03A pragmatic English Devolution White Paper
There is still a chance to avoid these issues. A clear emphasis in the English Devolution White Paper on economic geography, with an eye on local finance reform, creating simpler local government, and a national shift to mayoral leadership would ensure devolution fixes problems rather than creating more.
The approach would be simple and pragmatic, with three requirements:
1. Use High Skill Travel to Work Areas to define economic geography.
Competing definitions of economic geography and competing considerations for devolution can make it appear difficult to develop a clear preferred geography.
High Skill Travel to Work Areas (HS-TTWAs) – essentially the commuting areas of higher skilled workers – are the best geography for devolution to aim towards, for two key reasons.
First, HS-TTWAs are larger than “regular” Travel to Work Areas, and so include a mix of affluent and poorer neighbourhoods, making it possible for them to absorb fiscal devolution without increasing inequality.
Second, HS-TTWAs are small enough that large cities and counties with urban economies are consistently contained within distinct HS-TTWAs.
They capture the geography that housing and labour markets operate over and are a sensible scale for local economic policy, such that improvements in planning, transport, and skills have the best possible chance of increasing local and national growth.
2. Use district councils to build simple devolution structures that match economic geography.
Most modern devolution proposals use upper-tier county and unitary councils as their basis. This is understandable; lower-tier district councils have few powers, and moving them from one county to another or promoting them to unitary status solves few of the problems facing local government or local economies.
The big advantage in using district councils as the building blocks for devolution is that it allows for closer alignment between new structures and economic geography without redrawing the boundaries from scratch, because they are smaller than counties and many unitaries. This may make the devolution process more complicated than just dealing with upper-tier authorities. However, the end result is a simpler local government system, if districts are then promoted to unitary boroughs in combined authorities and merged into new unitary authorities elsewhere.
3. Combined authorities for the big cities, county unitaries for the shires.
For “wider” devolution to work, the counties need distinct devolution arrangements to the big cities.
Combined authorities in the big cities are the “strategic” economic service providers working with local authorities that deliver “personal” social services.
In the shires, which have local economies with larger areas but smaller populations than the big cities, “strategic” and “personal” services see economies of scale over very similar areas. Two-tier government therefore becomes much harder to justify in shires that are to be governed according to economic geography, especially when county councils already deliver most “personal” services.
The English Devolution White Paper should prioritise combined authorities in the big cities, with governance split between metro mayors and boroughs, and unitary county authorities elsewhere in the country.
These unitary counties should have the powers of both local authorities and combined authorities under devolution. The logic is the same as that of the Redcliffe-Maud Report, still widely considered the best proposal for local government reform in England since it was accepted and almost implemented by Harold Wilson in 1969.
This may seem radical. But all of the big cities now have combined authorities, and unitarisation is already half-complete in the shires and completed in the devolved nations. Only one two-tier county remains in the North (Lancashire), and experienced local government commentators recognise unitarisation is already the direction of travel. Reports suggest the Government is considering this option in the White Paper and it should pursue it.