Combined Authorities for more sub-regions? – Learning the adverse lessons from England beyond the metropolitan conurbations

an article by Alan Townsend (Durham University, UK) published in Local Economy: The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit Volume 34 Issue 2 (March 2019)

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of the latent need for further Combined Authorities across England and finds that there are many potential functional areas, like the Cambridge and Peterborough Authority, which merit them on grounds of size or growth.

They often correspond to Local Enterprise Partnership or past Multi-Area Agreement areas and stand among many abortive devolution proposals of the last four years.

Their travel-to-work areas frequently conflict with shire counties’ present boundaries, a problem which provides the strongest obstacle to new ‘larger-than-local’ governance arrangements.

The present government’s abandonment of the requirement for new non-city Combined Authorities to have a directly elected mayor would remove a main barrier to establishing new devolution agreements across England, which is delayed by the need for a promised policy paper from government.

Local institutions and local economic development: the Local Enterprise Partnerships in England, 2010–

an article by Andy Pike, Anja McCarthy and Peter O’Brien (Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, Newcastle University), David Marlow (Third Life Economics, Stamford, Cambridgeshire) and John Tomaney (The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London) published in Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society Volume 8 Number 2 (2015)

Abstract

This paper examines the roles of local institutions in economic development at the local level.

Drawing upon comparative analysis of the 39 local enterprise partnerships emergent in England since 2010, it demonstrates: how local economic development institutions work within multi-agent and multi-scalar institutional settings; the ways institutional genealogy shapes processes of layering and recombining as well as dismantling and improvising in episodes of institutional change and the analytical themes able to explore the roles and functions of institutions in local economic development.

JEL codes: H70, O10, O20, R58

Full text (HTML) and (PDF 20pp)

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New directions in economic development: Localist policy discourses and the Localism Act

an article by Gill Bentley (University of Birmingham, UK) and Lee Pugalis (Northumbria University, UK) published in Local Economy Volume 28 Number 3 (May 2013)

Abstract

Since entering office in 2010, a distinct grammar of localism has pervaded the UK Coalition Government’s philosophical outlook inflecting localist policy discourses and practice.

This article, written in June 2012, considers the implications of this new grammar for the scope, organisation and mobilisation of economic development interventions, through a focus on the 2011 Localism Act, which applies to England and Wales.

Interpreting these changes through a localist conceptual prism, which helps to refract varieties of localism, it raises some serious concerns regarding localism in action through exposing the controlling tendencies of central government. Analysis is also directed towards the uneasy relationship between centralised powers, conditional decentralisation and fragmented localism.

Nevertheless, emergent practice serves to demonstrate how ‘constrained freedoms’ can be negotiated to undertake innovative actions.

It concludes by suggesting some foundational elements that would support the notion of ‘empowered localities’ that may secure the government’s imperative to enable private sector-led growth.

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