No local revenue-raising instruments beyond council tax and business rates
English councils and mayors control only council tax, referendum-capped and levied on 1991 valuations, retained business rates, precepts and limited supplements. The 2023 trailblazer deals gave GMCA and WMCA ten-year full business-rates retention and integrated settlements, which is spending flexibility rather than taxing power, and their fiscal asks, a tourist levy among them, were deferred. The November 2025 visitor levy consultation and a King's Speech 2026 bill would create the first genuinely new local tax, and not before 2028. The Chancellor's fiscal devolution roadmap, interim in summer 2026 with the full version at the autumn Budget, is so far a document. CCN and Grant Thornton estimate a modest devolved menu could yield £4.4bn a year for councils.
England remains one of the most fiscally centralised large economies. Local leaders cannot capture the proceeds of the growth they enable, which blunts incentives, and every local priority requires a Whitehall negotiation. Devolved responsibility without revenue autonomy transfers blame rather than power.
Enabling legislation for a defined menu of local instruments, the visitor levy now and an assigned share of income tax for established mayoral strategic authorities next, with HMRC and VOA collection-and-assignment infrastructure, sequenced through the fiscal devolution roadmap.
// State-led: Instrument: HM Treasury enabling legislation via the fiscal devolution roadmap plus HMRC/VOA collection-and-assignment infrastructure.
England's fiscal centralisation caps local growth capture, and Treasury already owns the fix through a live visitor-levy bill and its autumn 2026 roadmap.
One gap, several dossiers: entries folded into this one (2)
The research pass surfaced this gap independently in more than one domain. Those entries are merged here so the map counts it once: one instrument: the promised fiscal-devolution framework giving mayoral authorities real revenue tools.
№ 55 · Mayors now have growth duties but almost no fiscal tools (Growth & stagnation)
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 (Royal Assent 29 April 2026) created strategic authorities everywhere and extended mayoral precepting and a mayoral CIL, but delivered no revenue autonomy: no land value capture at scale, no assigned tax shares, no borrowing tied to local growth. The Treasury committed in March 2026 to a 'fiscal devolution roadmap' at the autumn 2026 Budget, content unknown. UK city leaders control a fraction of the revenue of French or German peers.
Its fill: A statutory fiscal devolution package for established mayoral authorities: tax-increment financing and land value capture powers, a visitor levy, and retained business-rate growth or an assigned income-tax fraction. This is the concrete content the promised roadmap must contain.
№ 164 · Devolution without fiscal devolution: no revenue framework beneath the 2026 Act (Policy (lens))
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 (Royal Assent 29 April 2026) creates three tiers of strategic authorities with broad areas of competence, but almost no fiscal agency. Integrated settlements (single pot, limited virement) covered only Greater Manchester and the West Midlands in 2025-26, extending to the North East, South and West Yorkshire, Liverpool City Region and the GLA from 2026-27; other authorities remain on fragmented grants. There is no framework for revenue retention, tax assignment or new local revenue tools in England, in contrast to Scottish income tax powers, Welsh rates, and Scottish/Welsh visitor levies. Territorial funding still runs on the unreformed Barnett formula, criticised for decades as needs-blind. IFS, IfG and Resolution Foundation analyse the problem; no government framework answers it.
Its fill: A published fiscal devolution framework: a timetable extending integrated settlements to all mayoral strategic authorities, reformed business-rates retention, a menu of optional local revenue tools, and an independent review of Barnett/needs-based territorial funding. Responsible: MHCLG and HM Treasury; committee interest: HCLG Committee, Scottish/Welsh Affairs Committees.