Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-173)
MS TRISH
HAINES, MR
KEN FOOTE
AND MR
LAIRD RYAN
20 MARCH 2006
Q160 Mr Olner: The footprint is not
wrong—it is too big?
Mr Foote: We are yet to be convinced
with the proposed footprints of the ambulance service and the
police service, in regard to sensitivity to local issues.
Q161 Mr Olner: I know that Staffordshire
is well in love with the West Midlands on all of these issues—are
you not?
Mr Ryan: The new localism, if
you like, is putting increased pressure on those services to link
in to local demands and identities; and yet at the same time they
are trying to create a regional perspective for them, so the two
definitely run counter to each other.
Mr Foote: I thought that was a
really important point because at the same time we are having
this debate about regions, sub-regions and city regions, most
town halls are now devolving lots of powers and governance to
neighbourhood levels, and so we have to see this in some kind
of continuum and not have too big gaps opening up in terms of
accountability and strategy.
Q162 Mr Olner: Mr Foote, at one stage
you are saying you are going to devolve things to a lower level
locally, and it is moving in other regions the other way, to make
things bigger. Does the one in the middle disappear?
Mr Foote: That is why we are very
interested, particularly where we are because of the geography
of the north, in the sub-regional, city regional agenda, because
we see that as the real opportunity to connect both to the street
and to the region; and because of where the Humber is, we have
as much interest in what is happening in Rotterdam as we do other
parts of the country, so we are wanting to try and connect all
those places with some kind of strategic thread.
Q163 Mr Betts: To Hull and Stoke;
you have obviously large parts of severe deprivation and low activity
in your areas. How do you think city regions would address that
particular issue?
Mr Ryan: I think that they would
create a wider perspective for the strengths and weaknesses and
opportunities that we can use to address the issue. Over the past
twenty years or so there has been a whole series of initiatives
like SRBs, derelict land grants, a housing market renewable partnership
and so forth, which have tended to focus on the weaknesses of
the area, and allow the area in a sense to pull itself up by its
own bootstraps. The reality is that a city regional perspective
widens the economic opportunities. For example, the zone of influence
of Stoke-on-Trent extends across three regions, into the North
West and then to the East Midlands; but because the regional economic
strategies collect the data region by region, we cannot see the
benefits of what is going on in the city in terms of the wider
area. We also have, for example, am automotive corridor that runs
along the A50 and the A500 from Bentley and Crewe, through Stoke,
through JCB at Uttoxeter and to the west side of Derby. It enables
us to identify the way that labour and housing markets operate,
and the environmental perspective and the way that that operates.
If we just look at it in terms of our city boundaries, we do not
do full justice to the processes that go on.
Q164 Mr Betts: Was not one of the
problems of trying to do it through almost loose working relationships
that Hull and East Anglia had a bit of a problem, did they not,
on housing market renewal, in getting its act together and getting
funds? If you had been in an athletics race, you would have been
lapped by one or two of the other contestants.
Mr Foote: No, the baton has been
handed down. What I was going to say- funnily enough before you
asked that question was that if you had East Riding giving evidence
to you, they would be saying that it is absolutely crucial for
the sustainability of the East Riding that Hull works as a city
and vice versa; and that the relationships and the interconnectivity
between Hull and the East Riding is properly understood between
the two councils. There is an enormous amount of cross-boundary
activity going on. That perhaps was not the case back when there
was the break-up of Humberside and the two or three years that
followed that; those days have gone now. We actually see that
we have got a shared agenda.
Q165 Mr Betts: Concern has been expressed
in relation to city regions that those authorities, those small
towns that may be on the periphery of a city region—and
indeed might be in an overlapping area between two city regions—that
they somehow lost out in the loose federations that get formed.
Is that an issue of concern that has been raised and you are trying
to address that?
Mr Ryan: No, not at all. If you
look at our own example in south Cheshire, there are two contrasting
authorities: Crewe and Nantwich, and Congleton. Crewe and Nantwich
have a very successful engineering sector and a number of chemical
industry research establishments, and it has a very high-quality
living environment. However, they are not recognised as being
part of the Manchester city region. They tried to join and they
were rejected. Congleton is an area that falls between Manchester
and ourselves. They have an image as being a commuter centre both
northwards and southwards. The whole idea of the city regional
approach that we are trying to adopt is one based around governance
and the strengths of the areas. It is trying to complement what
is going on in the city centre with the opportunities of small
towns and rural areas so that there is, if you like, a fair exchange
between them.
