Number 10 North: What Could Andy Burnham’s Vision and Manchesterism Actually Mean for Skills, Young People and the Welfare Trap?

Andy Burnham hasn’t become Prime Minister yet. His speech at the People’s History Museum in Manchester this afternoon reads less like a leadership pitch and more like a policy blueprint already road-tested across ten years of Greater Manchester. For those of us in further education and skills, there’s a lot here worth unpacking carefully, because this is not the usual Westminster noise.

So what’s he actually saying? Let me take you through my take on what he shared… as if no one else stands as a potential Prime Minister candidate, Andy Burnham could actually be the PM in about 3 weeks time! Starmer mentioned September, so it all depends, if no one stands in his way, when that date will be, as 3 weeks for some of these funademental shifts, is not long to get this together.

Number 10 North, the epicentre for nationwide devolution

The headline idea, the one that sounds dramatic, but is actually the load-bearing wall of everything else Burnham is proposing, is No 10 North. Not a symbolic gesture. Not a press announcement. A nerve centre for a rewired Britain, operating from Manchester, designed to redistribute power and resources across the UK, requiring all government departments and agencies to actively support strategic and local authorities with staffing and resource. No 10 North sounds like a clothing brand, but it will actually be the epicentre for driving devolution and giving local mayors more power to deliver to their local needs.

Burnham called out “Whitehall turf wars” and departmental silos directly. No diplomatic softening. The whole of Whitehall will now be required to get behind our local regions and work together to make quicker, more joined-up decisions. As Milburn highlighted in his interim review, we need a system rethink and reset, a joined-up system, not just for youth employment, but for the entire country’s economic health.

The real question this raises for large employers, training providers and colleges is: what does a devolved skills landscape actually look like in practice? Relationships with central government commissioning bodies, national frameworks, nationally negotiated contracts… much of that architecture gets redrawn under this model. We have devolution, but not fully. The ‘lion’s share’ is still London-centric in reality. What also happens to the resource and communication networks, will there need to be relocations, or are we looking at remote and joined up systems of administration?

The direction of travel is towards regions holding more of the levers, setting their own skills priorities, and expecting providers and employers to engage at place level rather than waiting for Whitehall to hand down a specification is exciting…. but is another additional change, ontop of qualification reform, defunding, qualification rollout… but we were handed a massive notice that things had to change by Milburn, we have a system serving the institution, not the learner, not the young person fallen through the gaps or the employer according to Milburn. For large national employers and provider groups, that means building genuine regional relationships, not just a regional office with a London-facing strategy. This again, also points to reaffirming, particularly in colleges, the place-based and ‘anchor institutions’ in their locality.

Does this drive the importance of Skills England’s Local Skills Dashboard pilot?

It also really highlights an extension from Skills England and the Skills Compass, the local skills dashboard pilot, thankfully, Skills England have been testing and moving in this direction already, so it will not be a total rethink, just using the compass to move fully into a new local led direction. To make this possible, we need local data, we need a common language of skills and a UK Standard Skills Classification can help… all being developed in the first year since Skills England came into power (I chatted in depth with Phil Smith about this recently). So yes, it is new, but it isn’t ripping up the script and starting again; it is moving in the direction with markers and breadcrumbs already laid out by different parts of the skills and employability system.

The Milburn Interim review takes centre stage on youth employment

Alan Milburn’s interim report on young people and work gets a direct, unambiguous mention in this speech. Not a footnote. Not a policy annex. Burnham calls it a “complete rethink” trigger, and the direction of travel is clear: sustainable, meaningful employment for every young person, not just a qualification at the end of a course. It also could be seen to be a foundation to rethink how the system best serves the learner and the employer, rather than institutions… and the need for joined-up systems thinking, departments all working together.

Will there be a Rethink on what the education system’s purpose is?

Burnham states the days of a school system configured entirely around the university route will be brought to an end, and that we will build parity between academic and technical education, giving every young person a clear path into a reindustrialised Britain. That framing is significant… now parity of esteem, PM’s for years have talked about this, from Rishi to Starmer in September last year. Starmer also announced additional funding (no funding mentions from Burnham yet, but he isn’t PM yet either). At least he hasn’t mentioned Gold Standard Apprenticeships, or a cliff edge (must be different speech writers in Manchester compared to London)!!

However, Starmer, Rishi, they were still thinking primarily about a centralised system, not flipping the model completely and looking at the predominance of this radiating from local mayors. Number 10 North, could be totally flipping this model and thinking.

We are not talking about education reform for its own sake. We are talking about young people’s long-term economic security, their ability to sustain themselves in the labour market, contribute to their communities, and build lives that don’t depend on the state picking up the pieces later.

Parity of esteem has been the aspiration of every skills minister since… well, since the last one who said it. I have heard it so much, I can’t think of a Skills Minister who hasn’t said it. Burnham is contextualising it within a broader reindustrialisation mission. That is a different argument, and a stronger one politically. The destination here is not a better qualification framework. It is a generation of young people with durable, future-facing skills in employment that lasts… and meets local needs.

