Examination of Witnesses (Questions 513-519)
MR PAUL
ROGERSON, MS
NICOLE BROCK,
MR MICHAEL
FRATER AND
DR SIMON
MURPHY
12 JUNE 2006
Q513 Alison Seabeck: Thank you very much
for coming. First of all, can I offer the Chair's apologies, she
is in Iran today. If you could start by identifying yourselves
for the record, please, your name and your role?
Mr Rogerson: I am Paul Rogerson
, I am the Chief Executive of Leeds City Council.
Ms Brock: I am Nicole Brock, I
am Head of Regional Policy at Leeds City Council.
Mr Frater: I am Michael Frater,
I am Chief Executive at Telford and Wrekin Council.
Dr Murphy: I am Simon Murphy,
the City Region Project Director.
Alison Seabeck: Thank you very much.
I am very grateful to you for having rushed here having had a
horrible journey from the West Midlands.
Q514 John Cummings: In your submission,
that is the submission from Birmingham, you describe the role
of city-regions as "building urban and regional competitiveness
and reducing regional imbalance". What do you mean by "regional
imbalance"? Can you tell the Committee what you can do to
reduce it, and how will you do it?
Dr Murphy: The regional imbalance
is in terms of the prosperity gap and the GVA figures between
the best performing parts of the United Kingdom and those that
are currently under-performing. Our estimation is that the city-region
at the urban core of the West Midlands is an under-performing
region. How we would close that gap is by targeting strategic
decision-making on certain key policy areas, namely transport,
housing and sustainable communities, competitive locations, economic
development if you will, innovation and enterprise, particularly
skills and employment, and the area of creativity and culture.
We believe by taking decisions at a city-region level across eight
council areas, working with partners such as the Development Agency,
the Learning and Skills Council, the Regional Assembly and the
business community, all of whom since we submitted our evidence
have agreed to join the executive board, so we have a very broad
based executive board taking these decisions in those policy areas,
taking decisions on a collective basis across a wider area, will
enable us to take strategic decisions more quickly and to spend
public and private monies more effectively and more efficiently
than currently is the case.
Mr Frater: As well as imbalance
between regions there is intra-regional imbalance within the region
as well. There is growing evidence that there is an economic fault
line that runs broadly north/south through the West Midlands and
to the west of it, places like Telford, where I work, and Stoke
where there are significant challenges. Telford's GVA is on a
par with the likes of Stoke, Blackburn, Grimsby, at the bottom
of the league, so there is an opportunity to address imbalance
within the region as well as between regions.
Q515 John Cummings: Do you think
that this is a role that all cities can play or should the Government
be concentrating on the development of only a few city-regions?
Mr Frater: Like many initiatives,
this is an initiative that started within local government from
the eight core cities which had been working together for some
years and proposed this idea to Government. It does seem to me
that certainly the starting point has to be the major core cities
outside the capital. Whether there is advantage for other towns
and cities to follow suit, for example in our own region Stoke-on-Trent
are proposing that they will form their own city-region which
makes a lot of sense as they really look equally to the East Midlands
cities, to Manchester and to Birmingham, I think Stoke-on-Trent
will demonstrate whether this is a concept that is applicable,
as it were, at the smaller city level and at the town level.
Q516 John Cummings: So you are not
averse to more cities being brought under the umbrella of city-regions?
Dr Murphy: Currently Government
is inviting us to describe to them how we would actually run a
city-region in the urban core with the West Midlands. We are doing
that in terms of the governance models we would put in place,
in terms of the policy areas where we believe this wider base
of decision-making can have a strategic impact in terms of closing
the prosperity gap and increasing the quality of life for our
citizens. I guess if the model is proved to work in one or two
areas, or maybe more, it is something the Government could consider
rolling out across the whole of the country and inviting other
areas to look at city-regions also. We, and Leeds, I am sure,
are by no means the only two within the country currently working
on this agenda but we are responding to encouragement from Government
to come forward with our proposals on how we would do it ourselves.
Q517 Mr Betts: I just want to explore
with you about the fact that you are developing a City Region
Development Plan—this is Birmingham—and you have already
got a West Midlands Spatial Strategy in existence. Are you intending
for your plan to supersede the Spatial Strategy, is it going to
be a part of it, or is it a building block towards it? What happens
if there is a conflict between the two? Presumably you want your
plan to be the one that is taken account of and perhaps the Regional
Assembly's efforts are not worthwhile any more?
Mr Frater: If I could start the
answer to that. Within the region I have the responsibility for
the strategic overview of the Regional Spatial Strategy and I
am also, as it happens, the recently appointed secretary to the
Regional Assembly, so I would be in serious trouble with my colleagues
if they thought the Regional Spatial Strategy was going to be
subject to being driven just by the eight authorities. The answer
is no, I think we see the Regional Spatial Strategy, which is
currently going through its first review, particularly in light
of the housing numbers, as being the principal means of achieving
housing growth. The RSS as currently formulated, and I do not
think that will change fundamentally, sees most of that growth
taking place within the existing metropolitan areas. In that sense
there is not a fundamental conflict between the two. The challenge
with the new housing forecasts is how those numbers are going
to be achieved across the region, not just within the major urban
area, certainly in the short-term.
Q518 Mr Betts: What happens if there
is a conflict? You would have a particular problem wearing two
hats in a conflict.
Mr Frater: Indeed.
Q519 Mr Betts: How would a conflict
be resolved? If the Assembly organisation has a view on life and
the Regional Assembly does not share the same view, you have got
a problem, have you not?
Mr Frater: We would have if we
allowed that situation to develop, but I do not believe we will.
Firstly, the Regional Assembly chair sits on the shadow board
for the city-region. Given the nature of the RSS, which is not
going to fundamentally change—it will change in detail but
not in principle—which already declares that the majority
of growth should be within the major urban areas, there is not
going to be a fundamental conflict there.
Dr Murphy: Can I add a point to
that which Michael was making about the executive board that will
be running the city-region. It will have the eight leaders on
it in terms of its governance structure but there will also be
the chair of the Development Agency, the chair of the regional
Learning and Skills Council, the chair of the West Midlands Regional
Assembly, as Michael has said, and also a business representative.
Some of the issues that you are raising there we hope would be
dealt with by the executive board before they ever became an issue
in terms of conflict. Currently there is a review of our Regional
Economic Strategy which is driven by the Development Agency and
we are working very closely with them to ensure that our City
Region Development Plan and the new RES complement each other
and, indeed, within the Regional Economic Strategy the city-region
working is seen as a delivery mechanism for some of the key aspirations
that will be within that wider West Midlands Regional Economic
Strategy from the Development Agency.
Mr Frater: We have developed the
programmes for the Regional Economic Strategy review and the Regional
Spatial Strategy review so that they run in parallel to the same
timescales so we can have read across between the two.
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