article, “while devolution brings real opportunities, it also risks town halls making the same mistakes that national governments have for years.”

If this reform is to succeed where others have fallen short, it must ensure that power genuinely reaches local communities.

Successive initiatives - from the Localism Act to Levelling Up - have promised to shift decision-making closer to people, but too often the reality has remained distant from everyday life. Devolving authority to combined or strategic bodies does not automatically deliver meaningful change at neighbourhood level.

Community Right to Buy is a step in the right direction, but without sustained investment in local capacity, institutional change within public bodies, and a genuine shift from consultation to collaboration, existing inequalities risk being reinforced rather than reduced.

The Act needs to deliver visible improvements in people’s daily lives and rebuild trust between communities and those who govern. That requires not only new powers, but a radical new approach to how those powers are shared and exercised.