Which indicates that far from being independent institutions responding to local need, or innovative institutions able to come up with new solutions to chronic problems, combined authorities remain the delivery agents of central government policies
You can watch the skills committee meeting of 10 November 2025 here (click on the webcast) and see the response to the public question I tabled at item 4. I can’t say I was surprised by the response – quite the opposite. If anything, it’s useful to have the limitations of Adult Skills section of the Combined Authority set out in a single, quotable paragraph.
“The entire purpose of adult skills funding across the region is to ‘support adult learners to gain skills which will lead them to meaningful, sustained, and relevant employment, or enable them to progress to further learning’.”
Above – CPCA to A Carpen 10 Nov 2025
Central Government narrows the scope of adult education to adult skills
It was Gordon Brown’s Government that enacted the primary legislation giving ministers the powers to delegate skills budgets to combined authorities. It was Theresa May’s Government that tabled the secondary legislation making it happen in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough.
“A relevant order transfers adult education functions under section 86 to 88 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 (‘the 2009 Act’) with the exception of such functions relating to apprenticeships training, adult detention or any power to make regulations or orders.”
Above – Adult Skills Fund (ASF)(formally known as the Adult Education Budget AEB), CPCA
The secondary legislation mentioned above is The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018 and the bit that form the ‘strings attached’ are in Part 2, Article 5:
“The Combined Authority must adopt rules of eligibility for awards by an institution to which it makes grants, loans or other payments under section 100 of the 2009 Act in accordance with any direction given by the Secretary of State.”
Above CPCA (AEB) Order 2018 Pt2 Art.5
This means that if the CPCA hands out the funds in a manner that breaches any directions given by central government, the latter can claw the funds back and leave the CPCA out of pocket. This is why the CPCA appears utterly inflexible when it comes to adult education funding. It has ever-so-limited independent tax-raising powers to fund what it might otherwise judge to be local needs that there’s no point in engaging in the ‘nice to haves’. All it is doing in my opinion is acting as the contract manager for central government, taking the rules that come attached with the funding and implementing them. The CPCA has no authority to question those rules or come up with its own. Ministers and Parliament simply have not given combined authorities those powers. So long as HM Treasury sticks to its over-centralised ‘command and control’ cultures – using ‘fiscal reasons’ as the justification (i.e. managing the nation’s overall tax, borrow, and spending policies’ – thus giving it the remit to restrict what all public sector organisations can do).
“So, how come other countries are able to function with more-empowered regional and local tiers of government?”
***Don’t ask complicated questions!***
(It seems that UK governments today are not interested in learning from other nation states unless it involves defence or looking tough on migration)
One of the reasons why national public policy making has become ever so burdensome is because generations of politicians and ministers have insisted on hoarding powers (and power) at the national tier. Whether it be ‘taking back control’ from the EU without having much of a clue about the concept of pooled sovereignty where the total benefits are far greater than the sum of the inputs, to regionalising and nationalising things that were previously done at a local level.
For example there is no sound reason (unless it’s centralisation by principle) as to why the Education Secretary has to sign off the establishment of every new further education or lifelong learning establishment in the country. (I wrote about it here in 2021 having gotten written confirmation from the Minister via my MP Daniel Zeichner). When the Cambridge School of Arts as founded in the late 1850s (today, now part of Anglia Ruskin University), they didn’t have to wait for a minister to approve things. They just got on with it. Same with its pioneering principal Dorothy Enright when it came to surveying the skills needs of the local employers a century ago. <<– Our city really should have commemorated this centenary.
With no ability to raise funds locally and independently of central government, the CPCA is stuck, powerless to explore things like:
- paying people to retrain in sectors with skills shortages help alleviate some of Cambridge’s chronic problems
- Widening the skills remit to encompass general adult education and lifelong learning
- Massively increase the budgets raised via new types of taxation given the reluctance of employers to train their own workforce (a 20% reduction between 2014-2024)
- Requiring key industries to co-ordinate skills and training strategies – if only to send signals to providers about what to invest in, in terms of new facilities and new staff.
- Telling ministers that a much wider remit of adult education and lifelong learning has a host of other benefits that their electorates want to benefit from.
Policy overload from over-centralisation
I found out the hard way during my civil service days what it was like to work in a policy team that did not have the resources to take on the hugely wealthy and influential vested interests coming at it from all sides. This was ultimately exposed at the Grenfell Inquiry.
“This is not a picture of a civil service setting out to obstruct ministers’ policies. It is at best a picture of excessive willingness to accept staff cuts and other HR policies which left the department, at all levels, incapable of doing its proper job.”
How many other government departments and policy areas are in a similar situation – one that could be relieved if HM Treasury were more willing to devolve far more revenue-raising powers to local democratically-accountable institutions (i.e. local government, with proper overview and scrutiny structures in place – easier said than done in an era of TeamNigel running some councils I know!)
That way, central government would not need to carry out nearly as many functions (in particular things that require sign-off from ministers in processes that actually add very little value when you consider how much civil service and ministerial time is spent on it.
For me this is another episode that supports my case for abolishing the combined authorities in their current function, in favour of an empowered unitary council based on travel to work areas, and meaningful regional tiers similar to those that Redcliffe-Maud proposed and/or the old Government Office Network that I started my civil service career in over 2 decades ago.
Which makes me feel old!
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
- Follow me on BSky
- Spot me on LinkedIn
- Like my Facebook page
- Consider a small donation to help fund my continued research and reporting on local democracy in and around Cambridge
The Cambridge Town Owl 