Andy Burnham’s Number 10 North changes the postcode, but not the politics
As Andy Burnham moves part of Downing Street to Manchester, Scotland and Wales are asking what it means for devolution. London, United Kingdom — On
As Andy Burnham moves part of Downing Street to Manchester, Scotland and Wales are asking what it means for devolution. London, United Kingdom — On his fourth day as prime minister, Andy Burnham did not stay at Downing Street in London. Nor did he go to Manchester, the home of Number 10 North. He went to Glasgow. Hours before King Charles and Queen Camilla opened the 2026 Commonwealth Games, Burnham held his first in-person meetings with Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney and Wales’ First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth. The talks were meant to demonstrate, in Burnham’s own words, that growth is needed “in every postcode across the whole of the UK”. A meeting with Northern Ireland’s First and Deputy First Ministers, Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly, is pencilled in for a wider UK tour in August. Notably absent from the agenda, at Burnham’s insistence, was any discussion of a second Scottish independence referendum. Just days after being appointed prime minister, Burnham is testing a proposition that will define his premiership. He’s selling a vision that the office itself can be partly relocated out of London to Manchester, the city he governed as mayor from 2017 until his return to UK Parliament in the Makerfield by-election last month. What Number 10 North actually is Stripped of rhetoric, Number 10 North is a written ministerial statement. On July 21, Baroness Smith of Basildon, Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal, confirmed on the government’s behalf that devolution and local growth policy functions are moving out of the housing ministry and the Treasury and into a new Manchester-based operation.
There, civil servants will work inside a restructured Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, led by Cabinet Secretary Dame Antonia Romeo. The interim headquarters is Heron House, in the New Islington area of Manchester, chosen partly for its proximity to a planned Manchester Digital Campus. Caroline Simpson, the outgoing chief executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, has been named Burnham’s deputy chief of staff, and will be in charge of day-to-day office operations. Downing Street says Burnham himself expects to work from Manchester “at least one day a week”, though officials caution his diary may change, and insists the arrangement carries no additional cost to taxpayers. Burnham calls it “the nerve centre of a rewired Britain” and rejects suggestions it is symbolic. “Not a gimmick,” he told his first Cabinet meeting about Number 10 North. Plumbing, but no water Number 10 North “establishes the plumbing, but the water isn’t flowing yet”, said Mirte Boot of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) North. The institutional architecture is firming up, but fiscal devolution – ie, the transfer of money and ta raising power – that would make such a policy meaningful doesn’t yet exist, she added. Still, she calls it “a step in the right direction” after what she describes as “too much power condensed into one postcode”. Leaving Westminster isn’t enough; Number 10 North will need “strong political leadership aside from the prime minister”, she added. The verdict that Number 10 North contains vision and ambition but currently lacks a detailed plan and delivery mechanism is a recurring response from independent voices.
The BriefWire