Five Conditions for Successful Skills Devolution 

Last week, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Skills, Careers and Employment (APGSCE), hosted a roundtable in the House of Lords on the role of devolution in shaping skills pathways, careers provision, and employment support. With devolution a key theme across recent government announcements, from the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 to the Rewiring the State statement and the plans for further devolution that came with it, the discussion was a timely opportunity to hear how this is playing out in practice for local areas. 

We heard from mayoral, strategic, and local authorities across urban, rural, and coastal areas, as well as parliamentarians, providers, employer bodies, and national organisations. The discussion covered funding, data, partnership working, and the risk of areas without devolution deals being left behind. Five conditions emerged consistently as the basis for successful devolution. 

Strategy: a clear, overarching national vision 

The discussion began with the question of what devolution is for. Without a shared national vision, areas are left to define their own purpose and devolved powers risk pulling in different directions. National guardrails and outcomes matter for accountability and for practical reasons, such as making sure qualifications are recognised wherever a learner moves, provided they leave room for local variation.  One formulation put forward was provision that is nationally conceived, regionally contextualised, and locally delivered, which is a useful test of whether the balance is right. It reflects a principle in our Earning or Learning report, which treats devolved delivery within a clear national framework as central to reducing rates of young people not in employment, education, or training (NEET).  

The risk of getting this balance wrong is a postcode lottery. Areas without devolution deals could be left behind as funding concentrates in devolved areas, and differences in local government capacity could reinforce existing inequalities. A national vision is therefore a means of coordination and also a safeguard of fairness between places. 

Flexibility: freedom in funding allocations and delivery 

Within that national framework, the next question is how much room areas have to shape provision around local need. Flexibility was the most consistent theme of the discussion, and it takes three forms. 

1. Flexibility across places requires central government to accept that policy will look different in different areas. 
2. Flexibility within programmes, funding rules and regulations allows areas to respond to local need. 
3. Flexibility over time allows areas to build more integrated local systems at their own pace. 

Underlying all three is a distinction between devolving funds and devolving programmes. Passing national programmes down for local administration gives areas little say over where resources are best placed, whereas single, less ring-fenced settlements allow them to commission provision from local partners according to need. 

Integration: cohesion among local stakeholders and systems 

Flexibility is only useful if it helps local partners join up provision rather than adding to what they already manage, and this was a concern across the room. Local Skills Improvement Plans, the Youth Guarantee, employment support programmes, local growth plans, and Integrated Care Board plans are among the overlapping elements that local areas are expected to align. If devolution passes down a series of separate programmes, each with its own rules and governance, the complexity facing employers, providers and learners is likely to be reproduced locally. One contributor suggested that areas inheriting multiple programmes will find duplication, and that consolidating provision into fewer, well-delivered interventions should form part of the process. 

Integration also extends beyond skills. Skills and employment cannot be considered in isolation from health, housing, transport, childcare, and other local services, since the barriers to starting and staying in learning are closely connected. We saw this from the learner’s perspective in Earning or Learning, where young people had to navigate multiple, poorly connected systems, and we called for greater integration of employment support, skills, education, and youth services. Our Trained for Tomorrow report makes a comparable case for health, recommending that Integrated Care Boards plan their workforce regionally, jointly with universities, colleges and regional skills bodies. 

In practice, this kind of integration depends on partnerships. Contributors described these as resting on relationships and trust as much as on formal structures, and as strongest where partners start from shared goals and are involved as co-designers. 

Stability: certainty through multi-year funding settlements 

Partnerships of this kind take time to build, and they need funding that lasts long enough for them to mature. The move towards multi-year settlements was welcomed, but contributors described the disruption caused by in-year funding reductions applied after providers had completed their planning. They called for adult skills settlements to be aligned to the academic year rather than the financial year, and for existing funding levels to be maintained during the transition. 

Short-term initiatives were seen as limiting partnership working, because arrangements often end before they have matured. Earning or Learning found a similar pattern in youth provision, where funding cycles of one to two years are not compatible with the sustained support that young people at risk of becoming NEET need. The same logic applies to the authorities themselves. Devolved responsibilities need to come with capacity funding for administration, so that delivery budgets are not top-sliced to cover it. 

Evidence: grounding decisions in data and empirical results 

Planning over several years, and judging whether devolution is working, both depend on being able to see what is happening locally. Access to data was described as a precondition for evidence-based decision making, and it was argued that any power or responsibility devolved to an area should come with the data needed to plan and run that part of the system. Providers can see learners’ qualifications but often not whether they have moved into work, and tracking NEET status can require checking several separate systems. Newer authorities reported that the adult skills data currently available to them is historic and difficult to use. 

Earning or Learning identified the same gap. It recommended a Youth Data Duty on national government, to share real-time participation data with local authorities and Mayoral Strategic Authorities, alongside testing secure access to Longitudinal Education Outcomes data for strategic planning. Data of this kind also underpins accountability, since outcomes for people can only be measured if they can be tracked. 

Conclusion 

The five conditions are closely linked. A national vision gives local flexibility its purpose, and flexibility is useful only if it supports integration rather than adding to fragmentation. Integration depends on partnerships, which need stable funding to mature, and data is what allows the whole system to be planned and judged. Weakness in one area tends to undermine the others, so devolution is better approached as a connected system than as a series of separate reforms. 

This post draws on only part of a wider discussion, which also made clear that progress will take time. Areas are at very different stages, and a mixed picture is likely to persist. Devolution was described as an ongoing process of testing and learning rather than a move towards a fixed end point, with central and local government sharing responsibility for outcomes. Participants argued that success should be measured by outcomes for people rather than programme targets, including whether residents can reach provision, whether small employers can recruit, and whether people move into sustained, fairly paid work. 

These questions will run through our research over the coming months. Our Higher Education Commission inquiry into universities and their regional connections will look at how universities work with employers, other providers and public services to support regional and national social mobility, and devolution will also feature in the Skills Commission’s inquiry into apprenticeships. 

For more information on our upcoming events and research, contact Rhiannon Tuckett-Jones (rhiannon.tuckett-jones@policyconnect.org.uk).