The Department of Communities and Local Government committee concluded that considerable confusion surrounds the future of regional policy and much will depend on the Treasury's review of sub-national arrangements for economic development, expected to be published in the autumn.

City Regions have been proposed by various parties as an alternative or an addition to existing regional government structures for some time. However the committee expressed its disappointment at the lack of clear detail on the concept in the recent Local Government White Paper (see earlier story in knowledgebase).

The committee accepted that the economic case for City Regions is compelling and that their economic role could be achieved without the wholesale re-organisation of existing administrative structures i.e. the regional assemblies [in the south east - SEERA] and the regional development agencies or RDAs [in the south east - SEEDA] and the government offices [in the south east - GOSE].

The committee agreed with many commentators who see City Regions as the most realistic route towards devolved decision-making in the wake of the North East referendum on regional government, which rejected establishing an elected layer of bureaucracy between central and local government.

However, a warning note was sounded that policy also needs to ensure that any development of a UK City Regions policy will not result in a reduction of support for those areas for which this approach is not appropriate. In the south east, for instance, we have few cities that have the economic clout of the large metropolitan conurbations in the north.

The capacity of RDAs to support areas outside City Regions would be an important element of any new policy direction that moved towards their creation.

The Committee also expressed concern about the lack of democratic accountability of RDAs and called for greater scrutiny powers for the existing regional assembly.