Follow the regional road

March 3, 2006

Chris Leslie, Director, NLGN
Public Finance

Whitehall policy watchers might have been bemused of late to see someone other than the New Local Government Network (NLGN) advocating elected mayors for some of the UK’s major cities. The call from the Centre for Cities certainly brought a wry smile to those at NLGN who remember the time when barring the odd brave local government minister and a handful of local activists, supporters of the mayoral concept were about as rare as an arctic monkey.

What is novel about the Centre for Cities proposals is that they come in tandem with its calls to establish and empower key city regions around Birmingham and Manchester, bringing together what some among the local political classes view as entirely separate issues. Either way, and having drawn similar conclusions on city region powers at the end of our own Commission on the theme, NLGN welcomes the further championing of this agenda. City regions offer an exciting next step along the road to mature, empowered devolution and local government reform.

In the way that London has benefited from clearer leadership and decision-making arrangements that resonate more with the capital’s citizenry, so too a West Midlands or Greater Manchester City Region could see governance modernised to reflect economic realities. Ultimately however, it is not for Whitehall or London-based think tanks (ourselves included) to dictate how Greater Manchester, the West Midlands or indeed a ‘Greater’ Liverpool should move forward. The process must be organic, shaped in part by the cultural identities of the areas concerned, and more importantly by local expectations and demands.

Naturally, some conurbations will find the city region concept difficult to swallow. Can one imagine Bradford and Wakefield handing over strategic responsibility to a ‘Greater Leeds’? Where the model does fit however, it would bring scale and a more readily identifiable presence formed around real life demographics rather than current administrative boundaries. Greater collaboration could see component authorities in each city region win billions of additional infrastructure investment, bolstering their competitive edge against counterparts across and beyond continental Europe.

All well and good, but what about regional co-ordination?

Some of the more radical advocates of the city region model argue that it requires the functions of the Regional Development Agencies to be dispersed to these new sub-regional entities. Logical as the argument runs, particularly in light of the successes of the Greater London Authority model, it misses the point that such functions are currently more about collaborative coordination than big budget direct delivery. The real question should be: ‘would we be better coordinating these delivery agencies at a city region rather than regional level?’. There is little evidence to suggest that such coordination would be vastly improved if left solely to sub-regional rather than regional bodies.

Many RDAs have long recognised the existence of city regions on their turf through the sub-regional partnerships and structures that have shaped their decision-making. Still, when it comes to coordinating investment priorities for wider geographical areas, city regions are only part of the solution. What would the effects be on Blackburn, Burnley or Preston if Greater Manchester carved itself out of the North West Development Agency and went its own way? At the very least, city region status should only be given with an explicit protocol and guarantee that the neighbouring hinterland is consulted and involved in major decisions.

Comparisons will naturally be drawn with the arrangements for Greater London’s governance and development, but the drive and acceptance of this strongest of regional arrangements has largely been a function of consistent prosperity and growth. The unquestionably dominant position of the capital city has ensured that development across the surrounding south east of England is almost always a by-product of London issues, be it the need for affordable housing, land for industrial development, or replenishing skills to substitute for the brain-drain to the city. Is it likely that the hinterland surrounding other English city regions would be as tolerant of an increasingly domineering Manchester or Birmingham?

Of course, it is the usual paralysis of reformers to fret about smaller problems once the biggest has been overcome. But here it hasn’t. Whitehall centralisation remains the core concern, and we should keep focused on this while regarding lesser potential divisions within devolved regions as a second order matter.

Step one must be to secure devolution wherever possible from SW1. If the administrative boundaries of the existing English regions need to be redrawn because, in some cases, a sub-regional perspective chimes in harmony with public opinion and identity, then so be it. RDAs were originally designed to work consistently with local government, and there is no reason why they cannot also work with city regional government either.

Front line delivery is a task best fitted to local government and local democracy – even if in some circumstances this means larger unitary authorities for whole conurbations. Embroidering strategic deals across England however, is a job that requires a regionalist approach.


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