How to ensure radical devolution delivers for children and young people in place

15th July 2026

Second to Manchester, "place" is perhaps one of the words Andy Burnham has uttered most in recent weeks. In his first major speech, he promised to make place-based collaboration the operating principle of the country: "place first, not party first." A No 10 of the North. Good growth in every British postcode. A decade-long mission to rewire Britain, with power flowing out of Whitehall and into the hands of the people and places who can use it best.  

It is well documented that the UK is one of the most over-centralised countries in the developed world. Decentralising power and putting fiscal responsibility into the hands of those who know, understand and are part of the communities they serve, is vital for everyone’s future, including children and young people.   

The radical distribution of power to communities and places has the potential to be transformative. We know this as Dartington has been part of powerful place-based change efforts for decades. Our ten-year evaluation of the Lambeth Early Action Partnership showed that place-based systems change can genuinely improve outcomes for children and families. Our Kailo work – incorporating #BeeWell data - is demonstrating how systems can shift to centre young people and communities in designing places and systems of support that are meaningful and matter, and where young people feel they belong. We have seen what becomes possible when a place is given the time, resource and permission to work differently.  

We have also learnt that the key to being able to support systemic change in place, is to ensure the wider enabling conditions that keep problems in place are addressed effectively.  

Felt in place, held by national systems

It is tempting to see child poverty, youth unemployment or racialised inequity as the same problem recurring in different postcodes and therefore solvable postcode by postcode. But these problems are not simply  felt  in many places. They are  held in place  by national systems: welfare rules, funding architectures, labour markets and prevailing societal norms and mindsets. They are endemic, not just widespread. 

This distinction matters. Devolving delivery without shifting the underlying conditions asks places to solve problems they did not create and cannot fully control. Systemic change can absolutely happen in place, but a place can only shift the conditions within its reach. When the conditions holding a problem in place sit in the Treasury, in primary legislation, or in the deep structures of our global and national economy, no amount of local ingenuity will dissolve them. It will only manage them, at local expense. Transforming this will require both shifting revenue-raising powers to place and pulling national policy levers, as was done with the two-child benefit cap. Place-based work needs to be connected to national policy if it's to address the challenges and inequities felt in place. If not, we risk setting the concept of place-basedchange up for failure.  

Equity as a design principle for devolution

Andy Burnham has promised the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen. But power moved from Whitehall to a town hall or a combined authority has still only moved between institutions. It can pass straight over the heads of the people furthest from power in every place. 

Shrinking the unit of intervention does not guarantee a fairer share of power within it. It is likely to be the same groups of people who lose out  within  each place, whoever wins between them. The poorest families, single parent families, and those from racially and ethnically minoritised backgrounds, carry the heaviest loads of the challenges facing children and young people. A devolution settlement that is silent on this will redistribute power around them, not to them.  

In all of this we are acutely aware that place means different things for different people. Communities transcend place and places have been the source of danger for communities. People who have not been welcomed in place have sought bonds that stretch across countries and oceans. For many, place hasn’t been the answer to their problems or prayers.  

Minoritised communities often draw their strength, voice and campaigning power from coming together nationally from networks and movements that transcend any one place. If influence increasingly flows through dozens of local arenas rather than one national one, communities without the density or resource to organise in every place risk being structurally quieter, precisely at the moment power is supposedly coming closer to them. 

Equity must be a design principle of devolution. It needs to be intentionally baked in and not assumed or hoped into action. Consideration for how different communities engage in the concept of place and ensuring shifts in power are felt by all will support a truly radical devolution agenda.  

Invest in place — and in the connective tissue between places

Systemic place-based change works best when it is linked and connected to wider change efforts: shared learning infrastructure, evidence that travels between places, and national policy work that shifts the conditions every local actor operates within. If place-based collaboration is to become the operating principle of the country, the wiring between places and their connection to the national level needs investment as seriously as the places themselves. Otherwise, we will have forty local experiments and no way of learning from any of them - and problems held in place nationally will simply outlast our local efforts to solve them. This is why Dartington is focusing on creating shared, credible practical guidance on how to evaluate systemic change effectively.  

A radical devolution agenda has so much potential for place, but to deliver meaningful transformation for the children and young people in place we need to strive for an approach where place is connected to national change, designed around equity, accountable to the people within it and supported by connective infrastructure. If we can seize this opportunity place might just be where the solution starts for all children and young people to have thriving futures.  

Find out more about how Dartington is catalysing collaboration to support more effective systemic change here.