Thankfully, Skills England have also been working on Skills Passports, Digital Skills Wallets and transferable skills, as people will want to move, and the 1.8 Million jobs for the priority skills areas will no doubt require people to relocate. At the moment, only 19% of Level 2 and 3 starts are on a pathway to the Priority skills areas from the industrial strategy. So could this also be addressed longer term… could we get a new industrial strategy with the new PM? We live in a fast moving World… the industrial strategy came out on the 23rd June 2025, so it is over a year old now… does it need a rethink?!?

Maybe some new language will inevitably come in with a new PM, but Burnham did mention Reindustrialisation clusters, with the Cambridge-Manchester life sciences partnership. Could Priority industries as a term be dropped? Reindustrialisation come in (we are in the 4th industrial revolution after all).

45-day work placements: already proven, now national

This is the policy detail that should grab every employer engagement professional, every college partnership lead, literally at the end of last week Education and Employers explained the importance of work experience in reducing young people from being NEET… that is a pretty fast response from Burnham!

A Thousand young lives changed every year

Burnham describes how, during his time as Mayor, Greater Manchester set itself the mission of finding a 45-day work placement for every young person who wanted one, ringed round its businesses, and, with the help of hundreds of companies, delivered a thousand extra placements in a single year. He calls that a thousand extra young lives changed every year.

He now wants that scaled nationally. Baked into public procurement contracts. Required of companies winning public work. This is the T Level industrial placement logic extended and democratised, driven not from a DfE consultation document, but from a Mayor who actually delivered it on the ground. What could that mean with a national effort?

Welfare reform through devolution, not punishment

Burnham also stressed the need to bring down the welfare bill and get more people back to work, arguing the best way to do so is through a more localised approach, with local authorities empowered to give unemployed people support for mental health issues… we have campaigned a few times on this. 1 Million NEETs have a cost (£125 Billion per year), Economic Inactivity due to ill health has a cost, £212 Billion per year, combine that together, it is a third of a trillion.

The speech goes further, calling for mental health support to be provided as part of in-work support, and for the devolution of employment support so it operates more through community and voluntary sector organisations at grassroots level, working with organisations people trust rather than going to places they fear.

Just 707,000 vacancies for the entire labour market

However, at the moment, we have just 707,000 vacancies for the entire labour market according to the latest ONS Labour Market data. We have over 1 Million NEETs. If you add the NEETs and those economically inactive due to ill health, it is around 3.2 Million People in need of job opportunities.  That’s one job for every 4.5 people in this bracket.

We also need to not just look at welfare reform, local devolution, but stimulating the supply and supporting employers. So… previously Burnham has previously said on a Newsnight interview: “I have said that I thought the weight of the burden of employers’ national insurance wasn’t the right decision. However, it was the decision. There is more that needs to be done to listen to the voice of small business, and as I’ve gone around this constituency, I’m hearing a lot. People just feel they are at the kind of limits of what they can do.” He also talks about backing scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs and creatives. Employers need backing to take on more risk and need more staff. 707,000 vacancies, for 3.2 Million people, no wonder we have a whopper of a welfare bill! If 1 Million NEETs were working, it would be net £38 Billion to the economy (at the moment it is a £125 Billion cost).

For SME’s Burnham has said he will also have a rethink on Business rates. So employers could be getting more backing, as we can have the best education system in the world, all pointing to sustainable skills for the jobs of the future, but if employers don’t have the vacancies.. what is the point?!

What is genuinely new here?

So a bunch of new and flipped thinking, but we have had breadcrumbs to a lot of it in FE, skills and employability. Devolution isn’t new, but London decentralised thinking first is.

The honest question. Because we have heard parity of esteem, devolution, and employer-led skills pipelines many times before.

What feels different in this speech is the integration. Burnham is not proposing a skills reform, a welfare reform, and a devolution reform as separate tracks… also supporting employers across the country. He is proposing a single reindustrialisation mission in which skills, employment support, mental health, housing, transport and infrastructure are all levers on the same flywheel, driven from a regional power base rather than managed from Whitehall line-by-line.

He has described the approach as “Manchesterism”, a vision for good growth and a rejection of the old trickle-down model, and he has ten years of evidence from Greater Manchester that it produces results.

The Makerfield Test, as he frames it, is simple: does every decision work for every postcode? Not just the growth corridors. Not just the university cities. Every postcode. Including the ones that FE colleges, training providers serve day in and day out.

Manchesterism

If Burnham gets to No 10 (more like when), FE, Skills and Employability is not a footnote in his programme. It appears to be very much top of the thinking. Milburn, rethinking the purpose of education, taking the Manchesterism experience of the 45-day work placement infrastructure. The parity agenda. The community-based employment support. The mental health in-work provision. The local skills commissioning. All of it lands in our sector’s lap.

The question is whether the sector is ready to move from responding to policy to co-designing it. As Burnham’s model, as he proved in Greater Manchester, is partnership-first. He will want the sector at the table, not in the consultation inbox. It will mean new relationships, local and to the good of the postcode is key.

Watch this space. Closely. More change is a coming, but we knew it was needed, hopefully the Skills Compass is pointing in the right direction, destination local!

By Gavin O’Meara, CEO and Founder FE News and FE Careers