English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Today, the Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution, Jim McMahon OBE MP, introduced the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.

The Bill’s progress can be tracked on the IoL’s Legislation Tacker.

This Bill builds on the Government’s English Devolution White Paper (Dec 2024) and signals a significant shift of powers from Whitehall to local leaders – making it one of the biggest changes to local government in 50 years.

The Government said:

“The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will deliver on the government’s commitment to widen and deepen devolution across England, providing Mayors with unprecedented powers to deliver growth.

“The Bill will support the government’s plan to rebuild and reform local government, as the foundation for devolution, and give communities stronger tools to shape their local areas.”

The Bill includes measures that fall under 3 broad sections:

• Devolution: describing devolution structures, outlining and expanding powers for Mayors and authorities through the new Devolution Framework and explaining routes to devolution for places that don’t have it.

• Local government: ensuring the process for local government reorganisation supports the ambition in the White Paper, outlining changes to local authority governance, reforming accountability and introducing effective neighbourhood governance structures to amplify local voices.

• Communities: giving more power to local communities to purchase assets of community value and making reforms to commercial leases.

Guidance accompanying the Bill explains, in relation to licensing:

“The Bill will allow all Local Transport Authorities (including Strategic Authorities where they exist) to regulate on-street micromobility schemes through a licensing regime. Micromobility operations include a range of small, lightweight vehicles like bicycles and e-bikes, typically used for short trips. Initially, this regulatory power will be limited to shared cycle services (where people can hire bicycles for short journeys or to explore a certain area). However, the regime is designed with the flexibility to add other micromobility operations in future if these begin to have an impacts on shared street space (e.g. blocking pavements). For example, this could mean expanding to include shared e-scooter schemes or pavement delivery devices, should further regulation of those vehicles enable them to fall under the framework in the future.

“The approach to licensing will involve minimum standard conditions set by the Secretary of State for Transport to ensure a consistent baseline of operability and safety for all schemes. Licensing authorities will then be able to add additional local conditions to shape these schemes around their needs, connect people to public transport, and tackle issues with badly parked shared cycles.”