City-regions: stand together or fall apart

Ben Walker, Regeneration & Renewal, 18 July 2008

Sometimes it's worth counting back. The first wave of multi-area agreements, deals that allow councils in a metropolitan area to pool their funding and spend it against a set of agreed priorities, were signed off this week. That is almost three years after one of the Maa areas, Greater Manchester, first proposed a metropolitan senate to direct policy across the conurbation. Compare Manchester's experience to that of London. Greater Manchester's Maa is only a first step to it creating a city-regional senate. Yet the mayoral Greater London Authority was proposed, put to referendum, legislated for, elected and installed in just two years and three months. Little wonder that the former minister for London, Nick Raynsford, corrects people when they suggest that moves towards city-regional governance would waste time and take forever.

Maas were proposed in November 2006, 18 months ago - or two-thirds of the time it took to create the entire Greater London Authority mayoral system. Thirteen city-regions applied for Maas, although Birmingham soon dropped out. And this week only seven were approved - including the surprise package of Greater Bournemouth, but not Greater Liverpool nor Greater Bristol. For its part, the Department for Communities and Local Government has been clear throughout the process that Maas must demonstrate clear and robust accountability and governance to get the nod. Greater Liverpool, says one politician in the area, still falls short of that bar.

"I think the Government, rightly, has some concerns about the governance arrangements," says Joe Anderson, leader of the opposition Labour group on Liverpool City Council. "The informal, existing partnership between Greater Liverpool's districts is too risky: we could end up spending a lot of time and effort working up and agreeing outcomes of the Maa, and then someone, on a whim, decides they are not supportive of it."

The Liverpool City-Region says it expects the green light for its Maa when the DCLG assesses the next set of applicants in the autumn. Whether it and the other four unsuccessful Maas actually get it will depend on whether they can produce a document which gives the Government confidence that the sort of unilateral declaration of independence outlined by Anderson will not occur. "They realised themselves that the partnerships are not in the right place to come to government with a fully worked up set of proposals," says a senior DCLG source. "The strength of the partnership is really quite critical. As is the strength of the governance."

Communities secretary Hazel Blears dropped a big hint this week that she believes the best way to fill the governance gap and attract more devolved funding to city-regions is to have a city-regional mayor in charge of the Maas. Yet the idea is despised by many councillors. Still, Blears hinted to local reporters that she may force referendums for mayors on city-regions such as Birmingham. "She sees Maas as a stepping-stone towards directly-elected city-regional mayors," says Dermot Finch, director of think-tank the Centre for Cities. "That's not official government policy - yet - but it's clearly the way Hazel sees it."

The DCLG source won't be drawn, saying only that they demand transparent, democratic governance for the Maas. However, back in Liverpool, Anderson, one of the few councillors of core cities to support the city-regional mayoral model, says mayors are now the "elephant in the room" in the Maa process. Installing elected mayors may take time, but not, as Nick Raynsford reminds us, as long as many councillors would have us believe.