Insights
Just before the Christmas holidays, the government published their eagerly awaited white paper on English Devolution. The resulting English Devolution Bill will usher in the biggest reorganisation of local government for decades- including a restructure of local government towards unitary authorities, the creation of a new tier of mayoral strategic authorities with wider powers, and efforts to support staffing capacities to deliver. Our colleagues at Centre for Cities held a webinar on the 9th January assessing key details, particularly the plans for reorganisation of local government structure. We will be holding a webinar on Effective devolution: lessons learned over ten years on Wednesday 5th February between 9.15-10am where we will discuss the role of data, evidence and evaluation in devolution around local growth.
In this blog I focus on some of the new responsibilities proposed, and how these align with our new policy challenge pages on local growth plans; supporting local business investment; local economies and net zero; and economic inactivity, skills, and good jobs.
More responsibilities and plans around local growth
A core part of the white paper sets out government plans to devolve more responsibilities over key functions around local growth, development, transport and planning. This will largely apply to areas which form the new “Mayoral Strategic Authorities”. However, funding reform will also see a reduction in restrictive grants to local authorities in favour of a more stable longer-term Local Government Finance Settlement, potentially meaning more discretion over spending around local growth priorities for all.
Mayoral Strategic Authorities will need full local growth plans with other plans (like skills improvement plans) needing to be linked back to them. Foundation Strategic Authorities below the Mayoral level won’t be required to develop a full local growth plan but will need to set out a vision for local growth. Our new policy challenge page on local growth plans outlines key steps that local policymakers can take to think about developing these kinds of strategies – these steps are relevant for building local economic strategies at all levels and so will be useful to non-Mayoral areas too.
Planning to improve the local business environment
Elsewhere, the white paper talks about supporting local business environments and pulling in more business investment. Alongside local growth plans, this will include closer collaboration between the Office for Investment, Innovate UK, and the National wealth Fund with Mayoral Strategic Authorities to develop investment propositions, devolution of business support schemes, and continued central government support for Investment Zones. Our new policy challenge page on local business investment pulls together our evidence on this topic, as well as some useful external resources. Our new policy challenge page on net zero and local economies covers related evidence around the impact of net-zero transition and green-related investments on local economic development.
Planning to improve local labour markets
Skills and employment policy is another area where new responsibilities will be bestowed on Mayoral Strategic Authorities. Non-apprenticeship skills funding will be devolved, as will funding for employment support related to economic inactivity, and there will be responsibility for co-design of future non-Jobcentre Plus employment support. These new powers will come with requirements to produce Local Skills Improvement Plans, and local Get Britain Working Plans focused on economic inactivity. Our new policy challenge page on tackling economic inactivity, building skills, and supporting good jobs focuses on these key labour market issues, drawing on our evidence resources as well as external work.
Supporting local growth plans with new resources
We will continue to update these pages as more policy is announced and as we develop new resources. We want to ensure they are as useful as possible to local policymakers in addressing the questions and issues that are most pressing in these areas.
We’d like to hear from our users on this – whether that’s how to understand datasets or grappling with issues in these areas that our pages don’t address, please get in touch. Ask us and other LA officers in the online forum ‘Economic growth in the UK’ on Khub, or email our Head of Outreach, Megan Streb.
