Tag Archives: city deals

Reflections from the Scottish Planning and Environmental Law conference

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The theme of this year’s conference posed a question to speakers and delegates of the conference: is the current planning climate in Scotland presenting “new opportunities, or more of the same?”

Delegates came together in the COSLA building in Edinburgh to discuss all areas of planning and environmental law in Scotland. The gathering included a range of organisations and sectors, including lawyers and solicitors, planners, engineers, academics and civil servants.

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Image by Rebecca Jackson

The morning session focused on energy, infrastructure and economic development. Ross Martin (@SCDIChief), chief executive of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry kicked the day off with a discussion of place making in Scotland. He highlighted the economic benefit of good planning, noting that when it is done well planning has a core role in economic development strategies and can facilitate growth within an area.

This was followed by a discussion from Professor Becky Lunn from the University of Strathclyde who gave delegates some interesting food for thought in her discussion of the environmental, economic and moral consequences of Scotland’s energy choices.  A day after Ineos imported its first container of US shale gas to its Grangemouth refinery, Professor Lunn told delegates, that no energy solution is problem free, but “if we (Scotland) say no to the domestic production of gas and nuclear energy we are saying yes to something else”- the demand needs to be met regardless of whether the energy is produced in the UK or not. She questioned the moral arguments that it could be acceptable to import shale from elsewhere, while we are not content enough with the level of safety, the security of regulation and its wider environmental impact to do it ourselves (something which was picked up on by Ruth Davidson later that same day in FMQ’s). Professor Lunn advocated a strong public element to discussion, and a robust and well-informed debate around long term energy choices. She also warned against “crisis led” energy policy-making dictated by rhetoric of “fear and shortage”.

housing estate

 

Head of planning at Homes for Scotland, Tammy Adams (@TammyHFS) discussed the delivery of high quality homes in Scotland within the wider planning context. She highlighted the challenges and opportunities for house building, arguing that delivering new homes in Scotland should be “a golden thread” running through the Scottish planning system, and that an effort should be made to better align market realities and site strategy, but maintain flexibility of delivery.

The penultimate session of the morning was delivered by Sara Thiam, director of the Institution of Civil Engineers Scotland. She looked at the role of infrastructure and planning. Sara discussed the potential of devolution to city regions to grow the economy by allowing city regions to plan and build infrastructure which reflects their local social and economic needs. She also spoke about the need to be strategic about infrastructure choices, not just pushing increased finance for infrastructure, but targeting it strategically, investing in green infrastructure where possible, and thinking long-term about projects and desired outcomes.

The morning was brought to a close by event sponsors Terra Firma Chambers who provided some useful insights into  up-to-date case law, including notable cases that many delegates could draw on for their day to day decision making and planning submissions.

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Image by Rebecca Jackson

The afternoon session opened with a panel session which featured insights from four speakers: Greg Lloyd, Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at Ulster University; Craig McLaren, RTPI Director of Scotland and Ireland; John McNairney, Chief Planner at the Scottish Government; and John Hamilton, CEO Winchburgh. The discussions focussed on the new opportunities presented in planning in Scotland, including the review of planning, building homes, creating more joined up planning and the planning process more generally. Discussions were wide ranging, generating a lot of interaction both within the panel and between the panel and the delegates. The discussions were wrapped up by a second case law update.

The final presentation of the day was delivered by Steve Rogers, Head of Planning and Regulatory Services at Dumfries and Galloway Council and Chair of Heads of Planning Scotland. He spoke about his experiences with smart resourcing and the importance of leadership in planning.

Overall it was a day full of insight and expertise, which provided everyone who attended with the opportunity to think critically about the state of planning in Scotland from a number of different positions. It posed questions to be considered, allowed delegates to reflect on their day to day practice and highlighted opportunities and potential barriers for planning in Scotland in the future.

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SPEL Journal is read by decision makers in Scottish planning authorities, planning law practices, planning consultancies, surveyors, civil engineers, environmental managers and developers across Scotland. It is also valued by many practitioners outside of Scotland who need to keep abreast of developments.

