A statutory instrument published on legislation.gov.uk on 14 May 2026 makes a wide set of consequential amendments to the legal framework for England’s combined authorities and combined county authorities. Signed by Taylor of Stevenage for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Regulations were made at 12.06 pm, laid before Parliament at 3.00 pm the same day, and come into force on 4 June 2026. The title is technical, but the purpose is clear. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 (Consequential Amendments and Revocations) (England) Regulations 2026 clear out older provisions in local devolution orders where those provisions now duplicate, or sit awkwardly alongside, the new statutory code created by the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026.
The explanatory note states that the 2026 Act creates “strategic authorities” as a common legal category covering combined authorities and combined county authorities. It also sets default governance arrangements and confers functions across transport and local infrastructure, skills and employment support, housing and strategic planning, and economic development and regeneration. That matters because England’s devolution settlements had become heavily layered. Over time, each area accumulated its own orders on transport, housing, adult skills, funding, mayoral powers and constitutional procedure. This instrument is therefore less about granting a fresh settlement than about moving existing settlements on to a single legislative footing.
The reach is national across the main English devolution institutions. The Regulations amend instruments affecting Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Devon and Torbay, East Midlands, Greater Lincolnshire, Greater Manchester, Hull and East Yorkshire, Lancashire, Liverpool City Region, the North East, South Yorkshire, Tees Valley, West Midlands, West of England, West Yorkshire, and York and North Yorkshire. In practical terms, the pattern is consistent. Older Parts dealing with transport, housing, regeneration, planning, data sharing, incidental provision and mayoral development corporations are omitted in whole or in part, while constitutional schedules on proceedings and voting are pared back so that local rulebooks no longer repeat what the 2026 Act now supplies.
Adult education is one of the clearest areas of legal consolidation. The Regulations revoke, in full, the adult education function orders for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, East Midlands, Liverpool City Region, Tees Valley, West Midlands, West of England, York and North Yorkshire, and the 2025 amendment order that sat across the wider framework. Greater Manchester is handled slightly differently, with its 2018 adult education order largely stripped of operative content rather than revoked outright. The effect across the system is the same: adult skills powers are no longer meant to rest on a patchwork of separate transfer orders where the 2026 Act now provides the governing structure.
Housing and regeneration provisions are also cut back sharply. East Midlands, Greater Lincolnshire, Hull and East Yorkshire, the North East, West Midlands, West Yorkshire and York and North Yorkshire all lose substantial text on housing, regeneration, planning or mayoral development corporations. In several cases, schedules modifying the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 or Part 8 of the Localism Act 2011 are removed as well. The legal signal is important. Earlier devolution deals often relied on bespoke modifications to national housing and regeneration statutes so that local structures could exercise powers borrowed from existing bodies. The new Regulations indicate that those special modifications are no longer required in the same form once the 2026 Act’s default framework is in place.
Transport provisions are treated in much the same way. Across multiple areas, the Regulations remove powers to pay grant, local transport clauses, highway-related agreements, bus lane or road traffic enforcement text, and other transport-specific machinery that had been inserted into earlier orders. The same approach appears in funding clauses. Repeated references to long lists of named mayoral powers are replaced with the simpler formula of ‘any mayoral function’. For legal and finance teams, that change reduces the need to trace each spending power back through several rounds of local amendment orders before reaching the current position.
Governance provisions are tightened at the same time. A large number of constitutional schedules lose detailed provisions on proceedings, voting thresholds and related procedural matters, again because those topics are now handled through the default code in primary legislation rather than repeated locally. There are also targeted clarifications for non-mayoral combined county authorities. In Devon and Torbay, and separately in Lancashire, the Regulations specify how the consent requirement under section 24E of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 is to operate where decisions impose financial liability on a constituent council. That is a narrow drafting change, but it has direct value for decision-making and audit trails.
The final set of amendments concerns the Transport Levying Bodies Regulations 1992. The instrument updates those Regulations so that all combined authorities and combined county authorities sit expressly within the levy framework, aligns the definition of relevant transport costs with section 74 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 as amended by the 2026 Act, and clarifies how levy shares are to be apportioned where local agreement is not reached. For transport authorities and constituent councils, that is one of the most operational parts of the package. It gives a clearer route for allocating transport levy costs and removes doubt about whether the 1992 regime applies consistently across newer combined county authorities as well as the longer-established combined authorities.
The explanatory note says no separate impact assessment has been prepared for this instrument because no significant effect on the private, voluntary or public sector is expected. Instead, the Government points back to the impact assessment prepared for the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 itself. Even so, the Regulations are more than administrative housekeeping. From 4 June 2026, officers, mayors, combined authority members and constituent councils will need to read older devolution orders as subordinate to a common statutory model rather than as stand-alone constitutional settlements. For anyone tracking English devolution, that marks a shift from deal-by-deal drafting towards a more standardised legal code.