WM2015

Is transport the first step in Bore’s vision for Greater Birmingham?

Local leaders come together on regional transport authority

By:
Published August 8, 2013, in Politics, WM2015

In a radical step the leaders of seven West Midlands councils, collectively the Joint Committee, have agreed to form a new regional Integrated Transport Authority.

The new ITA will take responsibility for transport strategy, decide which schemes will be given priority and seek new investment for transport in the region. The board has also invited the chairs of each LEP – Greater Birmingham and Solihull, Black Country and Coventry and Warwickshire – to join the board. Centro will remain as the and continue to deliver transport projects across the region.

This follows an announcement last month that National Express West Midlands and Centro have signed a £81m Partnership Plus agreement to transform bus travel. London-style smartcards and hundreds of new buses will form part of a wide-ranging transport package worth more than £80 million set to transform bus travel in the West Midlands.

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“Absentee landlords” are a recipe for economic failure

Karen Leach argues true economic regeneration must be home-grown

By:
Published August 5, 2013, in WM2015

 

The English corner shop (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To me, the emperors-new-clothes issue around delivering local powers and progress as we approach the 2015 elections – ignored by politicians of all localism-embracing colours – is that of the concentration of economic ownership into fewer and fewer hands.  The UK economy is increasingly oligopolistic, poorly distributed across regions and individuals, unequal, exclusive and unstable. How could local authority and community efforts match this?  Is there a link between this, political apathy and the social failures of localism?

Localise WM has spent the last year working on some research on this theme, basically investigating what social and economic benefits could be brought to a region by placing more emphasis on tackling this ‘econocratic deficit’, integrating localised approaches into mainstream economic development.

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London’s Calling

Is it time to abandon localism and accept a London-centred economy?

By:
Published July 30, 2013, in WM2015

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to , the jig is up: it’s time to accept that the UK is London-centred. For Ganesh this is the product of organic processes within the economy, and it in spite of politicians’ best efforts to promote regional rebalancing, they should be “humble” enough give up and accept the inevitable.

Ganesh outlines the hard time London has got in the recent years: “London has not flourished because of favourable treatment by the national political class.” The claim is evidently not the case. London has an expected bias as the nation’s capital. It benefits from money flowing through national institutions and back out to the regions.

Let’s take a national organisation such as the BBC. The Midlands and London raise a similar percentage of the £3.6 billion license fee, around 25% each. Yet the expenditure in the Midlands’ is 2.5% of that figure, where as London swallows 73% of the budget. Simply having the bricks and mortar of national institutions in London has an ingrained bias; it’s hardly a tough lot.

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Fresh hope for a Greater Birmingham authority – but only if council leaders can agree

Manchester, Yorkshire, Newcastle and Liverpool in radical push to regional governance

By:
Published July 26, 2013, in LEPs, WM2015

A little over two years ago the metropolitan councils of Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Manchester, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, and Wigan formed the Greater Manchester combined local authority with powers to oversee transport, economic development and regeneration.

This was the first small but significant step towards regional governance since John Prescott’s ill-judged 2001 plan for regional assemblies, and there were many pundits ready to suggest that other conurbations across England and Wales would quickly follow Manchester’s example.

Certainly, the Greater Manchester authorities had already been working together for several years in a more informal organisation and were  in well equipped to formalise the arrangements.  It is true, however, that the case for combined authorities has been given a boost by the emergence of Local Enterprise Partnerships, which have been handed responsibility for delivering economic development across council borders through the Regional Growth Fund.

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Seconds out for the great Local Growth Fund fight

LEPs to fight each other for share of £1 billion: further devolution of budgets 'exception rather than norm', Government warns

By:
Published July 25, 2013, in WM2015

Half of the £2 billion a year Local Growth Fund earmarked for Local Enterprise Partnerships will be subject to a competitive bidding process, the Government has confirmed.

The country’s 39 LEPs are being invited to fight each other for a share of £1 billion and decisions on awarding cash will be based on the robustness of local strategic economic plans.

A further £1 billion a year is to be allocated by Whitehall for major transportation schemes, housing and the development of workforce skills.

Initial guidance for LEPs on growth deals released by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) makes it clear there will be winners and losers: “Competition is an important means of driving better investment, collaboration, commitment, ambition and innovation.

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