 

Place-based approaches to service delivery

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Manchester Town Hall: (Photograph, James Carson)

By Alan Gillies

A recent enquirer to our popular Ask a Researcher service sought our help to identify the available research on the concept of place-based or whole-place working.

Place-based approaches have been promoted through, for example, the previous UK government’s whole place community budgets. And in the Scottish context, the 2011 Christie Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services recommended a place-based, or ‘total place’ approach in order to improve local services and break down institutional silos.

In keeping with its focus on localism, the UK government also piloted a neighbourhood-level version – ‘complementary and integral to the concept of Whole Place community budgets’ – and in April 2014 granted an extra £4.3m of investment to ensuring the model reached 100 new local areas through the Our Place programme.

Principles of place-based or whole-place working

The principles underpinning this model of collaborative place leadership have been identified by the Local Government Association as:

  • building services around people and communities;
  • removing barriers to better outcomes and reduced costs through integrated working across agencies;
  • involving the business and voluntary sectors as equal partners;
  • collaborating to put together a workable whole public sector approach, joint responsibility and shared leadership;
  • local innovation and co-design with central government departments;
  • local delivery and investment mechanisms tailored to local needs and circumstances.

Benefits

The financial savings of such an approach could be significant. In January 2013, a report by Ernst & Young estimated that community budgets in England could deliver a net benefit of between £9.4 and £20.6bn over five years.

In looking at the costs and benefits of the whole place pilots in England in 2013, the NAO warned however that previous attempts such as local-area agreements, multi-area agreements and Total Place “did not lead to widespread or fundamental changes in local public services, or in the relationship between central and local government”.

But as financial pressure on public finances increased, there was even greater incentive than before to assess whether integrated whole-place approaches could help deliver services within increasingly tight budgets. A major driver of the process was therefore to maintain services while making savings.

The potential for place-based or whole-place policies to deliver financial savings does seem to be backed by the available evidence.

However, Localis, as recently as March 2015, has suggested that there is a sense across local government that Whitehall is unwilling to devolve the powers and funds necessary to let whole-place community budgets become a truly successful alternative means of delivering public services. The community budget pilots themselves ‘consistently pointed out that to deliver change on the scale they envisage there has to be change not only at a local level but also in Whitehall.’ (Ernst & Young, 2013)

Current government policy

The current government’s policy of devolution deals with certain areas has been seen as a way of realising the potential of place-based working. The Core Cities Group has called on the government to go further though. It wants the government to undertake a ‘place-based’ comprehensive spending review, looking at the total public resources deployed across a city or city region. It argues that without a similar place-based approach “within Whitehall, Holyrood and Cardiff Bay”, to join up the way different departments work with local agencies and cities, “we will not see the changes people want, need and deserve, in their lives and their cities”.

Local government lessons

In an interesting exercise, the New Local Government Network brought together local government chief executives to explore how place-based, integrated public services could deliver budget reductions and better outcomes for people in a notional ‘Newtown’.

The main learning points identified it its 2014 report were:

  • Working towards outcomes for place requires a different way of thinking and is an incredibly hard thing to do, particularly in relation to prevention, commissioning for outcomes and joining together what different sections of the public sector are doing to deliver outcomes for place.
  • Groups found it tough to move beyond current services and ways of working to develop new approaches to deliver outcomes. Thinking tended to involve ‘less of the same’ or different delivery bodies, rather than whole-scale public service reform.
  • There are a huge number of choices that need to be made and a vast range of stakeholder interactions required, yet few localities have the capacity available to complete this unaided.
  • Few areas have the practical experience to embed customer journey mapping into place based design principles. Perhaps worryingly, the report noted that groups found it difficult to put citizens at the centre of their plans for reform.
  • Despite having ‘red-lines’ of was not possible to change as part of the exercise (e.g. taxation), the groups went outside of these to ask government for additional powers, which suggests that in order to radically change public service in localities, central government reform maybe necessary.

These findings point to some of the challenges that local areas will need to overcome if they want to embrace a place-based approach.

Among the services offered by the Idox Knowledge Exchange, one of the most popular is our Ask a Researcher service.

In the past few months we’ve answered enquiries ranging from older people’s employment to young people’s housing; from rural inequalities to smart cities; and from early intervention to dispute resolution.

