Healey’s first budget to include big devolution package to boost growth

Burnham said Healey’s budget was about ‘shifting power out of Westminster and into the hands of the people who know their communities best’. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Andy Burnham has promised that local leaders in England will no longer have to come “cap in hand to Westminster” ahead of a fresh drive to devolve spending power in next week’s budget.

In his statement on Wednesday, the chancellor, John Healey, will include plans for a new £1.5bn borrowing facility, to be drawn up in collaboration with mayors over the next two years.