Public: Partnership + Features | Public

Local enterprise partnerships: government to decide

Jane Dudman — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:00:18 GMT

All bids are now in for the new bodies that will replace regional development agencies, but the process is already causing tension in some areas

As the government sifts through the 56 bids from groups of local authorities and businesses in England hoping to become local enterprise partnerships (LEPs), it has been warned that their bids will be complex to assess.

LEPs are the public-private partnerships with which the present government intends to replace regional development agencies (RDAs). The deadline for submitting LEP proposals was midnight on Monday 6 September, following the announcement of the scheme in June by business secretary Vince Cable and communities secretary Eric Pickles.

The bidding process itself has already created tensions in some areas. North Lincolnshire council's bid, which calls for an LEP between four councils in the Humber area, for instance, has led to some councillors claimingthey were not properly consulted over the plans, while council leaders in Hull and the East Riding have opted instead to link up with councils in Scarborough.

Other bids include the East of England, which claims to be one of only three regions in the country to make a positive contribution to the nation's coffers. Its proposed LEP will, in effect, be a low-cost version of the East of England Development Agency. The largest proposal comes from the two county councils of Kent and greater Essex.

The government has not yet said how many LEPs will replace the existing nine RDAs, although a limit of 30 has been discussed, and the 56 proposals, published on the website of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), vary considerably.

A reportby the Institute for Public Policy thinktank says the assessment process will not be straightforward. It points out that there will be contradictory bids, with overlapping geographical areas for proposals. "Some areas could find that they fall in within an LEP that they do not want to be part of," it says. Similarly, the broad guidelines for LEPs will create uncertainty as to what will meet the criteria and what will not.

The report says that LEPs are now in the vanguard of sub-national economic development and it is vital that they are strong and powerful bodies able to make a real contribution not just to economic development, but to localism and social justice. The government's white paper on sub-national economic development is due out soon.

Monday was also the closing date for the consultation on the Regional Growth Fund. Announced in the budget, the £1bn fund will provide support for projects that offer significant potential for sustainable economic growth and can create new private sector jobs.

The two-year fund is designed help areas that have been traditionally reliant on the public sector "make the transition to private sector growth and prosperity", according to the department for BIS.

Jane Dudman

Top marks for school's transformation

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:35:14 GMT

Cressex Community School in Buckinghamshire was the county's second lowest performing school, but a new partnership with the council and various local organisations has resulted in a more positive reputation, Eifion Rees discovers

The motto of the Cressex Community School in High Wycombe is an African proverb: "It takes a whole village to bring up a child."

Sandwiched between a business park and the M40, it's hard to imagine a less village-like setting, and yet the application of the principle is paying dividends for this once-failing school.

Last year Cressex was Buckinghamshire's second-lowest performing school, with only 25% of its 655 pupils achieving five A* to C GCSEs, including English and maths – 5% less than its commitment as part of the National Challenge, set up in 2008 by the previous government to raise standards in schools.

In April this year Cressex became the county's first state-maintained Trust school, and one of the first Cooperative Trust schools in England, and its GCSE results were its best yet: 36% of students gained five A* to C GCSEs, including English and maths, and more than 50% gained five or more passes in any subject.

The school's change in fortune is being put down to the formation of the Cressex Cooperative Learning Partnership, a collaborative effort on the part of various local organisations to raise attainment at the school and broaden opportunities for its students, with each bringing its particular expertise to the table.

The cooperative members include high-performing selective state school Dr Challoner's Grammar, in Amersham, Wycombe Abbey girls' independent, Buckinghamshire New University, the Cooperative College and Buckinghamshire County Council.

In essence, the educational bodies are sharing their expertise and pedagogy to help improve standards at Cressex, with the county council facilitating this new educational practice. Council representative sit on Cressex's governing body to make sure the arrangements that have been put in place work.

Sue Imbriano, Buckinghamshire county council's strategic director for children and young people, says partnership trusts are the way of the future.

"Schools are sharing much more in terms of their expertise across the piece and supporting youngsters in the wider community.

Self-esteem, confidence and resilience

As well as the content knowledge provided by the school, partnership trusts mean working with pupils in the context of family and community to build up their self-esteem, confidence and resilience. Our trust was set up to develop better opportunities for Cressex's students, their families and the community in general – we were very conscious that we wanted to be working within the school walls and in the community beyond."

