The Task Force has conducted a number of reviews over the past two years examining the nature of the relationships between individual central government departments and local government with a view to improving the way in which local services are monitored, regulated, and held to account by sponsor departments.

The catalyst for this most recent report was the Sub-National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration (SNR) and the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 (CSR),which recognise that economic development could be greatly enhanced of central government grants greater local flexibilities and much less bureaucracy.

The recommendations are directed at five Government Departments -

• Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG)
• Department for Business Enterprise & Regularity Reform (BERR),
• Department for Transport (DfT)
• Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills (DIUS)
• Department for Work & Pensions (DWP).

The Task Force was supportive of Multi Area Agreements (MAAs), which are voluntary, formal arrangements for agreed economic development priorities across local authority boundaries. Because they involve more than one local authority, their increased clout allows more devolution of funding, particularly for housing and transport, from central government to the local level but for MAAs to succeed, there needs to be an equal degree of commitment from national, regional, and local levels of government which isn’t always the case.

The review calls for more support to be available to areas that want to participate in MAAs. Among the specific economic burdens inhibiting local authorities the review cites an apparent difficulty among Regional Development Agencies (RDSs) to respond effectively where sub-regional partnerships cross over regional boundaries. It is also suggested that RDAs impose excessive evaluation and monitoring requirements on funds that they might devolve to a MAA.

It is recommended that the new Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) to be imposed on local authorities to measure their performance should be sufficient to assess their capacity to receive devolved funds from the RDAs.

The Task Force believes that the integration of Regional Economic Strategies and Regional Spatial Strategies (see earlier story) is a good step in streamlining planning to assist economic regeneration. Local and sub-regional economic assessments proposed in the SNR should form the starting point for the new integrated regional strategies.

The review also addressed the practical problems faced by local authorities in securing funding to support long-term and spatially focused strategic aims often exacerbated by the short term, fragmented, and uncertain nature of public funding sources which makes it difficult to secure private sector investment

The Task Force supports an approach where government departments and agencies agree on local priorities with local authorities and sub-regional partnerships and then commit to investment strategies that support these priorities over the longer term.

Current and proposed methods for raising finance locally – e.g. Local Authority Business Growth Incentive (LABGI), Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), Supplementary Business Rate (SBR), and the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) are all generally supported. However, the difficulty of juggling this cocktail of funding packages to invest in long-term infrastructure projects was criticised.

The Task Force is in favour of incentive schemes like LABGI but suggested rewards should be made over a three-year period, where there is evidence that they contribute to business growth and economic development, and where they are simple, predictable, fair and transparent.

The Task Force noted the mounting change that is in process around the skills and worklessness agendas. The key theme that has emerged from the evidence is a call for councils to be more involved in decisions about skills provision via a more local, flexible, and responsive system linking the business plans for Jobcentre Plus (JCP) and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) to local priorities.

It is hoped that the new Employment & Skills Boards (ESB) offer an opportunity to align and focus budgets on local circumstances. The Brighton & Hove Economic Partnership sits on the Sussex ESB.

Unsurprisingly, the barriers to aligning and pooling mainstream funding from different government departments to tackle skills and worklessness were identified as a significant burden. Some departments just don’t play (see earlier story)

The Task Force recommends that the commissioning of employment support services should be based on economic geographies that reflect local labour markets.