United Kingdom

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland legislate for themselves on much of what cities do. In England, an Act of April 2026 put “strategic authorities”, including mayoral ones, on a statutory footing, while two-tier areas are being merged into single councils. Money is the binding limit: 36 councils had in-principle approval for exceptional government support in 2026–27, and 14 have issued a section 114 notice, which stops all new spending and is often called bankruptcy, since 1988.

• Broadband and mobile: private operators build, Ofcom regulates and BDUK subsidises. A city cannot order fibre; it mostly grants street-works permits.
• Buses: outside London, private operators set routes and fares unless the authority franchises them. Since the Bus Services Act 2025 every English transport authority may franchise without the Secretary of State’s consent, and may again set up its own bus company. Wales legislated in 2026 to plan its buses nationally.
• Streets: the 2026 Act gives councils powers over pavement parking and the licensing of rental e-bikes.
• Policing and cameras: police and crime commissioners, or the mayor in London and Greater Manchester, hold the police budget; the government announced in November 2025 that the commissioners will be abolished in 2028, their powers going to mayors wherever possible. Facial recognition has no statute of its own: forces rely on common-law powers, data-protection law and case law.
• Heat and energy: under the Energy Act 2023, councils can coordinate heat-network zones, where certain buildings must connect; regulations for England are due in 2026.
• Planning: councils decide applications, and mayors gain call-in and development-order powers. A national AI tool, Extract, which turns old planning documents into data, has been open to every English planning authority since June 2026.
• Open data: there is no open-by-default law. A transparency code tells English councils what spending, contract and asset data to publish.
• Online services and identity: the Government Digital Service builds GOV.UK and One Login; councils need not use either.
• Procurement: English councils have bought under one regime, the Procurement Act 2023, since February 2025.
• Skills: England’s Adult Skills Fund is devolved to 11 strategic authorities, one council and the Greater London Authority: about 68% of it in 2025–26, planned to rise to about 73% from August 2026.

British cities are strongest where Parliament has handed a mayor a whole system and a statute, as with Greater Manchester’s buses. They are weakest where the centre keeps the platform and the purse: a city cannot shape the citizen’s login, order fibre, regulate police biometrics or raise much of its own money. Councils’ digital and data staff are 2% of their headcount, half the benchmark the government’s review uses.

Around them sit the Government Digital Service, BDUK and Ofcom, all now in the culture and digital department; the Information Commissioner’s Office; and the Climate Change Committee. LOTI, London’s local-government innovation team, began with 15 boroughs in 2019 and now works for 27, the Greater London Authority and London Councils. Big Brother Watch, which brought the latest facial-recognition case, and techUK, the industry body, press from either side.

From our library

R (Thompson and Carlo) v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2026] EWHC 915 (Admin) — press summary, 21 April 2026

London's live facial recognition gains broader legal clearance, extending surveillance despite prior privacy concerns.

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Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017, won a by-election in June 2026 and became Prime Minister on 20 July, after Keir Starmer resigned. Labour has held a Commons majority since 2024. On his first full day, 21 July, he announced a “No.10 North” in Manchester to run devolution and local growth, taking the work from the housing ministry and the Treasury.

The same announcement closed DSIT, the technology department. The Government Digital Service and digital inclusion moved to a re-created Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport under Lisa Nandy; AI strategy went to the Cabinet Office, and science to a merged business department. The government cancelled the digital ID and used its money to take VAT off household electricity bills from 1 October 2026 until the end of March 2027. techUK and the Startup Coalition called the break-up “a terrible signal” to the sector.

Scotland and Wales voted in May 2026. John Swinney of the SNP remains First Minister in Scotland, and Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth leads the Welsh government. Greater Manchester elected Bev Craig as its mayor in July.

No national smart-city programme exists. The only one, in 2013, gave 30 cities £50,000 each for feasibility studies, shortlisted four and awarded its £24m demonstrator to Glasgow. Since then the money has come through infrastructure programmes, city-region deals and small funds. The Local Digital Fund put more than £16m into 61 council-led projects built to be reused, and has closed. The UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which replaced EU regional money, shared £2.6bn by formula rather than by competition.

Outside the EU, the UK has no recovery money, but it rejoined Horizon Europe, the EU research programme, from January 2024. Bristol and Glasgow are in the EU mission for climate-neutral and smart cities as cities of an associated country, and both hold its label.

The sharpest argument is over facial recognition. Ten police forces in England and Wales had used live facial recognition by late 2025, and the Met recorded 962 arrests from it in a year. In April 2026 the High Court upheld the Met’s policy against a challenge by Shaun Thompson, a youth worker wrongly stopped after a false match, and Big Brother Watch’s director. The Home Office consulted on a law and a single regulator for it, and the King’s Speech in May 2026 promised the framework in a Police Reform Bill whose text has not yet been published. Residents are more at ease with the cameras than the argument suggests: in IMD’s survey, people in Manchester, Leeds, London and Birmingham are the most likely of 22 cities in six countries to say CCTV makes them feel safer, and 77% in Manchester are comfortable with face recognition to lower crime, the highest share.

