My thoughts on the English Devolution White Paper in a quick thread. The extra powers for big cities (rail and roads, planning, single settlement, geog alignment of police, fire and health etc) are all substantial improvements on what we have today. But outside the big cities... - ThreadSky

antbreach.bsky.social • 79 days ago

My thoughts on the English Devolution White Paper in a quick thread. The extra powers for big cities (rail and roads, planning, single settlement, geog alignment of police, fire and health etc) are all substantial improvements on what we have today.

But outside the big cities...

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antbreach.bsky.social•79 days ago

It's not really clear why the big city devolution model is being extended to the shires. Abolishing two-tier government, only to then recreate it again in the shires seems to me like lots of pain for not a huge amount of gain. https://www.centreforcities.org/blog/combined-authorities-are-the-wrong-choice-for-the-shires/

antbreach.bsky.social•79 days ago

The idea that we need a 'strategic tier' when EDWP already commits to (internationally very large!) 500k+ local authorities is strange to me.

For example on planning - a big 500k+ shire that does all the planning across a housing and labour market area would be nice and simple.

antbreach.bsky.social•79 days ago

In contrast, creating new 500k+ unitaries and then new strategic authorities on top of several at a time, that then try to negotiate a strategic plan (ie adjusting housing numbers between them) will be awkward and politically fraught.

danielphilips.bsky.social•79 days ago

Yes 3 (500k) into 1 SA (1.5m) seems quite a starter ration. Many old counties are around 1m so it might just end up merging some small LA’s. The Home Counties seem the hardest to make fit.

danielphilips.bsky.social•79 days ago

Buckinghamshire UA- who can they sensibly really form a SA with? Say a merger with Berkshire creates an odd shape where half the population is in one UA?

antbreach.bsky.social•79 days ago

Quite. It's really something that makes a lot of sense from a Whitehall process perspective, but in terms of getting stuff done on the ground...

antbreach.bsky.social•79 days ago

Of course, big cities are more important for the national economy than the shires, so on net it might be a win. But there are still two concerns at the front of my mind even for devolution to the big cities:

antbreach.bsky.social•79 days ago

1) If the Government goes "wider" by negotiating with existing LAs case by case on geography, it will take ages and consume enormous amounts of civil service bandwidth without improving growth

(even before we address phasing of abolishing districts, how strategic plans are agreed etc)

antbreach.bsky.social•79 days ago

2) If after everything we end up with a 'dead end' structure that makes it much harder to do fiscal devolution, then everywhere will be in serious trouble. Fiscal devo is the only way out of the local funding crisis, but it requires certain principles to work well.

alonlevy.bsky.social•79 days ago

What's the argument against just doing single-tier government but at the Met County level instead of the municipal level?

antbreach.bsky.social•79 days ago

Single tier for shire counties makes sense. For metro counties, logic is there is a distinction between 'strategic' services that need to match econ geography (transport, planning, skills etc) and 'personal' services (social housing, care, libraries, parks) which don't benefit from econs of scale.

antbreach.bsky.social•79 days ago

This distinction matters more in big cities as the population levels are just bigger and the challenges of local governance are more complex

alonlevy.bsky.social•79 days ago

Wait, what's wrong with libraries at the scale of a large city like New York?

And re social housing, overlocalization leads to NIMBY empowerment.

antbreach.bsky.social•79 days ago

Nothing necessarily. But there's a tradition in England that considers local governance that's closer to people as better. That's more defensible for non economic services.

Politics of housing/social housing are different in the UK - moving up to a city region level could be more Nimby

alonlevy.bsky.social•79 days ago

I thought in London there was more local-level NIMBYism than citywide NIMBYism?

antbreach.bsky.social•78 days ago

That's true for housing in general. In terms of social the partisan split matters more (the other aspect is if you're thinking about the statutory duty for local gov to deal with social housing need, then it makes some sense to think about it at a semi-neighbourhood scale rather than city-region)

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