‘Reverse devolution’: losing the local?

Over recent years, national economic policy has been characterised by a strong emphasis on developing sub-regional scale partnerships, strategies and governance structures.

The proposals and impending legislation that has arisen from the Sub-National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration mark a new face of multi-scalar governance, including the provisions to add statutory duties to Multi Area Agreements, and to establish sub-regional economic development-focused bodies called Economic Prosperity Boards.

These measures represent a real thickening of the role and responsibilities of the sub-region, moving towards a new era for economic development that operates across larger functional economic areas when evidence basing, strategising, delivering and evaluating ‘local’ economic development.

CLES has questions about the spatial scale of governance at which economic development and regeneration activity should be occurring. The sub-region scale is fraught with operational problems, around ensuring commitment from constituent authorities; monitoring and evaluation difficulties at sub-regional level; questions over capacity to deliver all of the roles allocated to EPBs; and the lack of funding acting to disincentivise risk-taking (and hence preclude innovation – surely a predicate of rapid recovery from recession?), and yet the concern runs much deeper than these implementation issues.

Sub-regional strengthening may be contradicting the local in local economic development as local authority areas (and particularly sub-local areas, e.g. wards, neighbourhoods and LSOAs) are being subsumed into wider structures. This threatens correct identification of local and sub-local economic issues via the new Economic Assessment Duty, and reduces the likelihood that appropriate action for discrete smaller areas will be taken.

The interests of secondary town centres and peripheral locations are already becoming less of a priority in areas covered by MAAs, City-regions or other similar structures. These authorities are becoming increasingly subservient to the Utilitarian ideal of achieving the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ of people by attracting investment into the sub-region as a whole and relying on dispersal of benefits.

From our research, CLES has spoken with more than one local authority who identified the juggernaut of sub-regional governance as resulting in hollowed out local retail and civic centres, and increasing the inaccessibility of already socially and economically excluded people to employment and amenities.

This shift in spatial governance clearly threatens to remove some power from the local level. Far from the Government’s intention of sub-regional devolution, what we are actually seeing is a kind of ‘reverse devolution’ of powers into bolstered sub-regional structures that are too large to be locally specific.

The opportunity presented by the Economic Assessment Duty to carry out robust assessment of localities and gain a thorough understanding of local economy dynamics, is in danger of being lost to generalised assessments over larger geographical areas that inform generalised non-local strategies that neglect smaller places.

Contradictory to another prevailing theme of Government rhetoric, local democracy and empowerment, this will ultimately disempower local communities and people as their voices are not being heard in the sub-regional din.

We call to local authorities therefore, to be mindful of their need to retain some local economic independence from the sub-region! To put their residents’ interests first and foremost rather than yielding to sub-regional pressures! While sub-regional partnerships have an important role to play, indeed they can be very beneficial, recovery from recession will necessarily include locally specific responses and decisive action, innovation and real empowerment; forging resilient local economies in a new era of economic development.