Regeneration & Renewal,
21 September 2009
This story was the subject of a subsequent correction. Please see published correction at the foot of this story.
A Conservative government would abolish regional development agencies within its first week if the party wins the next general election, the shadow communities and local government minister said last week.
Speaking at a Regeneration & Renewal event co-hosted with Basildon Renaissance Partnership, Stewart Jackson said that RDAs would be abolished under a Tory government and their funding handed instead to elected local mayors.
His statement on the future of the RDAs is the strongest yet from the Tories. Jackson has repeatedly stated that the RDAs would be abolished under the Conservatives, but other Tories, including former shadow business secretary Alan Duncan, have said that the agencies would be stripped of planning powers and asked to focus on economic development.
However, Jackson also suggested that one of the RDAs, understood to be One North-East, could be retained and exist as a local enterprise partnership.
In his speech, Jackson also set out proposed details of a Conservative green paper on regeneration, which he said was due to be released in November.
Among a range of legislative changes aimed at allowing councils to enhance business activity in their areas, he said the Tory's "top priority" is to replace the Local Authority Business Growth Incentive scheme with a Business Increase Bonus. Under the Bib model, if the amount of business growth in a local authority area is higher than the national average, the council would be entitled to keep the difference for six years, he said.
Conservative sets out RDA policy
Regeneration & Renewal, 26 October 2009
The Conservatives would not make any "kneejerk" decisions about the future of individual regional development agencies in the aftermath of a general election victory, shadow regeneration minister Stewart Jackson said last week.
Last month, Regeneration & Renewal reported that Jackson had said that the Tories would abolish the RDAs within the first week of coming to power. We now accept that this was incorrect, and that, although Jackson had said that the Tories "will abolish" the RDAs, he had not put a timetable on the process.
Tory shadow business minister Mark Prisk has since said that his team is making no commitment to scrap RDAs. Speaking at Regeneration & Renewal's Northern Regeneration Summit last week, Jackson said the Tories would not axe RDAs without first checking that this was what local councils and their private and voluntary sector partners wanted.
