After several years of what has been, by government’s own admission, a ‘fallow period’ where English devolution is concerned, it is now ‘back on’.

That’s the message from new local government secretary Robert Jenrick, who promised during Conservative Party conference in Manchester earlier this month that his door was open to those hoping for more local powers.

In Greater Manchester there had initially been some concern about the government's renewed devolution rhetoric, however, since it has repeatedly talked about ‘levelling up’ other areas to the powers already exercised by the mayor here - leaving a question mark over what further control Andy Burnham might be able to seek.

But during party conference, Mr Jenrick was clear.

“We stand ready now to negotiate productively with any city or region or indeed rural area that would like to take devolution forwards,” he told regional journalists.

A devolution white paper - subsequently confirmed in today’s Queen’s Speech - would primarily be focused on those areas with no existing devolved powers, he admitted, but added: “We’re also open to what further powers would be useful to be exercised at local level...exploring which further powers might be useful for mayors.”

(Image: Matt Ratcliffe)

Those may well include longer-term control over transport funding, he said, which even in Greater Manchester has a tendency to come through in dribs and drabs.

“I think the other area that a lot of mayors have asked us to consider is around education and skills,” he added, “which clearly plays an absolutely fundamental part in the success or otherwise of a city.”

Transport and skills are indeed at the top of our own mayor’s wish-list, reflecting a particular frustration around a lack of control where post-16 education is concerned.

But the brand new power Andy Burnham is eyeing up goes well beyond those currently enjoyed by any local area in England: he wants control over housing benefit.

With the loss of private tenancies now the biggest reason for soaring homelessness in Manchester , and the freeze on local housing allowance a key driver within that, he believes the region could do something clever if it was handed powers over that benefits cash. That could, in theory, mean a higher housing benefit rate for people in need of it here.

Devolution is like a ‘jigsaw’, said the mayor, and at the moment the benefits system is ‘a big missing piece’.

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“You could argue that if you have control of the local housing allowance, which we don’t, but if we did, you could argue that we could make a case for increasing it because of the effect on public services," he said.

“It creates homelessness, doesn’t it?

“We would also want control over the housing benefit element of Universal Credit.”

Housing benefit freezes have combined with Greater Manchester’s lack of available social housing to created an escalating problem for leaders here in recent years.

As the M.E.N. reported last week , 50 people a day are now asking the council for help with homelessness - not rough sleepers, but the growing numbers of other people have found themselves unable to find housing, including families - and the town hall is running out of suitable accommodation.

A few weeks ago it was forced to separate a teenage boy from his family because it only had one available hotel room left, while the cost of sourcing emergency housing and hostels continues to cripple the council.

Hidden homelessness is now considerably higher than when we carried out our investigations on the crisis last year .

(Image: M.E.N.)

Mr Burnham also believes that if Greater Manchester could control the housing benefit pot already spent in the region - £350m a year of which goes to private landlords - then he could also use it as leverage to drive up standards.

It is a suggestion previously made by Oldham MP Jim McMahon, who has pointed out that between 40pc and 50pc of that sum currently goes to owners who don’t maintain decent homes.

“We would start to go after private landlords,” agreed Mr Burnham of the ways in which devolved housing benefit could be used.

“We wouldn’t allow it to be given to landlords who don’t maintain decent homes - we would have rules and conditionality.

“And I think powers over the regulation of the private rental sector generally we would want. It’s patchy and limited at the moment.”

He believes the other major problem for an area blighted by hidden homelessness, that of our social housing shortage, could also be solved through ‘borrowing powers to build council houses’.

“Why can’t combined authorities do that?” he added, pointing out that individual councils have their borrowing tightly controlled by the Treasury, which often stops them from building. “Why not let combined authorities borrow to build homes?”

(Image: Getty Images)

Mr Burnham is not, as it stands, seeking income-tax raising powers, although he doesn’t ‘rule it out’ in the future. Instead he believes that were Greater Manchester able to take over the housing benefit system, it would be able to make savings in other public services - savings the region ought to then be allowed to keep.

Whether that’s a model the government will go for remains to be seen.

However officials and leaders here are cautiously optimistic that ministers have genuinely turned their attention back to English devolution, given Boris Johnson’s previous time as London mayor and the positive noises surrounding the proposed white paper.

Even Robert Jenrick, whose remit notably includes housing, admitted to regional journalists during party conference that things had been somewhat quiet on the devolution front in the last couple of years.

“What I want to do is get the process going again,” he said, referring to what he called ‘a fallow period’.

“The overall message is devolution is back on and we want areas to come to us now with proposals and we’re going to negotiate with all the same enthusiasm that we had in the Osborne era.”

It is a promise leaders here and elsewhere are likely to hold him to.