Andy Burnham couldn’t have been clearer in his speech on devolution and living standards. He promised “good growth in every postcode”, “the biggest wave of devolution”, a new No10 of the North, and delivered a clear instruction to Whitehall “not to stand in the way”.

This marks a decisive shift in how the UK thinks about growth. The case set out today recognises that national performance is inseparable from the performance of regional economies, and that productivity depends on fiscal and institutional reform at that level.

Much of this builds on a model developed and tested over more than a decade, including the original Greater Manchester devolution deal and the waves that followed across the country. It reflects an approach grounded in practice, shaped through the negotiation and implementation of successive deals and the experience of delivery in places. This is not a northern centric model - the opportunity of taking a system wide approach to local economies, and the costs of not doing so, apply to all parts of the country.

Metro Dynamics are strongly aligned with this new opportunity for Britain. It’s why we created Metro Dynamics in 2015, out of the legacy of the City Growth Commission (which first recommended Metro Mayors) and the first Devolution Deal in Manchester. From the outset, our focus has been “full fat” devolution: giving places the powers, capacity and incentives to drive inclusive growth where people live. This is the growth and reform agenda, combining hard edged capital investment and innovation support with human capital development and local welfare reform.

Mayoral Strategic Authorities and councils have already made significant progress on transport, investment, jobs and prevention. They have demonstrated that devolved leadership can deliver. What has held them back is not ambition, but the scale of resources, powers, capacity and certainty available to them. What Andy Burnham has said is that they will now have a Government whose explicit mission is to transfer power and capacity to local places. This creates the conditions to focus on his three major priorities: reforming utilities including housing, energy and water; reindustrialising local economies; and regenerating local places.

Now that the direction is clear, our priority must be helping government and places with how to deliver. Making good on Burnham’s vision will depend on how far fiscal devolution goes, how quickly institutional capacity can be built, and how national policy aligns behind place-based priorities. Through our Growth and Reform Network partnership with the Future Governance Forum we have already started some of this work on fiscal devolution and the pathways required to make it work for MSAs.

The UK’s challenge is not just slow growth, but misallocated capital, with too little investment reaching the places and sectors that will drive growth and productivity. The challenge is connecting capital and opportunity in a way that works at scale. We are working with L&G’s Place Investment and Growth Initiative to help create the tools needed to do so.

The same focus is now needed on innovation and public services.

Delivering growth means turning strategies into credible, long-term pipelines of investable opportunities, aligning public ambition with private capital, and building institutional capability to structure and manage delivery. It depends on sustained institutional and fiscal reform carried through over time, not short policy cycles or quick wins. As Burnham said, it needs a 10-year plan.

Growth will come from how effectively places build on their existing economic strengths and take a system wide approach. In practice, that means focusing on a small number of growth drivers and supporting them consistently over time – not attempting to do everything everywhere. This is why the 10-year framing set out in the speech matters. Institutional reform and market confidence take time. Progress depends on consistency and follow-through, and a willingness to accept that early results will likely be uneven.

Fiscal devolution will underpin the long-term revenue certainty that investment requires and create incentives for local leaders to take long-term decisions. Without it, the shift from strategy to delivery will remain constrained.

As this agenda moves into delivery, the decisive factors will be the ability to connect policy, capital and delivery: structuring investments, building pipelines and supporting places to execute over the long term. None of this can be achieved without partnership at every level. Government, through the new No10 of the North, should work with Mayors to align industrial strategy, infrastructure and defence investment with local growth plans. Institutional investors will need to work more directly with places to remove barriers to investment. National agencies and arms-length bodies should put their capability and expertise to work in support of regional authorities.

With everything now pointing in the right direction, we must seize the moment and focus on delivery at pace and at scale.