How can devolution in England help us to age better?

Many of us are living for longer thanks to advances in public health and medical science. However, the benefits of this are not felt evenly across the country or equally between people. Seeing an ageing population as an opportunity, not just a challenge, will be vital. To seize this opportunity will require radically different approaches across every aspect of society, including housing, health, communities, and work.

With the acceleration of English devolution there are now ten sub-national authorities with devolved powers and the ability to directly elect a mayor. If you include London alongside the nine Combined Authorities, over 40% of England’s population now live in areas with directly elected mayors and greater devolved responsibilities. Nearly 8 million people aged 50 and over live in these areas, and this number will increase to nearly 9.5 million over the next 20 years – accounting for pretty much all the population growth.

We believe that these elected mayors and devolved institutions have an important role to play in helping more of us to age better. Through our work with Greater Manchester, in the West Midlands, and elsewhere we have learnt that we can have greater impact acting in collaboration and partnership with local authorities, public, private and voluntary sector organisations, and alongside those aged 50 and over.

These relatively new devolved structures can make a difference to later lives through both the ‘hard’ legislative powers they hold and the ‘soft’ powers to convene and facilitate leadership and local action. With the forthcoming Levelling Up White Paper, we believe it’s more important than ever to engage with these Mayoral and Combined Authorities, highlighting their key role in improving later lives.

To help us do this, we’re convening representatives from England’s Combined Authorities and the Greater London Authority and their local partners to improve outcomes for the ageing population in their areas. We’re working with Martin Wheatley and Merron Simpson to undertake stakeholder interviews, focus group discussions and an analysis of the legislative powers these authorities hold to identify how to enable action to improve later lives. We will use the WHO Age-Friendly Framework to inform our analysis. We will then co-design with stakeholders a programme of work offering our evidence, insight, ideas and other support to take action to improve later lives.

This programme builds on our strategic partnership with Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and our experience of working in the West Midlands. For example:

In Greater Manchester, the Centre for Ageing Better has been working alongside the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub since 2016 to understand and create system change to improve policy and practice. With an initial focus on older workers, and making it easier for over 50s to get back to work, we are developing an Employability Support pilot with GMCA and the Department for Work and Pensions. We have also worked alongside health and housing stakeholders in the city region to develop and publish a Framework for Creating Age-Friendly Homes in Greater Manchester.

In the West Midlands we're working alongside Barclays to develop approaches to retraining and reskilling over 50s who are at risk of redundancy. Greater Manchester, London and Liverpool City Region have all signed up to become Age-friendly City Regions, part of the World Health Organisation’s Global Networks for Age-friendly Cities and Communities for which we provide the UK secretariat.

Setting out strategic approaches from Mayoral and Combined Authorities to respond to and seize the opportunity of our ageing society will help ensure millions more of us can age well in our communities.

If you’re interested in learning more about this work or getting involved, please contact: [email protected]