Housing, town-centre regeneration and public service reform are part of a single project that only local authorities have the strategic vision to lead. Today’s Budget supports this approach and sets some foundations for taking it further
A penny off a pint, fuel duty rises cancelled and bingo duty halved. As widely predicted, George Osborne’s fifth Budget contained lots of popular measures and clearly the Chancellor enjoyed himself with a confident and bravura performance as he delivered his ‘Budget for the makers, the doers and the savers’.
It was, in many ways, the definition of a pre-election budget: rewarding saving, reducing taxes for lower- and middle-income workers (something for which the LibDems will want to claim credit) and support for pensioners.
Cynical minds might see a shot across Nigel Farage’s bows with a package of populist measures designed to appeal to the sort of voter who might be tempted to forsake the conservatives for Ukip.
The Chancellor will also have enjoyed announcing the Office for Budget Responsibility’s improved growth forecasts, falling unemployment figures and a falling deficit. Increased investment in infrastructure and increased credit for exporters allowed the presentation of this Budget as one of growth, consolidated gains and, in a word the Chancellor used repeatedly, increased ‘resilience’.
One element of that which will feel particularly relevant to local authorities is extra support for house building, with a £500m pot to provide financing to developers, a £150m pot to stimulate regeneration of housing estates and reform to the planning system to allow increase flexibility in change of use. This will include a consultation on a new retail class that will exclude pay-day loan and betting shops.
These measures are all things that local government has called for and will welcome. They will give democratically elected local councils more freedom to stimulate house building thus providing homes for local people and a boost to local economies and will help them regenerate high streets in interesting new ways.
Increasingly local authorities see their role not just as providers of services, but as curators of places, helping local people create places that are good to live in. We need to recognise that housing, town-centre regeneration and public service reform are not separate agendas, but part of a complex single project – a project that only local authorities have both the local know how, the democratic mandate and the strategic vision to lead.
How far does this Budget assist this endeavour? It certainly doesn’t stand in its way and sets some good foundations for taking it further. The most significant announcement, buried deep in the detail, might be the £100m support promised to Greater Cambridge to support transport and infrastructure initiatives through a Gain Share mechanism.
This sort of new relationship: central government supporting local government to innovate and allowing it to benefit is what we need to see much, much more of. A lot will depend in the coming years on how quickly government is able to let go and allow these sorts of schemes and the level of conditionality they apply.
For, of course, old habits die hard. The Chancellor also announced a £200m pound ‘challenge fund’ for pot-hole repair. Welcome money no doubt, but we might wonder if ‘challenge funds’ is just a fancy new phrase for ring fencing?
Jonathan Carr-West is chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit
