Will Burnham's devolution plans fail?

Andy Burnham wants to give local authorities in England much greater financial power, but he is ignoring a crisis that makes this dangerous: the audit system meant to hold councils accountable has almost entirely collapsed. Since the Tories privatised local authority auditing in 2014 and abolished the Audit Commission in 2015, the market has failed to deliver, leaving nearly 1,000 audit opinions outstanding by 2023 and only around 1% of English council accounts filed on time in 2022/23.

This video explains how that collapse allowed financial disasters to build unchecked, including Woking's accumulation of roughly £2 billion in risky debt from property speculation and crises in Birmingham, Thurrock and Croydon. It argues that devolving more money and power to councils without first rebuilding independent audit, potentially by expanding the National Audit Office's remit, is a recipe for disaster, not decentralisation.