Devolution in Sussex: power, patience, and the problem of joining things up

Sussex likes to talk about potential. It has for decades. Coastal opportunity. Knowledge assets. Creative energy. Natural beauty. Entrepreneurial grit. And yet, for all that promise, it still behaves like a place looking sideways to London rather than shouting about its own offer to the UK and the world.

That tension, between proximity to power and a lack of power of its own, sits at the heart of Sussex’s devolution debate. And with the mayoral elections now likely to take place in 2028, rather than the expected 2026, Richard Freeman from the Sussex And The City podcast sat down for a chat with the Rt Hon Peter Kyle MP.

Even if the timetable has changed, the underlying questions haven’t. If anything, the longer runway makes them more urgent: what is devolution for in a place as economically lopsided, socially mixed and geographically fragmented as Sussex?

Peter has the dual role of being MP for Hove and Portslade, and Secretary of State for Business & Trade – a key architect of this current government’s plan for growth and technological innovation.

His argument is that the current system hasn’t worked. Not for coastal towns, not for rural communities, and not even fully for Brighton & Hove. Devolution isn’t about adding a layer of governance. It’s about fixing a structural failure; a county full of assets that don’t face each other, don’t reinforce each other, and don’t yet add up to more than the sum of their parts.

Sussex doesn’t have a growth problem. It has a connection problem.

Look at the map. Sussex has ports, an airport, two universities, advanced manufacturing, creative industries, farming, tourism, logistics and a serious small-business economy. What it doesn’t have is coherence.

As Kyle puts it, Sussex’s infrastructure and economic anchors still define themselves in direct relationship to London, not to each other. Brighton to London works well. Brighton to Hastings or Bognor? Less so. Coastal transport is slow. Labour markets are fragmented. Opportunity pools don’t overlap.

The result is that Brighton & Hove continues to perform reasonably well on paper, while nearby towns struggle to benefit from that success. Not because they lack talent, but because the system doesn’t allow value to travel sideways.

Devolution, in this framing, is less about “power coming down” and more about alignment coming together. It is argued that mayor isn’t there to flatten local identity, but to do the boring, difficult work of coordination (transport, skills, investment, procurement) across a place that’s been operating in silos for generations.

Growth isn’t neutral; and Sussex knows it

One of the more uncomfortable truths in the conversation is that growth has already been happening in Sussex. It just hasn’t been shared evenly.

Housing pressures in Hove look nothing like housing pressures in Hastings, but both are real, and both restrict life chances in different ways. Coastal deprivation isn’t universal. Rural affluence isn’t either. The county is a patchwork of contradictions, often street by street.

This is where devolution gets risky. If growth is pursued purely through headline metrics alone, it risks reinforcing exactly the inequalities it claims to want to fix. More heat in already-hot markets. More distance between people who can access opportunity and people who can’t.

Kyle’s insistence is that growth policy has to be multi-dimensional: skills, transport, housing, social mobility, routes to work. Not just where investment lands, but who can realistically benefit from it.

That’s not a mayoral magic wand. It’s a leadership test. One that requires restraint as much as ambition.

AI won’t save Sussex, but could it change the rules?

The conversation’s sharpest edge comes around technology.

Sussex is a small-business economy. Heavy on hospitality, care, retail and creative work. Light on big corporates. That makes it both vulnerable and oddly well-placed as AI reshapes labour markets.

Kyle’s case is that AI, properly handled, could be one of the most levelling technologies we’ve ever seen. Not because everyone becomes a tech founder, but because access to tools, knowledge and productivity no longer depends on postcode or pedigree.

That only works if the foundations are there: skills, digital infrastructure, local pathways into work, and education systems that don’t assume a single route to success. Universities matter, but so do FE, apprenticeships and lifelong learning. Sussex has all of these. It just doesn’t yet join them up.

Without that join-up, AI becomes another force that benefits the already-connected. With it, it could quietly rebalance opportunity across the county.

Devolution only works if place comes before party

Politically, Sussex is awkward. That’s putting it mildly.

It’s socially liberal in places, deeply sceptical in others, and increasingly volatile across the board. Any future mayor will be governing a region where party loyalty is thin, trust is fragile, and impatience is high.

Kyle is clear on one thing: voters choose the mayor, not Westminster. The real dividing line won’t be party label, but whether the mayor treats the role as a platform for ideology or as a job of convening, brokering and getting things unstuck.

Devolution fails when it becomes a culture war. It works when leadership is visibly about place first, politics second, and when mayors use power to bring people into the room rather than keep them out.

If devolution delivers better connections, fairer access, fewer cliffs between aspiration and reality, Sussex will finally have done something it’s talked about for years: turned proximity into possibility.

If it doesn’t, it’ll just be another chapter in a very familiar story.

To listen to the full conversation, expert opinion and insight, and to catch up on everything you need to know about devolution in Sussex and Brighton, visit sussexandthecity.info.