Wycombe Abbey's summer school is one example of the new partnership in practice, attended by some of Cressex's talented students. Wycombe Abbey's sixth-formers work with Cressex students on literacy schemes and work alongside teachers to help those pupils develop.

Dr Challoner's has programmes set up around student leadership that Cressex students will also benefit from, teaching them about how prefects discharge their responsibilities, as well as providing them with a sense of community and responsibility, equipping them to lead their peers both within and without the school gates.

In return, Cressex, a specialist business and enterprise school, has been able to offer the other schools its expertise in those areas, as well as in special needs and English as an additional language.

Cressex headteacher David Hood says better exam results are only part of the overall picture. He says the partnership's aim is also to build closer links with and so improve the community.

"We'd like parents and community representatives to have more influence on what we do, joining the school's stakeholder forum and having their say about the development of Cressex." He says more applying to become governors "would be a great development".

A brand new £27m school building – funded by the now defunct Building Schools for the Future programme – has been "psychologically great", according to Cressex's head. "We feel as though we're standing proud, and it's good for the Trust to be clustering around a school that's feeling good about itself."

Teamwork is the name of the game

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:05:00 GMT

John Carleton is the head of Local Partnerships, the newest body trying to help councils drive a better bargain with private companies. He brings a wealth of experience from public service, banking, consultancy ... and international rugby

Perhaps one of the lowest points in John Carleton's international rugby career, in which he garnered 32 caps for England and seven tries, came on the unsuccessful 1983 Lions' tour to New Zealand. Three months of rain had culminated in yet another defeat in the "horizontal snow" of Dunedin.

"I remember it distinctly," Carleton says, "because the World Cup cricket was on in the UK. I was lying in bed in New Zealand in a tracksuit, cold, and watching England and Pakistan from Old Trafford on the TV and it was 80-odd degrees and people had their shirts off."

He looks, fortunately, much happier now, newly installed as the first chief executive of Local Partnerships. The agency, formed out of the ashes of its predecessor, the 4ps, is now run as a joint venture between the Local Government Association and Partnerships UK, itself a public-private hybrid.

The agency's job, Carleton says, is to be at the "interface" between councils and their private and voluntary sector partners, trying to make those relationships run more smoothly. But, as he acknowledges, it is no easy task.

Carleton, 53, has the kind of solid, compact build you'd expect from a former international winger, and an accent that bears the traces of his native Lancashire. His career has spanned both public and private sectors, first as a banker specialising in real estate, then at the Housing Corporation, where he says he was "humbled" by the dedication of his fellow workers showed in their attempts to improve some of the worst housing in the UK.

At that time, the relationship between the sectors was tainted by "huge amounts of suspicion on both sides", he says."I used to work for a guy who described partnership as the suppression of mutual loathing to access somebody else's cash ... I think a lot of people could see that sort of approach."

Now, he says, both sides have come "an awful, awful long way", though he accepts the relationship is far from perfect.

He acknowledges, too, that some public-private partnerships and outsourcing deals have been failures. That, he says, comes down to councils not knowing what they want at the outset.

"I bet nearly every time you find a partnership agreement that isn't working, has flaws, has problems, those flaws can be rooted back to when the partnership was originally set up, and will be rooted back to potentially really poor choices, uninformed choices at [that] point."

The mission for Local Partnerships, as he sees it, is to help councils make those choices better. Taking politicians' promises of localism at face value, he insists that whichever party wins power in the general election next year, councils will be in control of more spending and policy.

"It's not our role to second-guess how local authorities will deliver services to their people"

But as part of that, they will have to make "informed decisions" about what services they provide directly and which ones they outsource.

This doesn't mean that the agency will be promoting privatisation, Carleton insists. Rather, it will be using its wealth of experience in hundreds of public-private schemes to help councils, especially small ones that struggle with complex, private sector-based projects, to strike better deals.

"It's not our role to second-guess how local authorities will deliver services to their people," he says. "It's our job to help them find the best way of delivery, whether that be direct [public services], or whether that be working with partners.

"Our job ... will be to help them find those partners, to help them structure the partnership arrangement right, to help them with the governance around that – and maybe even identify how they can fund that."

One criticism levelled at the predecessor to Local Partnerships, the 4ps, was its lack of profile amongst senior council directors.

Carleton won't comment on that, but says: "If that's been the perception in the past, it certainly won't be the reality in the future."

