The government has missed a trick by failing to create County Deals in the same way it has for cities. This must change
It is difficult to comprehend why a government that is so concerned with securing the UK’s economic recovery has failed to provide county areas with the tools to do the job. In particular, why it has not as yet introduced ‘county deals’.
Current arrangements are not up to the task. Local Growth Deals do not match the transformative potential of City Deals, and Local Enterprise Partnerships serve a different function. Counties have been left sitting on the subs bench, watching London and the Core Cities demand ever-greater control of economic policy and taxation. This is over and above the freedoms and flexibilities they already have in City Deals.
While we support the cities’ localist aims, Whitehall cannot afford to leave County Council Network members out in the cold. County areas account for over 43% of national gross value added – and over half of the jobs in key manufacturing sectors. We have a proven track record of leading on regional growth when no other organisation could. County deals could unlock this potential and put us on the pitch.
Counties are not asking for more resources. Rather, just like the Core Cities, we are asking for the freedom to do the job set for us by central government and our communities. And these are not empty words. Counties have detailed plans that prove both the validity and necessity of empowering their regions.
For example, Essex County Council’s ‘Deal for Growth’ articulates how government devolution of key economic levers across skills, transport and infrastructure could enable the authority and its partners to deliver 60,000 new jobs, 25,000 homes and a reinvigorated local manufacturing base.
The deal typifies counties’ far-sighted and innovative approach to growth, with a 15-year commitment to transport funding, an employer-led Employment and Skills Boards and a £1bn infrastructure fund. The Essex deal flows from its plans for community budgets and, for many areas, county deals would be fundamental to a wider transformational process.
In this context, it is disappointing that the initiative to use the community budget process as a tool for economic development has met with such a tepid reception from the government.
The wisdom in allowing local economic decisions to be made locally has been recognised in Lord Heseltine’s report, No stone unturned: the pursuit of growth; in the London Finance Commission’s report, Raising the capital; and by a host of other experts. The wider world gets it, but the challenge is to remove the blinkers from Whitehall, where growth is apparently seen as something delivered only by city areas.
County economies are some of the most innovative and dynamic elements of the national economy, and are supported by strategically minded authorities. The fact that a third more new enterprises are being created by CCN member authorities than by the Core Cities goes to show what counties can do when they’re off the subs bench and in play.
Many MPs – including shadow local government secretary Hilary Benn and Liberal Democrat president Tim Farron – are beginning to listen. But we need quick action to break the mould.
A government looking for strong growth into 2015 should free the counties from the shackles that hold them back. They can no longer afford to ignore them.
David Hodge is chair of the County Councils Network
This opinion piece was first published in the November issue of Public Finance magazine