The Ask a Researcher service is available on a pay-per-search basis, or access can be included as part of an Information Service subscription. For more information, please contact us.

Britain’s cities push for more powers

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Manchester Town Hall: (Photograph, James Carson)

On 9 February, leading politicians, decision makers and academics will meet in Glasgow to discuss how more powers can be devolved to the UK’s cities. The meeting is being organised by the Core Cities group, which advocates a bigger say for Britain’s major cities outside London.

The Glasgow gathering is the latest sign of a growing appetite for financial freedom for the UK’s cities and regions.  The movement picked up pace during the Scottish independence referendum campaign with the pledge by political party leaders at Westminster to give more powers to the Scottish Parliament.  The subsequent publication of the Smith Commission’s recommendations  prompted Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council and chair of the Core Cities UK cabinet, to respond:

“What’s good enough for the Scottish Parliament should be good enough for big cities across the UK. Today’s commission report unveils significant fiscal devolution for Scotland and the power to retain more of the tax revenue it raises. This is something that Core Cities UK strongly advocates for cities on both sides of the border, giving us the power to make a difference on the ground and unlocking their full potential.”

But even before the Smith Commission had reported, devolution for cities was rising up the political agenda, and the major Westminster parties had already started setting out their proposals:

  • In November, the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, unveiled a plan to give Manchester new powers over transport, planning, housing, police and skills. Similar packages are proposed for Leeds and Sheffield, part of the government’s commitment to build a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ as a counterbalance to the ‘London super-region’;
  • The Labour Party has promised that, if elected to government, it will pass control of business rates to the major cities, and that the House of Lords will be replaced by a senate of elected regional and city representatives;
  • The Liberal Democrats have called for devolution on demand to be offered to any part of England with a population in excess of one million.

Politics is one factor driving the demand for more city devolution; another is the economic situation. As the Centre For Cities recently observed:

“From a public finance perspective, there is an increasing realisation that future reductions in public sector expenditure will be impossible to deliver without changing the way public services are designed and delivered, and this requires more to be done at the local level.”

For many, the moves to cut the purse strings held by Whitehall and Westminster are long overdue.  The City Growth Commission noted in October that the UK has the most centralised system of public finance of any major OECD country, with sub-national taxation accounting for only 1.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compared to 5% in France and 16% in Sweden.

The Commission argued that more powers for the cities would build on the momentum of the government’s City Deals by creating stronger, more inclusive and sustainable growth in the UK, and suggested that London, Manchester and West Yorkshire are already equipped to take on the risks and benefits of fiscal and funding devolution.  While some, including the Prime Minister, welcomed the report, others, such as Stephen Brady, leader of Hull city council felt short changed:

“I’m really, really disappointed that Hull once again has been overlooked in favour of the bigger cities. We’re like the forgotten city, despite being strategically so important. We’ve won the City of Culture 2017 bid. What else can we do to prove that we want to be given the chance to run things ourselves?”

His response is a reminder that establishing a comprehensive devolution settlement that covers all of Britain will prove challenging.

Ultimately, the real prize of city devolution could be a fairer society. A report from the International Monetary Fund in April 2014 found that decentralising government expenditure and revenue can help achieve a more equal distribution of income. But the authors stressed that this would require several conditions to be fulfilled, including comprehensive decentralisation on both the expenditure and revenue sides.

During its Glasgow meeting in February, the Core Cities group promises to unveil a ‘Charter for Local Freedom’ setting out the powers  it wants central government to devolve down to cities. And with cities set to play a key role in shaping the outcome of the general election, it’s clear that this is one issue that will continue to build. As Alexandra Jones from the Centre for Cities observes:

“The debates about devolution and the city regions have not always had political momentum; there’s no shortage of that now.”

Further reading

We’ll be attending the Core Cities Devolution Summit on 9 February – follow @idoxinfoservice for live tweets and this blog for follow-up commentary.

Devo-City: a short guide to Britain’s devolving city regions in words and data

Tales of the cities

Economic growth through devolution: towards a plan for cities and counties across England

Charter for devolution

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