He hopes to get out of his London office "at least" one day a week and go round the country talking to local councils. As he does, he will be "particularly interested" to hear from councils who feel their relationship with the 4ps "has not been that great. My offer, my promise, my commitment is, talk to me and let's see how we can repair that."

Another part of his mission is to get councils working together better. He admits it's "not easy", but insists good examples do exist, and that he will be pushing that message vigorously. He will also be pointing out that demands for services – notably in housing - Increasingly overspill local authority boundaries.

And he may be able to offer councils the incentive of start-up funding. In situations where a potentially cost-cutting project is being stymied by lack of upfront cash to invest, Local Partnerships could, he thinks, step in with some of its own money.

One problem he faces, however, is the need to charge councils for the agency's services. Around a quarter of the Local Partnerships budget comes direct from government, but funding squeezes means the agency will increasingly look to the council fees that already currently make up the rest of its budget.

Will councils cough up more, given the enormous strain on budgets?

Carleton insists they will – as long as the agency can prove that its experience of working with private companies can help them drive a good bargain, and thus save money.

"If we can demonstrate to local public bodies that ... we can help them deliver more for less – then, yes, they will pay for that."

He takes the same line when asked whether the Conservatives, having made clear their dislike for quangos, might scrap Local Partnerships if they won power.

"Whichever government is in power, the services that they [councils] are empowered to deliver will increase," he says. "So consequently if we are making them more efficient, more effective ... I feel fairly comfortable that Local Partnerships has got a future, no matter who's in government."

Tough times for charities

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:06:00 GMT

With a host of positive policy changes in the past 10 years, the third sector is well-placed to weather the storm, but must proceed with care

t's hard to predict the impact of the recession on the third sector. In policy terms, the sector is thriving, having achieved many of the changes it campaigned for, particularly in relation to children, young people, carers and disabled people.

This means the sector is well-placed to step forward and play an even bigger role, helping to address the growing needs for public services as a result of the recession, implementing Keynesian public investment projects in areas such as social housing, employment and the environment; and demonstrating as it does so a more ethical and responsible approach to doing business.

But the implementation of government policy, through commissioning and procurement has been less successful; in fact, it has been described by the sector's chief executives as "appalling," "dreadful" and "a complete disaster". From this point of view, the third sector might be asked to do more for less, and to subsidise contracts through (declining) voluntary income - it may lose contracts altogether if they are taken in-house or axed.

This pessimistic scenario could see many of the policy gains achieved by the sector over the past 10 years put at risk. Gains that have been considerable. In health, for instance, the focus on patient involvement and increased priority for people with chronic conditions is a tribute to the efforts of the Long Term Conditions Alliance and its members.

Self-management is now a core theme of NHS policy; the expert patient programme, based on the pioneering efforts of Arthritis Care, is now being rolled out by a community interest company, a form of social enterprise committed to community benefits.

The mental health national service framework and the government's commitment to spend £170m on talking therapies have both been welcomed by mental health charities Mind and Rethink.

Lynne Berry, the chief executive of the Women's Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS), one of the bodies working at the cusp of health and social care, says the white paper, our health, our care, our say, and Lord Darzi's follow-up report have "enormous potential" for her organisation's work, because of the emphasis on joined-up, person-centred services and on preventative strategies. Berry sees the WRVS, for instance, as ideally placed to support people through hospital stays and the period after discharge.

Anne Roberts, the chief executive of Crossroads National Association, says carers are now "higher up the policy agenda than ever before", signalled by the publication of a carers strategy, while charities Counsel and Care and Independent welcome government recognition of the need to improve care provision for an ageing population.

Positive developments

Similarly, there has been praise from the third sector for policy on children, particularly the every child matters green paper, which was published in 2003, and an accompanying investment in children's centres.

Those working with young people have welcomed the Treasury's 2007 aiming high strategy for young people in England and the my place youth centre programme, while initiatives such as those on teenage pregnancy, HIV awareness, and an increased focus on those leaving the care system are all seen as positive.

The biggest development of all, welcomed across the sector, has been the introduction of individual budgets and the personalisation of health and care services. This brings the promise of truly independent living for disabled and older people. However, it brings challenges to commissioners, providers and service users alike and for that reason, has been described as the "elephant in the room" by Paul Farmer, the chief executive of Mind.

