Written evidence from County Councils
Network (CCN) (ARSS 61)
The County Councils Network (CCN) is a cross-party
special interest group of the Local Government Association which
speaks, develops policy and shares best practice for the County
family of local authorities, whether unitary or upper tier. CCN's
38 member councils, with over 2,500 Councillors, serve 24 million
people over 45 thousand square miles or 87% of England.
The CCN has undertaken extensive policy and good
practice work on sub-regional arrangements, economic development,
and local government action to tackle the recession. The CCN therefore
welcomes the opportunity to engage with the CLG Select Committee's
inquiry into the abolition of Regional Spatial Strategies. The
following response was agreed by elected members at CCN Council
on 8 September 2010.
In the "CCN Manifesto" published in advance
of the 2010 General Election, the CCN argued:
…that powers, functions and funding should
be devolved from unelected regional and sub regional bodies to
elected local government, and to county authorities in continuing
multi-tier areas. This would include responsibility for strategic
economic development, regional planning (both spatial planning
and economic strategy) and learning and skills. In continuing
multi-tier areas county councils would take responsibility for
sub-regional spatial and economic strategies, working with other
authorities in the region to ensure that where needed there is
an overall congruent regional strategy which relates both to the
specific needs of sub regions and to national strategy.
The CCN therefore supports the devolution of a wide
range of economic and business support functions from the regional
tier to a geographic scale which more accurately reflects functional
economic geographies, and provides for a balance between local
knowledge and flexibility, and strategic capacity. As part of
this, the CCN welcomes in principle the abolition of regional
spatial strategies.
Addressing the particular questions identified by
the inquiry's terms of reference, the CCN would make the following
points:
Targets do not build houses, and regional totals
in particular do not necessarily build the right houses in the
right places. While some communities have felt that too much housing
development has been planned for their area, there are other examples
of locally-supported, locally-needed, housing development which
has been rejected at Ministerial level because of a "regional
plan" which was set remotely from those communities.
CCN considers that a sub-regional approach to planning
grounded in local democracy and awareness of the aspirations and
needs of local areas is more likely to result in sustainable housing
growth and support strong economic performance than top down imposition
of targets.
The impact of the Government's incentive plan is,
at this stage, hard to predict with confidence. The CCN supports
a greater recognition of population growth in local government
funding, and this is one way of achieving that, provided funding
is distributed in line with service costs. However, as present
indications are that the funding will be found from within the
existing grant, the offer of "funding from the centre"
is not all it appears, leaving local government potentially faced
with a zero-sum game. It will be possible to comment in more detail
when the proposed scheme is published.
The CCN supports flexible arrangements for ongoing
work on issues such as flooding, waste, and minerals, identified
as part of the RSS. In many cases there will be an existing plan
at unitary or upper-tier level, such as a county minerals plan,
or an existing amalgamation based on natural boundaries, as with
lead local flood authorities and in some areas of the country
amalgamations of Internal Drainage Boards representing a sub-catchment
area.
Where more formal cross-boundary working is required,
most CCN members are likely to feel that this should take place
on a similar geographic footprint to the Local Enterprise Partnership,
but should be led from the bottom up, rather than imposed by central
Government. If LEPs were to fulfil a planning function as suggested,
it would not be appropriate for that function to be exercised
by a body which had only a minority of members with a democratic
mandate.
The CCN would be happy to discuss the future of sub-regional
arrangements in more detail at the committee's convenience. For
more information, please contact.
September 2010
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