From our library

New legal framework for law enforcement use of biometrics, facial recognition and similar technologies (Home Office consultation, December 2025)

The Home Office’s proposals for a facial-recognition law.

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London’s mayor already holds the police purse that most English mayors are due to receive in 2028. In May 2026 the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime blocked a £50m contract between the Met and Palantir, the US data-analytics firm, because the force had engaged with only one potential supplier. Palantir took the office to the High Court; in October 2026 both sides withdrew their allegations, and the contract is being re-tendered with Palantir free to bid. The argument over suppliers is national too: in July 2025 the competition authority, the CMA, found that competition in cloud services was not working. In October 2026, after a five-month investigation, it proposed to designate Microsoft with ‘strategic market status’ in business software, with a decision due by February 2027.

Using a power written into law in 2017, Greater Manchester took its buses back under public control in three tranches, from September 2023 to January 2025, the first franchise in England outside London: the authority sets routes, fares and timetables and private operators run them under contract. TfGM reports that in January 2026, 82.7% of buses ran on time, against 71.9% a year earlier, and that passengers rose 8%, 10% and 2–3% in the three areas.

From our library

Delivering Transport for a Global City Region — Bee Network performance report to the Bee Network Committee (TfGM, 26 March 2026)

Greater Manchester’s own figures for its franchised buses.

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The government said in July 2024 that it wanted the Bee Network replicated across the country, after what it called Manchester’s six-year slog. Other mayoral authorities followed under the 2017 law, among them Liverpool City Region, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands; Wales plans to franchise its buses nationwide by 2030; and the 2025 Act extended the power to every transport authority in England.

Glasgow won the 2013 Future City prize and built an operations centre joining traffic management and public-space CCTV, smart street lights and an open-data platform. In 2017 Innovate UK’s case study claimed a £144m return; we found no independent evaluation, its operations centre’s current use could not be confirmed, and no national programme followed.

Birmingham’s replacement of its finance and HR system with Oracle software went live in April 2022 on a 2018 budget of about £20m. By 2024 the budget was £131m. In March 2026 the council projected £144m to 2027–28 and moved a relaunch to July 2026, saying a working system mattered more than the date. We have not been able to confirm whether the relaunch went ahead.

The rules for facial recognition have been set in court. In 2020 the Court of Appeal found South Wales Police’s use in and around Cardiff unlawful: its policy left officers too much discretion, and the force had not checked the software for bias. In 2024 the Met adopted a new policy after a review; in April 2026 the High Court found that it set clear criteria for who may be put on a watchlist and where cameras may go. The Met’s fixed cameras in Croydon, the first in the country, led to 173 arrests in six months with one false alert among more than 470,000 people who passed them, and it plans more in the West End.

Research money carried Newcastle’s Urban Observatory, which had more than 3,600 sensors across Newcastle and Gateshead by 2019, into a £12m partnership with Sheffield and Bristol, later joined by Manchester, Birmingham and Cranfield; its data portal is still online. One-city deals stayed put. Bristol’s 20-year energy joint venture with Ameresco reports heat-network capacity for more than 5,000 homes, without an independent evaluation we could find, and Sunderland signed a 20-year partnership for a shared 5G network on council assets in 2021, with no results published that we could find.

The national planning tool Extract went the other way, built once by the centre and opened to every English planning authority in June 2026. It is aimed at an estimated 250,000 hours a year that officers spend digitising old plans by hand. By then 50 authorities were using it, and in its first weeks it processed more than 1,000 documents, two-thirds of which needed only minor edits.

In the IMD Smart City Index, a survey of how residents experience their city, London ranks 4th of 148, Manchester 46th, Leeds 76th, Birmingham 89th and Glasgow 91st. Asked whether public transport is satisfactory, residents put London third and Manchester eighth of 22 cities in six countries; Glasgow, Leeds and Birmingham come 18th, 19th and 21st. Leeds and Birmingham have yet to franchise. A single year’s survey of perceptions cannot show whether franchising changed anything.

What travelled was a power in law. Manchester spent six years using one written in 2017; two years after its first franchised buses ran, Parliament gave the same power to every transport authority in England. A shared team travelled across London’s boroughs, and research money carried Newcastle’s sensors to five more places. What one city was given or bought for itself stayed where it was: Glasgow’s demonstrator has no national successor, and Bristol’s energy company and Sunderland’s 5G deal have no British copy that we could find.