So, with some caveats, government policies have been largely welcomed by those in the third sector. Implementation, however, is rated much less highly. Joyce Moseley, the chief executive of youth justice charity Catch22, for instance, scores policy eight out of 10, but gives implementation just three out of 10. Why should this be?

Part of the answer is that policy is set nationally, but implementation is carried out locally and may not be accorded the same priority. Sometimes, funds allocated to local government to implement policies get used for other things. More generally , the policy of devolving responsibility to local government means central government is reluctant to intervene. Also agencies that were part of central government, such as Connexions and learning and skills councils, are now becoming part of local government.

Delivery is increasingly being managed through the process of commissioning. The commissioning framework developed by the department of health is an excellent piece of work, but is not yet embodied in local practice. Many third sector chief executives feel there is a lack of understanding of the difference between commissioning and procurement. Too many officials still seem to believe their role is just to purchase a service as cheaply as possible. Potential providers are often excluded from initial discussions about the tender specification, while prices are often based on averages, not allowing for more complex cases, and payment can be in arrears, with no allowance for inflation.

Contracts are too often over-specified (what, how, when) rather than focusing on outcomes. Conversely, some contracts are being broadened, both in scale and scope, to reduce transaction costs for the purchaser, but this can then make it harder for local groups or single issue organisations to bid.

Third sector organisations often experience cash flow problems and are subsidising public services. Meanwhile, smaller, local groups are being squeezed out; there are increasing instances of national third sector providers, such as the Shaw Trust, or commercial providers, such as A4E, winning tenders against local providers, and then asking them for help with local information and contacts. There is a real danger that the valuable social capital provided by groups such as citizens advice bureaux, Home-Start and other local community groups will be lost.

How can this disjunction between fine policy intentions and poor practice be addressed? The commissioning framework is a good start and the Office of the Third Sector's training programme for commissioners should help improve local practice. But the government and the third sector itself must also be prepared to play their part.

How to reset the balance

While recognising the importance of devolution, the government should highlight examples of good and bad practice. Victor Adebowale, the chief executive of Turning Point, thinks the localism excuse is "rubbish"; there must be standards against which local government can be held to account. Meanwhile, third sector organisations must engage in all stages of the commissioning process and bring their experience of providing services to influence service specifications. They should develop partnerships and consortia, involving local groups wherever appropriate, while improving their ability to tender and manage contracts.

Most importantly, they must ensure they generate unrestricted income though surpluses on contracts, other trading or voluntary fundraising. Some belt-tightening, driving down of costs and avoiding over-exposure to risk will also be necessary to survive the recession. They can then decide when to walk away from a contract or when to bring added value through providing services beyond the specification. Remaining mission-focused and value-driven may not be easy when faced with reduced resources and increased demand, but these are the prerequisites for independence. After all, it was the sector's independence that enabled it to press for, and secure, the positive policy changes of the past 10 years.

Richard Gutch is an associate at the third sector recruitment agency, Prospectus. This article is based on interviews he has done with 100 chief executives of third sector organisations

Big ideas at the heart of the East End

David Walker — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:38:00 GMT

Under Geoff Mulgan's direction, the Young Foundation is a hub of social thinking and action, following in the footsteps
of its founder

The Young Foundation practises what it preaches. Enthusiastic about social enterprise, it's entrepreneurial, the begetter of myriad schemes and spin-offs. On a tiny budget, £4.3m this year, it is the epicentre of social enterprise, the great hope for both the political left and right.

As much a "do-tank" as a thinktank, the charity is led by an intellectual and organisational buccaneer in the person of Geoff Mulgan. He wears, metaphorically speaking, no bandana nor pirate's earring; his style is cool and correct, almost professorial.

Yet the former Downing Street insider has a star to guide him who was unconventional, institutionally bohemian, a born mould-breaker: the main who gave his name to the charity, Michael Young.

Young, of whom a full biography would be welcome, was a propagandist, sociologist and Labour party activist who died in 2002. His empirical social research with Peter Willmott in the East End in the 1950s remains a benchmark in understanding the dynamics of cities and communities. He established the Institute of Community Studies in Bethnal Green which, under Mulgan, has transmuted into the Young Foundation and, on present trends, is fast establishing itself as a global not just a British brand on the boundary where ideas meet practice.

