Talk:Strategic authority

Requested move 21 May 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jeffrey34555 (talk) 05:13, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

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Mayoral Strategic Authority → Strategic authority – The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 creates the legal entity of a “Strategic Authority” (SA) It establishes 4 types of SA. Mayoral Strategic Authorities are only one of the four types. I’m pleased that this article has been created, but I think it would be better to cover all types of SA. SAs will cover all CAs, CCAs, the GLA, and future single‑council strategic authorities. The government intend to ‘complete the map’ of English devolution so every part of England has one of the 4 types of SA. I think we need an article to cover all of these. Thanks. Simon373737 (talk) 10:15, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

The request has been automatically renamed incorrectly. I'm proposing to rename the page to "Strategic authority". Simon373737 (talk) 11:01, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Corrected as described. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:16, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Strong Support  M2Ys4U ^(talk) 20:15, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Support - It makes sense for Strategic authority to be an all-encompassing title like Combined authority currently is. AlecCoates (talk) 19:10, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

• Support, I think the proposer make a good argument. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 00:59, 23 May 2026 (UTC)
• Support, makes sense to have a more general article on all the bodies. DankJae 01:41, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

• Support - per nom - Dn9ahx (talk) 09:25, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

  Looking at the article with exception to the most recent legislation which could be added to existing articles it is a C&P of information from Combined authorities and other existing articles like Directly elected mayors in England and the Greater London AuthorityChefBear01 (talk) 18:28, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Related move - combined authorities

Talk:Combined authority#Requested move 21 May 2026 — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlecCoates (talk • contribs) 19:25, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Devolution in England

Please could anyone help with my Draft:Devolution in England article. I am creating an article that shows an overview of devolution in England, this differs from other articles as it focuses on specific governance structures and does not include everything in local government.ChefBear01 (talk) 15:01, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

I've had a go at improving this. Would like to see it moved into article space very soon. MRSC (talk) 06:02, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Mayoral Strategic Authority vs. Established Mayoral Strategic Authority

I feel like there is not quite enough explanation of what differentiates these two designations, what the "Established" terminology confers on the strategic authority that makes it more devolved than the regular mayoral strategic authority. It also strikes me that this should be its own section instead of the opening of the article. It'd appear from the map that the MSA cover more rural area and the EMSA are more urban. But the article does not explain of those powers & functions later listed, which are available to the MSA and which to the EMSA. Criticalthinker (talk) 09:00, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

We are in real danger of creating word soup here, completely impenetrable to a normal reader. Combined authorities and combined county authorities and this article. Should they both exists? What's the difference? MRSC (talk) 16:39, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

The GLA, CAs, CCAs, and strategic authorities are four different things each established by different legislation. I did initially suggest re-naming the existing Combined authorities and combined county authorities to Strategic authority and to then add the GLA to the article. This was put up for discussion and rejected. There was a strong majority preferring to create a separate Strategic authority article. Hope this helps. Simon373737 (talk) 08:13, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I believe the government hopes that strategic authority will become the publicly known and used name for all of these authorities and the average voter won't need to bother understanding the technical legal distinction between CAs and CCAs or between two-tier and unitary local government etc. Their aim is to 'complete the map of English devolution' to simplify English local and devolved government so every part of England is is covered by one strategic authority and one (principal and unitary) local authority. Some areas will continue to be covered by a parish too (no change). Hope this helps. Simon373737 (talk) 08:32, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I think the distinction given in the article is explicitly what the legislation says. Any mayoral strategic authority can apply to become established if it meets all the criteria. Doesn't matter if they cover more urban areas or more rural areas. Hope this helps. Simon373737 (talk) 08:18, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

This honestly does not help. What is the difference between an MSA and EMSA in terms of powers or structure of administrative subunits, etc? Criticalthinker (talk) 10:35, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I've added more secondary sources including the following link which explains this clearly: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/english-devolution-white-paper The main difference for Established authorities is the 'single pot' integrated funding settlement giving mayors and strategic authorities more freedom to decide how to spend the funds allocated to them by the Treasury. Non-established authorities have more restrictions on how and on what they spend the funds allocated to them. Many argue that this model is still pretty centralised compared to other countries. Simon373737 (talk) 12:03, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Combined authorities and combined county authorities needs to be merged into this and it needs to be turned into plain English. The need for secondary sources isn't just nice to have, it lets us know how these abstract ideas are being referred to in the real world. The place to put the legalese is on the relevant legislation article. MRSC (talk) 07:05, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

