Transcript City-regions and the Northern Way

Policies for urban and regional
development: the UK experience
Prof. Alan Harding, University of Manchester,
Presentation to 2nd Symposium on Regional
Development and Governance, TEPAV/EPRI,
Izmir, Turkey, 25 October 2007
This presentation
• Spatial policy and governance in the UK: a
brief history
• Recent changes under Labour Governments
• Devolution and the ‘English question’
• Two spatial policy agenda
• Review of sub-national economic development and regeneration (SNR)
& Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 (CSR07)
• A sustainable future?
Spatial policy phase I: Traditional
regional policy (1950s-70s)
• Aims: Regional economic ‘balance’;
deconcentration of economic activity
• Mechanisms: Incentives/disincentives to firms,
supported by decentralisation measure for
population, public employment
• Evaluation: ‘Worked’ during late industrial period,
unwound/became politically unsustainable with
large scale industrial restructuring
Spatial policy phase II: urban
policy (1980s-2005)
• Aims: Attenuate worst consequences of economic
restructuring, promote local economic and social
development
• Mechanisms: Variety of small area-specific
interventions focused upon physical
redevelopment, enterprise, selective social welfare
‘improvements’
• Evaluation: Supported recent ‘urban renaissance’,
particularly in city centres, improved certain
neighbourhoods. No marked effect at level of city
or on regional disparities
Recent spatial debates:
towards city-regions?
• Context: Uneven urban renaissance, adjustment to
‘knowledge economy’. Growing regional
disparities.
• Aspiration: Fusion of urban and regional policy,
underpinning and spreading benefit of urban
competitiveness.
• Potential mechanisms: Alignment of national
(spatial AND ‘place blind’), regional and local
policies, incentives for city-regional collaboration,
city-regional governance mechanisms
Spatial development and devolution
• Labour’s 1st term: 1997-2001
• Scottish Parliament, Assemblies for Wales,
Northern Ireland, ‘strategic’ metropolitan authority
for London
• Regional Development Agencies for the other
English regions
• 2nd term: 2001-05
• Collapse of English ‘regionalism’
• 3rd term: 2005• SNR & CSR: confirming spatial schizhophrenia
Two spatial policies?
 Regional Economic Performance PSA commits Government to ‘make
sustainable improvements in the economic performance of all English
regions and over the long term reduce the persistent gap in growth
rates between the regions’.
 Why? The reason that the PSA target was set up like that was exactly
in order to prevent taking the easy way out of trying to do one rather
than the other of the two aspects of the target, so in order to be clear
that we do want to narrow the gap between the economic growth rates
of the regions but not simply by slowing down growth of highperforming regions. Equally, we want all the regions to grow, but it is
not enough to simply have economic growth in every region; we
actually want to narrow the gap as well. It was deliberately done to
put the two elements of the target in. If we had thought one was more
important than the other, we could have just picked one of those two
elements as the PSA target (Minister Yvette Cooper, 2006)
 In reality.........
TOTAL EXPENDITURE ON SERVICES BY REGION, PER HEAD, 2004-05
Accruals, £
Total
London
7,530
North East
7,167
North West
6,930
Yorkshire and Humberside
6,363
England
6,361
West Midlands
6,291
South West
5,962
East Midlands
5,865
South East
5,624
Eastern
5,605
PERCENTAGE CHANGE IN TOTAL EXPENDITURE ON SERVICES
BY REGION, PER HEAD, 2000-01 TO 2004-05
Total %
London
41
South East
39
Eastern
38
West Midlands
38
East Midlands
37
North East
37
England
37
North West
33
Yorkshire and Humberside
33
South West
31
The SNR’s brief
• ‘To identify, ahead of the 2007
Comprehensive Spending Review, how to
further improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of existing sub-national structures
in England – including governance,
incentives and powers – and identify
options going forward that maximise value
for money and deliver changes on the
ground’……by…….
SNR’s task
•
•
•
•
•
•
‘Consider the optimal geographical levels for governance and decision-making
for functions directly linked to successful economic development and
regeneration of deprived areas
Map the current governance arrangements and incentives for encouraging
economic growth and regeneration at all sub-national levels, establishing in
particular the interfaces between regional and local institutions
Establish the value for money and effectiveness of key current interventions
for encouraging regional economic growth, and develop proposals for
improvements
Build on existing work to identify the key drivers of neighbourhood renewal
and regeneration, addressing in particular how socially excluded groups and
deprived areas can both share in and contribute to sub-national economic
growth, and
Establish the value for money and effectiveness of interventions aimed at
tackling spatial deprivation, including targeted regeneration funding … and
mainstream funding.’
What it actually did…..
SNR outcomes
 Local: LAs to be given specific economic development responsibility;
recasting of audit and assessment arrangements to give greater priority
to e.d. and regen. indicators of success; new power to levy a
supplementary business rate for economic development purposes
 Sub-/city-regional: Multi-Area Agreements; potential ‘duty of cooperation’ upon LAs, other public bodies; commitment to explore the
creation of statutory sub-/city-regional authorities for e.d. & related
purposes
 Regional: abolition of indirectly elected Regional Assemblies;
strengthened RDAs to be more ‘strategic’/delegating bodies
 National: ‘regional Ministers’ to champion ‘their’ region in
Westminster and Whitehall & oversee Government activity at regional
level; possible establishment of dedicated Select Committees for each
region
CSR 07
 Tight spending settlement for 2008-10:
slower real term growth in key spending
areas (health, education) BUT
 Realignment of major capital projects to
support and manage the growth of the
London super-region: London Olympics,
Crossrail, ‘growth areas’, added to e.g.
Heathrow Terminal 5, Chunnel rail link and
‘incidental’ spatial policy (e.g. HE R&D)
Sustainability questions
Reliance on the London super-region raises key challenges:
 Economic
 Dependent upon London’s global role in financial
regulation
 Environmental
 Dependent upon effective growth management in London
super-region
 Political
 No alternative visible as yet. Will be interesting to watch
the spatial politics of the next economic downturn
Does the same go for Turkey? Over to you, but….