Firework

Young was a firework and is credited with pushing for the formation of what became the National Consumer Council, the Open University and the Economic and Social Research Council, among other organisations. (There were near misses and failures, too.) Young's famous book, The Rise of the Meritocracy, captured the postwar fear that in becoming the sole currency of social success, examinations and credentials would exclude and oppress.

For the generation moving on and up in the 1960s and 1970s, the attainment of students in schools and colleges did seem to be outweighing the pull of their social backgrounds; now we know, however, that parental income and education count hugely. We don't live in a meritocracy after all. Able children from poor backgrounds are handicapped.

You don't have your base in Tower Hamlets without being intensely aware of social class and power, yet the Young Foundation is also inflected by an optimistic sense of possibility and emancipation.

Mulgan, by background, is a man of the political left. His CV touches the unions, the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone, Gordon Brown (in an earlier incarnation as Labour's bright hope) and, since 1997, the very closest connection with New Labour, as a policy adviser in No 10 and subsequently as a civil servant founding the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit.

Glorious descent

Mulgan's descent from heaven (to use the Japanese term) was always likely to be glorious when he left Downing Street three years ago. He could doubtless have chosen corporate wealth or academia - his scholarly outputs include Good and Bad Government and, later this year, a footnoted study of strategy.

Instead, he came east to pull together the threads of Young's institute, relaunch it and brand it as the place for thinking and action under the headings of innovation and enterprise, prefixed by the key word "social".

It is a rare beast, Mulgan says proudly. He simultaneously, and not without irony, recollects the foundation of the Institute of Community Studies 50 years ago "during a period of Tory hegemony, when Labour had run out of steam", and casts forward in time.

He and colleagues travel the globe running seminars in North America, South Korea and, on the subject of innovation and enterprise, at a school for senior cadres of the Communist party of China in Beijing.

The foundation's activities embrace what Mulgan calls classic research. In collaboration with a dozen other philanthropic foundations it is in the midst of a project to capture changing patterns of social need. Then there is local stuff. Young is an instigator and promoter of the neighbourhood agenda being pursued by Hazel Blears at the communities department.

It thought up such schemes as fix my street; it is helping refashion public policy to take better account of wellbeing; and is seeking to insert innovation in the school curriculum.

In addition, the foundation is heavily involved on its doorstep, with what is called the London collaborative. It recently organised a 24-hour retreat for London borough chief executives and will branch into more detailed thinking, and doing. "It's not classic thinktank stuff," Mulgan says, "we're bypassing the publications stage, to network ideas, to help the public sector make better use of 'intelligence'."

A consequence, he notes, is that the Young Foundation is less visible than it perhaps deserves to be.

New enterprises

The foundation is itself creating new enterprises in education and health. It is negotiating the creation of five or six schools for 16-19 year olds; it has venture capital backing to set up a new online marketplace for teaching and learning; it has social care and workplace health schemes and has been helping with Lord Darzi's review of the NHS.

And so on: leadership development schemes for the white working class and for ethnic minorities, action learning sets for British muslims.

Internationally, in association with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Nesta, Young is building "innovation" as a field of study and exploration, with partners in Australia, Spain, Portugal and beyond; the foundation is involved with the commission of the EU but seeking to push innovation up and away from the traditional association with scientific research and technological development.

The trip to Bethnal Green has become a must for ministers and moguls, Cisco and electric company, Philips among them, for finance as well as social capital has to be in the mix. Mulgan's Whitehall connections are multiple; Young is involved with the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills as white paper proposals, such as innovation in public services, roll out.

And Mulgan, savvy, is broadening the foundation's offer, bringing Tories in - "most of our local authority work is with Tory-controlled councils", he points out, "so we are relatively protected against political swings".

Mulgan's list of activities is vertiginous as he moves seamlessly between dense practice and high theory - few have thought as intensely as he has about knowledge for police and how government, researchers and intermediaries might be more fruitfully configured. "How do societies think," he asks.

Or take the problem of taking innovative practice from its local context and bringing it to scale, applying experience in other or wider contexts; there's an intense practicality to Mulgan's thinking which may stem from those years of having to distil and present suggestions to busy and often distracted government ministers.

It's hard to discern the management model for what is now a fair-sized operation: is Mulgan, unconsciously or by design, replicating the chaotic style of Michael Young? He says there is a strong team in place that mixes wisdom, age and creativity. While he eschews a "try anything" approach, that last quality - being original and interesting is what he wants the Young hallmark to be. "In government," he says, "I ceased to be surprised by the thinktanks; they had stopped carving out new space."

