rural regions

The ‘R’ word – region – resurfaced in the press this week. Post-election, devolution is back on the agenda with public leaders from the UK’s 10 core cities meeting in London to launch their own “devolution declaration”. They are demanding what Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester council and chair of the core cities group – Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield – calls a “radical modernisation of our centralised state”. This is about giving city-based regions more power to raise money and spend it; more power over planning, transport, homes, schools and health.  At the same time the article acknowledges that Westminster politicians risk being distracted from regional localism by the more urgent issues of Scotland and Europe. Lets hope all the frenetic activity of a new Government doesn’t lead to the neglect of thinking about the most important “R” word rural in all this devolution agenda.

This story takes me back as a spectator at the discussion about the creation of the East Midlands component of the now failed regional control centres plan. It explains:

“The project was launched in 2004, with the aim of replacing 46 fire and rescue control rooms in England with nine new regional centres, but the coalition Government scrapped it last year after a series of expensive delays.

The committee said in its report that a minimum of £469 million had been wasted, with eight of the purpose-built new centres remaining empty at a cost to the taxpayer of £4 million a month to maintain.

It is likely that only five of the centres will be used by the fire service, said the report, which criticised the Department for Communities and Local Government for excluding fire and rescue services about the design and content of the new centres”

I well recall, with bruises to show for it how in these heady times for the other “R” word “Region” everything had to fit into a regional template. This was hard to swallow in practical terms in a county as big as Lincolnshire with as much in common with Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire and the Humber than the rest of the East Midlands. Strangely having fought a number of battles to run rural projects and initiatives across regional boundaries and invariably found it hard going I sort of miss the idea of the East Midlands a bit.

Now don’t get me wrong I don’t want to go roll everything back – its just that I think some big rural issues like RDPE management and infrastructure planning probably worked best at a level bigger than what is now commonly called the sub-region and certainly better than at a national level. I wonder if part of the issue was the forcing of rural places into artifically constructed regions rather than the inappropriateness of any networking and planning at a sub-national level?