Mr Betts: Clearly, there may be a division
of opinion about how city regions should be governed, whether
it is this loose coming-together of a number of existing authorities
which pool their efforts on a slightly wider area—but equally
can look out if they get nasty decisions that they do not want
to be part of; or having something that is more formalised with
directly-elected councillors or a mayor—as the RPPR has
just come out in favour of—for a city region, with a more
formal structure with the hope that central government would recognise
that and target resources at it. Do you have views on that?
Q166 Chair: Can we have a brief view
from each of you—a "yes" or "no" really?
Mr Ryan: Yes, as long as it is
not the one-size-fits-all approach.
Q167 Chair: So either, but depending
on which city.
Mr Ryan: Yes.
Mr Foote: Local communities have
lots of experience through local strategic partnerships of being
able to manage areas through governance arrangements, which are
not necessarily governmental arrangements.
Ms Haines: Voluntary arrangements
work up to a point. They do not work as soon as you start getting
conflicting local priorities in different areas, and you have
to have some other mechanism for dealing with that. The tried
and tested one, in a sense, is LGR, which has some significant
downsides. There are a couple of other options, one of which is
the elected mayors that you talked about; and another would be
loading funding arrangements into strategic planning, to require
it to be done on a joint basis, which has been done in a very
limited way.
Q168 Alison Seabeck: Ms Haines, you
have already covered some of the benefits that you feel Reading
could gain from becoming a city region, and in a sense some of
those are also clear from your submission in which you comment
that Reading Council is restricted in its ability to take a whole
range of decisions because it does not have a wider remit outside
its own boundaries. How do the other five authorities within your
urban area feel about that—your expansion, if you like?
Ms Haines: They have different
views. Some of the views are different from ours and from each
other, so there is not a consensus on this, and that is part of
the problem; that there is no clear way forward coming out of
the councils working together.
Q169 Alison Seabeck: What are their
concerns? Can you pinpoint any specific concerns, or is it across
a range of issues that they just feel that your political clout
will simply subsume them?
Ms Haines: The concerns are around
two specific things, and they both relate to economic growth:
for those on the outside ring of a city region gaining the benefit
from economic growth without having to carry many of the costs
of it; and those on the inside of the city region carrying many
of the costs and having to bear them disproportionately. The voluntary
arrangements around things like key-worker housing, the voluntary
sector, et cetera are not a problem because everybody thinks
those are a good thing to do. As soon as it comes to crucial things
like housing numbers to facilitate economic growth or road-building
schemes or other transport infrastructure arrangements that might
lead to more congestion, or traffic being routed differently,
then each authority looks to the interests of its own local area,
quite legitimately obviously. What we have not got is a view across
that wider region that transcends administrative boundaries. It
is stifling strategic planning.
Q170 Alison Seabeck: You are suggesting
that you need to have some form of city regional government rather
than just purely voluntary governance for structures if you are
to make those decisions on a broader basis.
Ms Haines: Yes, Chair. The current
governance arrangements are insufficient for the strategic view
that needs to be taken on some things. It is sufficient in lots
of ways, but there are some specific areas, specifically around
strategic planning, where they are insufficient. I think there
are several routes that could provide that—as I say, a spectrum
from required joint strategic planning backed up by allocation
of funding at one end to local government reorganisation or elected
mayors or whatever at the other end. There are different routes
that lead to that.
Q171 Alison Seabeck: Let us move
forward and assume there is a greater Reading, a city region around
Reading: how do you envisage that functioning with the London
city region and the Mayor and his powers, because there will undoubtedly
be overlaps?
Ms Haines: The overlaps are there
at the moment, so in discussions with London around things like
Crossrail those discussions go on, and I do not think that that
would be any different. It might be a slightly more equal discussion
because London is not only very large and powerful but it is very
well organised in the way that the rest of the councils in the
South East do not speak with as coherent a voice as they might
do.
Q172 Alison Seabeck: You raised rail
as one of the overlaps. Scenario: Reading signal box needs to
be upgraded—very, very expensive; Mayor decides he does
not want to spend the money there, given that he is going to potentially
have powers over overground lines going into London, and he wants
to upgrade Paddington Station for the same amount: who do you
see acting as a broker in that position?
Ms Haines: Reading Station is
an interesting example because it is not a regional scheme, it
is a national one, because it is not Reading it primarily affects;
it is the South West—
Q173 Alison Seabeck: It was an example,
but if you had that clash?
Ms Haines: I would say that one
goes back to the Department for Transport, not to the Mayor for
London. However, I take your point and there are other examples,
and that is a real issue. I have to be honest and say I have not
thought about a region with London at the head of it because London
administratively is so separate from the rest of the South East,
so I am not sure how else to answer your question.
Chair: Thank you all very much for helping
us to explore city regions in an amoeba-like way!
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