Straddling bodies

But the best thinking is also doing. He talks of "straddling bodies", simultaneously inside structures of power and outside. Wholly out and you can't access power and money; wholly in and you lose creativity. Governments need bodies such as the foundation, able to think and do in useful ways but offering governments "plausible denial".

And that, presumably, will be the foundation's calling card if, as the chatterers now assume, Labour's era is over and a version of liberal conservatism and/or intra-UK nationalism colours politics. Mulgan already has lines out to the right. David Cameron and colleagues say they are keen on community self-help and social enterprise and the visitors' book in Bethnal Green shows they know where to turn both for ideas and examples.

David Walker

Councillors could gain control over PCT budgets

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Councillors could gain control over primary care trust budgets in the forthcoming review of the NHS

A report by the King's Fund says that filling the "democratic deficit", which is likely to be a central theme in Lord Darzi's review of the NHS, expected next month, could involve councillors gaining control over primary care trust budgets. But extended political control over primary care would not necessarily improve services. Here the report asks for an incremental approach using citizens' juries or enhanced versions of patient and public involvement forums, focused on specific PCT functions.

The Local Government Association has stepped up its lobbying in favour of more councillor involvement in primary care, and the thinktanks are weighing in. We will pick up the argument in June's edition.

The King's Fund also looked at choice in the health service. It found that 44% of patients referred for treatment in May 2007 remembered being offered a choice by their GP. That's a rise from 30% the previous year, when monitoring began, but falls well short of the expected level of 80%.

Most people were satisfied with the process; the main negative comments were about difficulties accessing the appointments phone line and appointments taking a long time to come through - issues not likely to be solved soon, as technical problems with the electronic appointments system Choose and Book meant an upgrade had to be postponed and resulted in some patients being given the wrong appointment times.

Also on a technical front, PCTs and strategic health authorities were warned by the Department of Health that most existing GP IT systems will not meet the department's new data security requirements for storing and transferring data. These requirements were brought in following the loss of confidential data by HM Revenue & Customs at the end of 2007. Authorities and PCTs have been told they will have to meet the costs of extra software to encrypt personal data.

There has also been a rise in the use of practice-based commissioning, according to the health department: 62% of GP practices now support the policy, a rise of 5%. The department also announced the launch of three more independent sector treatment centres, two in Greater Manchester and one in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. There are now 10 such centres. Future centres will be procured locally, rather than centrally - a move welcomed by private providers.

But who are private providers? GPs are, as a matter of fact, but not in terms of their self-perception. They take profits from their own practices but the British Medical Association led opposition to the proposal that doctors working in Sir Richard Branson's planned network of Virgin health centres would be given a percentage of the profits made by private dentists, therapists and laser eye surgeons working in the centres.

Whatever the Darzi recommendations on polyclinics, the private sector has got there first. The first such Virgin clinic opens in Swindon. Under General Medical Council rules, GPs working in private-sector primary care centres, who will be paid an NHS salary, will only be allowed to refer patients to the private clinics in the same building if they make it clear they have a financial stake in the profits - they will get 10% of the profits of the whole polyclinic.

More staff are now receiving appraisals and have a personal development plan according to the Healthcare Commission's annual survey and job satisfaction is high, something not borne out by external research. Poll firm Ipsos-Mori consistently registers NHS job dissatisfaction.

The public health minister, Dawn Primarolo, announced 12 new biomedical research units, which will investigate ways to translate medical research into diseases such as asthma, obesity and heart disease into effective treatments.
Meanwhile, heavy lobbying on all sides continues as politicians head towards a free vote on the human fertilisation and embryos bill, with embryo research support by a wide range of scientific and medical bodies and most strongly opposed by the Catholic church.

Cities are back: but London still leads the pack

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:00:00 GMT

ubregions of England are to get new powers and purpose, but the gap between them and London remains huge

Cities are back. After decades of decline and urban deprivation the metropolis (so the rhetoric goes) is the powerhouse of the 21st century post-industrial economy. In England the "core cities" - Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Nottingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle - have been working together to promote urban renaissance.

A plethora of reports promoted cities and regional governance. Their thread has been devolving power from the centre to local government; a key idea is the city region, in which (with or without structural reorganisation and boundary changes) the regional development agencies, councils and private bodies work together, conurbation-wide.

