Advantage West Midlands has a new boss, but for how long?

By Jonathan Walker on Feb 25, 09 02:02 PM in Politics

The West Midlands is to have a new business czar in the form of Sir Roy McNulty, former chair of the Civil Aviation Authority.

He has been appointed chair of Advantage West Midlands, the government quango with a £300 million budget which is responsible for supporting the region's economy.

But for how long will he be in the job? As the Birmingham Post reported earlier this month, Conservatives have announced that a Tory government would abolish bodies like Advantage West Midlands, which are known as regional development agencies.

The report has prompted some dissent - as did a story I wrote last year, during the Conservative conference, which predicted the announcement - from people who dispute that abolish is the right word.

The Tory proposal has two parts. First, they will remove the powers of regional development agency, except those directly related to economic development. The agencies will no longer play a role in housing or planning, for example.

Clearly, this does not mean they will be abolished.

But the second part of the Tory proposal is to invite councils to take over the remaining responsibility - economic development - and transfer it to new organisations they create themselves, called enterprise partnerships.

These will cover boundaries determined by local authorities, instead of huge regions such as the West Midlands. They will be answerable to local councils, not Ministers in London. And they will spend the money currently spent by regional development agencies.

If you like, you can argue that these are a modified version of regional development agencies rather than something brand new. Either way, everyone involved in economic development in the West Midlands needs to be ready for huge changes to the way the system works.

Here is what the Tory proposal says, in their own words:

"We believe that, in every case, the non-economic activities of development agencies should be localised, so we will immediately remove from regional development agencies (RDAs) all the powers they have been given as part of the present Government's attempt to turn them into unelected regional governments - including powers over housing, planning and 'regional spatial strategies'. These powers will immediately be given to elected local governments.

"We also believe that, even as development agencies, RDAs are often less effective than they could be, because they are defined by arbitrary regional boundaries. These arbitrary boundaries often fail to reflect the natural, local economies that have formed as a result of transport links, technological links, clusters of natural and human resources, and the choices made by businesses and their customers.

"As a consequence, the RDAs are much less able than they should be to help local businesses expand in good times and survive in bad times. So we will also give elected local authorities the power to come together to establish new enterprise partnerships that truly reflect natural economic divisions, and to take over from their RDAs the responsibility for economic development within those areas.

"These locally-established enterprise partnerships need to be non-bureaucratic and totally focused on helping businesses out of recession and into growth. To ensure that this need is met, the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatroy Reform will be required to satisfy himself that the areas covered by the new enterprise partnerships reflect natural economic patterns and have strong business leadership before he transfers to them the money currently spent by the RDAs."

The full Conservative policy paper can be downloaded here:
http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2009/02/Its_time_to_transfer_power_from_the_central_state_to_local_people.aspx

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