Agenda item

The Chairman welcomed Phil Swann and Lisa McCance, Directors – Shared Intelligence, to the meeting and invited them to introduce the update.

Lisa presented a series of slides to Members which set out progress to date, early findings, and next steps.

Following the presentation, Members asked a number of questions and raised the following points:

• From both a County Council’s perspective, and from the perspective of new Councillors, is this reorganisation still going to give us the benefits that we all thought it would give in the first place?

• Have you had a look at potential opportunities for local authorities to be given devolution powers?

• This feels slightly outdated and that government’s agenda has now changed. We’ve seen government’s appetite for top-down spatial plans, we’ve seen them moving towards top-down housing targets and we’ve seen a lot of central direction from Whitehall coming back into the narrative.

• As a country, we have to move quickly to come out of the Covid-19 pandemic. I question whether local authorities can move quickly to achieve an agreed position on devolution and whether it’s on the backburner or whether there is a place for devolution as levelling-up is rolled out.

• There’s a great deal of consensus across the Board with regards to devolution and all of the challenges associated with it.

• The government need to be aware of matters within unitary authorities around the country.

• Devolution needs to continue, we can’t go on with the current local government structures that we have, we need to reform and ensure that the levelling-up agenda is delivered.

• We need to use the stalling of devolution to push the next conversation with government through options regarding accountability and also work within the framework that the government agenda has set out.

• I think that there is a switch from devolution as a subject to recovery as a subject and that that is where the emphasis needs to be.

• We need to be sure that this debate keeps up with the changing landscape.

• The government have always had a lack of capacity to focus on more than a small number of geographical areas at a time, which they have publicly acknowledged.

• Based on the evidence which has been gathered, was there a desire for a Mayor title with Mayor responsibilities, or metro Mayors which have slightly different responsibilities?

• Does the map of the various local government tiering systems across the country actually reflect the re-organisations that are taking place in different areas?

• The Chairman referred to a message in the Microsoft Teams chat which stated that the Devolution and Recovery white paper could return post May 2021.

In response to the points raised by Members, Phil and Lisa stated that:

• In terms of the delay to the Devolution and Recovery white paper, there has been a significant shift with regards to recent budget announcements and how that affects responsibilities and increasingly competitive funding pots. We’re also conscious of the review of the LEPs which may or may not come forward and how that’s will feature in terms of the role of the combined authorities.

• We are looking at other alternatives that could benefit from a more structured sense of devolution into different parts of the system in different areas if the answer isn’t a combined authority. We’ve also looked at areas such as Oxfordshire in terms of housing and at the Cornwall model.

• We are capturing learning from the devolution aspects that might be of use to authorities that are thinking about how to respond to the changing agenda.

• With regards to Mayors and metro Mayors, it’s not only responsibilities which differ, it’s their style and way of working too. In terms of structures and local arrangements, we’ve looked now in some detail at all 9 combined authorities and there are 9 significantly different stories which reflect the 9 different places that the authorities are in, so I don’t think that there is one set of lessons. We’re very aware of the changing political landscape, our ambition is to extract learning from the experience of the 9 combined authority areas and the local authorities in those areas and present it back to you in a way that will help you promote the interest of local government in this changing context.

• Covid-19 recovery has prompted some of the combined authorities to think in detail about what the next steps for the Mayor will be, their responsibilities and the need for a new conversation to provide some alternative or different thinking.

Decision:

Members noted the report.