But if ministers have talked of giving cities their heads on the ground there's scepticism: things are not moving, despite the recent publication of an implementation plan for last summer's subnational review. It wants to formalise multi-area agreements within regions and requires regional development agencies to devolve funds to local authorities.

And despite the talk, the core cities are still lagging. In the UK, London is still seen as the only real global city player; the rest fall behind their counterparts elsewhere in Europe. A report in 2006 identified only two cities outside London (Bristol and Leeds) in the top 61 performing European cities.

Despite the success of the London model, few cities have actually opted for a directly elected mayor; there are only 13 across the country and none in the core cities.

Dermot Finch, director of the Centre for Cities thinktank, identifies a "power gap" between London and other cities as a result. "This is definitely something the government should be responding to. The more the mayor of London accumulates power, the further away London's system of government gets from other big cities. The power gap will start to disadvantage lots of really quite large cities."

But he adds that the government has gone from "lukewarm to silent" on the issue of mayors despite a manifesto pledge to consult on a new generation of city mayors.

The local government minister, Hazel Blears, has made noises encouraging cities to go for mayors based on existing local authority boundaries and a recent paper from the Institute for Public Policy Research calls for a mayor for every English town and city. But the Centre for Cities favours regional mayors based on the London model with strategic powers to push through big infrastructure developments and override local planning concerns.
Finch, however, points out: "Turkeys don't vote for Christmas - you can't look to existing bodies to suggest a mayoral model." It should be incentivised, he says, with promises of greater powers from central government on transport, strategic responsibilities and skills funding.

Leadership
Business groups have been campaigning in some areas such as Birmingham for a mayor to attract inward investment and in other cities such as Liverpool and Nottingham it has been mooted by factions dissatisfied with existing leadership but has got no further. Those against changing the system say a mayor is not necessarily a panacea.

Congestion charging provides a case in point of the difficulties of pushing through controversial developments requiring the buy-in of local councils, business and agencies. Despite the real traffic problems afflicting cities and estimated to cost the British economy £20bn a year, London is the only city to have any kind of road pricing. Three years ago, Edinburgh residents rejected plans for a congestion charge in a referendum and in many other cities the idea hasn't got past the first post. City leaders and regional agencies in Birmingham recently rejected road pricing plans, fearing it would harm the local economy.

The government has gone cold on national road pricing, instead encouraging local schemes to tackle congestion and reduce car use, offering matching funds through the Transport Innovation Fund. But Manchester is so far the only region where authorities and transport bodies managed to get their act together and present a bid in the first round of the scheme, which aims to invest £3bn in public transport with £1.2bn raised from road pricing.

City region brand
Manchester is seen as furthest down the line in terms of establishing a city region brand, with good partnership arrangements in place between the 10 Association of Greater Manchester Authorities. It is also the only authority that looks set to seek statutory status for its multi-area agreement. In other cities such as Birmingham it has proved more difficult, particularly as nearby Coventry sees itself as a big hitter in its own right and is unwilling to be subsumed into the idea of a greater Birmingham (see page 35). The city has also abandoned plans for the time being for a formal multi-area agreement.

Transport links are vital to make commuting possible and join up urban hubs - many resurgent cities are in the south-east, with good links to London, including Southampton and Reading. More needs to be done to make use of those links in the north, the Centre for Cities has urged. But it's not as simple as a north-south divide. York and Warrington are successful, prosperous cities in the north.

New research by Ivan Turok, professor of urban studies at the University of Glasgow, found British cities having outdone many of their European neighbours in terms of economic improvement over the last 10 years. London, Southampton-Portsmouth, Sheffield, Liverpool, Coventry and Newcastle were in the top 20 European cities in terms of urban employment revival. But UK cities do less well on productivity - the revival has been led by the service industry and financial services, with lower-level jobs created, compared to the outstanding European performers, Dublin, Helsinki and Stockholm, he said.

Retail boom
At a city regional level, Turok points out cities' economic performance is affected by their outlying areas. He says that while the core of Glasgow has benefited from the consumer and retail boom, its overall performance has been brought down by weaker outlying areas.

This is why you have to have interactions within regions, he says. Much of Glasgow's recovery could be put down to it capturing the spend that should have gone to its surrounding areas. "There is a danger that cities see the best route forward as competing against neighbours to build shopping centres, supermarkets and competing for talent, whereas they should be taking a strategic view to attract investment to the whole region."