The recent RM at that article for it to be renamed to Strategic authority failed, with most preferring them be separate at the time, although understood the original reasoning. Although I have a preference that Combined authorities and combined county authorities be split into two separate articles for each specific type, while Strategic authority becomes the general grouping article. DankJae 13:46, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't understand this. There is practically no difference between the two and all combined county authorities are due to become combined authorities anyway because of local government restructuring. It really is a distinction without a difference. MRSC (talk) 13:49, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Well once that happens we can re-approach the issue, but currently there are three entities of Strategic authority. Still too early. Not opposed to have Strategic authority be the main article, while CAs and CCAs are trimmed a lot. Although a CCA article could still exist historically. Once Strategic authorities become "Combined authorities and London", then I see the merit of a merger. DankJae 14:08, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I agree with this. I think the History and Proposals sections on the CA/CCA article should probably be moved over to this article instead. However, the Proposals section needs updating. I largely left it untouched, but I think some of the proposals listed have been abandoned, while other more current proposals are not mentioned. Simon373737 (talk) 14:28, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I was looking to do this too. The only problem is some of it is not well referenced (some paragraphs not at all) so needs some work. I don't like the idea of moving badly or non-referenced text over. MRSC (talk) 14:41, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm unsure if it's true that the existing CCAs will be reconstituted into CAs after local government reorganisation. I have tried looking into this, but I couldn't find anything definitive. I suspect what they might do is issue an SI for each CCA saying that the constituent members have changed from X to Y and the requirement for a CCA to contain a two-tier county council will no longer apply to this particular CCA. This is similar to SIs creating new non-met unitary councils (which say this authority is both a non-met county and a non-met district that will have a district council, but the (1972 act) requirement for every non-met county to have a council will not apply in this case).

I think the plan is that all of these authorities will more commonly be known as simply strategic authorities and the average voter won't worry about the legal distinctions behind the scenes. For those who are interested, they can read the separate article on CAs and CCAs. Simon373737 (talk) 14:12, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm unsure if it's true that the existing CCAs will be reconstituted into CAs after local government reorganisation

CCAs have to include a county council. They can't exist without one. We should not speculate. MRSC (talk) 14:36, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

As I said at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography, this article should incorporate Combined authorities and combined county authorities. The list of authorities (currently on Wikipedia in three places) can go to Draft:List of strategic authorities. Strategic authority area can redirect here. MRSC (talk) 12:58, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

As I've mentioned elsewhere, there was a strong majority against this idea in the 'Combined authorities and combined county authorities' article Talk. Before the Strategic authority page had been created, I suggested just renaming the CA/CCA article to Strategic authority. There was strong opposition to this and most wanted to create a separate article (and this when happened). Simon373737 (talk) 13:29, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Consensus can change. I the meantime I think Strategic authority region should redirect here. This is a completely made up term. I cannot find any source for it. Where these areas are discussed at all it is 'devolved area' or 'devolution area'. But as the article is merely a fork of this one it should redirect here. I am holding off doing anything on this because there is an active move request. MRSC (talk) 13:36, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Note the act does use the term "Strategic authority area", although as per the RM request there not "region". DankJae 14:08, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Combined authorities and combined county authorities

This is a distinction without a difference. Why does it have to be written out like this every time? How is the prose improved by doing this? MRSC (talk) 12:45, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

OK. On reflection, I think we only need to mention the GLA, CAs, and CCAs (as a collective) in the first two paragraphs. We could avoid acronyms altogether if we just mention them there (once each per paragraph). This defines what a "strategic authority" is so I think we can use strategic authority only as the term from that point onwards (e.g. in your new table).

If someone wants more detail on CAs and CCAs and the legal distinction between them, they can click the link to that article.

We should obviously still use the full name of each individual strategic authority (I don't think anyone is suggesting otherwise).

I do agree with plain English, but we have to also ensure everything is accurate. Thanks. Simon373737 (talk) 13:17, 14 June 2026 (UTC)