By Richard Johnstone | 4 February 2014
A senior council leader has urged the government to streamline its localism initiatives and set out more details about preferred structures for devolved powers.
Paul Watson, leader of Sunderland City Council and chair of the Key Cities Group of 22 mid-sized cities in England, called on ministers to ‘grasp the nettle now’ in bringing devolution policies together.
The cross-party group, founded last June to strengthen the voice of cities across England, published a Manifesto for Growth in January setting out a host of reform priorities.
The manifesto called for cities to be freed from Whitehall control, with greater powers to raise and spend money locally, and design services specifically for their areas.
Watson told Public Finance the devolution agenda was now accepted by most in the government. The issue was where this would take place.
Local Enterprise Partnerships have been established across England to work with councils to support growth, while City Deals have either been reached or are being negotiated with 28 areas. In addition, 18 local authorities are working on Community Budget spending packages after four trials, and more than 100 neighbourhood pooled spending initiatives are being developed.
But Watson said there was now such a mix of schemes that ‘you would not start from here if you had the choice’.
He told PF: ‘We would want to see more coherence and streamlining to the things that are there. We understand that there are some good things about Community Budgets and good things about the LEPs, but it just hasn’t got that coherent voice for the way they can all contribute meaningfully.’
The government needed to set out a unifying approach, which also brought together plans being developed for combined authorities across England, he added.
‘They need to grasp the nettle now,’ Watson told PF. ‘They need to take the lead and actually say what they want it to be. I think there has been a bit of a delegation of responsibility in terms of saying, “this is what our vision is”.’
The Centre for Cities think-tank agreed there was a need to bring existing schemes together.
Chief executive Alexandra Jones said reforms to boost economic growth, such as City Deals, and public service reforms, including Community Budgets, were two sides of the same coin. ‘They have to be thought of together, and that has to be the next stage. Given we know we’ve got to get the deficit down, and austerity is going to continue, bringing them together has to be where we go next.’
