Eleven days into his premiership, Andy Burnham’s flagship devolution project is open for business. No 10 North, operating from Manchester’s Heron House while the city’s Digital Campus remains under construction, will shift devolution and local growth policymaking from the housing ministry and Treasury. Caroline Simpson, from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, now heads this new structure in the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet as Burnham’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Burnham told his Cabinet that it is “Not a gimmick [but] the nerve centre of a rewired Britain,” even pledging to work there at least once a week as proof of his commitment.
No 10 North may symbolize devolution for Burnham, but it is ironically a product of centralization. It was created by a written ministerial statement, not an act of Parliament, or even secondary legislation. In fact, the statement was presented to Parliament in the unelected Lords chamber on 21 July, reorganizing which civil servants report to whom.
Although statements like these are how machinery-of-government changes are made, it likewise means the boldest symbol of the Burnham premiership rests on the shallowest of constitutional foundations. What a ministerial statement can establish can be just as easily abolished by a future ministerial statement. Hence, any future prime minister could dissolve No 10 North on their first day in office without any vote, debate, or recourse for Parliament or the city left holding an empty building on Great Ancoats Street.
How No 10 North Works
What will No 10 North control? Currently, Whitehall gets nearly 95 percent of UK tax revenue, making Britain the most fiscally centralized country in the G7. Even with the 2026 English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act, which expanded mayors’ powers over transport, planning, and housing, fiscal devolution was parked in a Treasury “roadmap” due alongside the forthcoming autumn budget. Until that roadmap becomes law, No 10 North is just a reallocation of officials under the Prime Minister’s oversight, and all of that can be reversed by a future government.
That is not to say that the concept of No 10 North is inherently flawed. Physically placing a Downing Street operation in Manchester changes who ministers meet and what policy issues get prioritized.
Nevertheless, much of Britain’s history of devolutionary reforms is a graveyard of arrangements that existed and were abolished at No 10’s pleasure. Local democratic structures felt this too when numerous local contests were postponed in 2025 to accommodate Whitehall’s reorganization timetable. Devolved nations have noticed the pattern themselves, which is why Wales’s First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth warned against No 10 North becoming a “Whitehall with a different postcode” while Scotland’s John Swinney stated “rhetoric alone will not cut it.”
Burnham is no stranger to such arguments, as the thrust of his entire leadership campaign, based on nine years as Mayor of Greater Manchester, is that power hoarded in Westminster gets used primarily for Westminster’s purposes.
Yet No 10 North’s own establishment partly proves this dynamic as Westminster keeps such power unless specific constitutional reform happens. Establishing a branch office is not a true transfer of power but the creation of a new arm for the central authority.
How to make No 10 North reach its full potential
The question for this premiership then is what Burnham converts from executive discretion into a structure that survives him. As such, Burnham must pursue far-reaching legislative and constitutional reform objectives to cement No 10 North as his devolution hub.
The autumn fiscal roadmap becoming statute would be the best place to start given the Chancellor’s announced timeline. The primary difference between devolution and delegation is whether tax-raising and spending powers are assigned to regions in law, and the ministerial statement establishing No 10 North has no authority to assign those powers.
Next, the government should anchor its devolutionary efforts in legislation. No 10 North needs a statutory basis, defined functions, and reporting duties to Parliament, with corresponding oversight bodies inside Parliament as well. This would not necessarily prevent its future abolition, but it would increase the costs of abolition to at least include debates, a bill, and political capital.
Finally, and most importantly, Burnham must outline his ministry’s plan to establish the Senate of the Nations and Regions. An upper chamber in which the nations and regions are constitutionally embedded would be costly for any future prime minister to undo. Burnham even has a mandate for constitutional reform here as Labour’s 2024 manifesto promised a consultation on replacing the House of Lords. Burnham must not delay such an ambitious overhaul either, as the early days of his premiership, when his devolution flagship is generating goodwill, are the best possible time to launch it.
No 10 North will remain the gimmick Burnham insists it is not until these objectives are fulfilled. So far, the postcode really is the only thing that has changed, not the constitution. Burnham must keep going to permanently rewire British politics.