More than 28 million people live in areas with a strategic authority. And that number will grow further with the government’s intention to ‘fill out the map’ and roll out strategic authorities right across England.
We have published a series of recommendations about how strategic authorities can really deliver on their promise (of economic growth) and improve the lives of the people in their regions given the right powers, tools and capacity. The recommendations are all set out in a report published by FGF, written in partnership with Metro Dynamics and funded by London Councils called, ‘Impactful Devolution 04, Stewards of the Regional System: Strengthening the foundations of strategic authorities’. And the changes we are calling for are aimed at national and regional government.
We argue that in addition to being new institutions in their own right, strategic authorities should act as ‘stewards of their regional system’ and use their unique position to collaborate both with local government and partners across all sectors, mobilising them behind shared regional missions. We learnt from existing leaders in regional government that setting and sustaining a culture of collaboration is fundamental to this stewardship role and we set out principles for this regional stewardship role. And we also call for a new partnership between national, regional and local government to connect with and coordinate industrial strategy, infrastructure investment, national wealth investment and housing.
Beyond their vital stewardship role we call for reform and consideration in three key areas:
Firstly – strategic authorities need greater capacity and more specialist capabilities to enable them to fulfil their role in the regional system, for example crucially so they are able to build pipelines of investable projects and prevention programmes. We are calling on arm’s length bodies like Homes England and government investment agencies to put more of their commercial and project capacity into partnerships with strategic authorities.
Secondly – strategic authorities need greater fiscal devolution so they can achieve both the government’s vision and work to their full potential on economic growth and public service reform. We call for an extension of integrated settlements to move towards a ‘Total Place’ settlement, creating greater flexibility for the regional system to pool resources across public services (rather than having separate budgets, i.e. local government, health, policing etc). They should also have access to more opportunities, both to raise revenue themselves and to retain more of the proceeds of growth to plough back into the region, behind their shared goals.
Thirdly – with more and more strategic authorities to be established, we found that an established approach to improvement is a glaring gap in the sector , particularly with three out of 14 strategic authorities either currently or previously subject to a best value notice. Wider public accountability mechanisms were also felt to be stronger in local government compared to regional government and that a regional public accounts committee model would be worth exploring.
The national government’s announcement to delay the next tranche of mayoral elections gives strategic authorities inside and outside of the Devolution Priority Programme, the benefit of time to develop and deliver. It’s time that should be used to lay the necessary groundwork for new partnerships and to invest properly in the new ways of working within strategic authorities so they can truly be ’stewards of their regional systems’.
