Scottish independence debate can pave way for more devolution in England
Another fascinating spin on Local Government in terms of devolution arising from the referendum debate. Why though do the best writers on local government innovation persist with their city bias as this article suggests? At the LGA/RSN conference we had a really good series of examples of rural innovation (are you still reading Hinterland Rob?). But perhaps more insightfully still examples of the innate dynamism in rural folk of the ability to do more on our own account whatever the bigger structures from Nation States to Gedney Drove end to do more for ourselves.
Much of the debate about devolution rightly focuses on the prospect of 5.2 million Scots waving goodbye to the UK in a couple of weeks. In the background, away from the fiery spray of words between Edinburgh and London is a debate about how the 53 million people in England could benefit from a bit of devolution themselves.
There are plenty of ideas floating around about how power and influence can be drawn away from London to the regions, and in particular, the bigger cities that create jobs. Birkenhead MP Frank Field argues that moving parliament to Manchester would make a good start. Michael Heseltine, the former Tory minister, presented his views in 2012, calling for a major restructuring of local government and the pooling of £58bn of Whitehall cash for local regeneration projects.
Arguably, English devolution got underway in April when parliament gave its blessing to a north-east combined authority to pool resources from local councils covering Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland. Its creation immediately followed the birth of council clubs covering West Yorkshire, Merseyside and Sheffield and Greater Manchester in 2011.
All these bodies are children of the 2011 Localism Act, which Manchester was almost panting for, but other authorities found more difficult to negotiate given local hostilities.
Each new authority hopes to pull together the rag-bag of regeneration agencies in their area to greater effect, primarily to shake off old allegiances to low-margin, outmoded manufacturing and develop service-oriented economies to rival London.