Ten days into her job, the deputy prime minister Angela Rayner wrote to local government leaders  promising ‘the most ambitious programme of devolution this country [England] has ever seen'. The new Government plans to devolve powers over, and funding for, transport, skills, housing, planning and employment support, that some of the mayors of combined authorities have, to more areas of England. It also plans for more areas to receive funding for such responsibilities via a ‘single pot' that they are free to allocate as they see fit, rather than use a plethora of ring-fenced grants as is now usually the case. More generally, all councils will benefit from multi-year as opposed to single-year funding settlements.

These plans can be described as ambitious only in the context of England's highly centralised governance arrangements: local governments in other large, developed economies often have more flexibility over spending and particularly revenue than their English counterparts. But they're a start. And a growing number of voices are calling for the devolution of additional revenue streams to accompany these changes on the spending side of the budget. This includes voices within local government (such as the Northern Powerhouse, and London Finance Commission ), and think tanks (such as the Centre for Cities  and LGIU) .