Mark Crowe

The Credit Crunch and the recession has brought government and the regional development agency together to talk about how to spend £900million of regional funding allocations over the current financial year to support sustainable economic growth.

There’s more about this on the HM Treasury website

The RDA, Yorkshire Forward says in the “next steps” section: “This document sets out an initial framework for discussion with stakeholders across the region. Yorkshire Forward and the Government will be working closely with a whole range of local and regional partners over the coming months to address the challenges described at the start of this document, and to build on the support and initiatives described above. We will be asking councils, regional agencies and voluntary sector organisations to add to this framework and to work with us on how best we support businesses and households in the region. We expect this to feed into a comprehensive programme of work across a range of different organisations across Yorkshire and Humber, as well as informing the Government’s work in the run-up to the Pre Budget Report”.

The document is available here: The Yorkshire and Humber Economy – A joint response to changing economic circumstances

The areas for action are highlighted below:
Support for businesses
• Helping businesses to cut energy
costs
• Helping companies to access new
overseas markets
• Simplifying support for small
businesses
• Working with big business
• Bringing overseas investment to
Yorkshire and Humber
• Helping businesses to access finance
• Meeting skills needs
• Matching people to job vacancies
and getting people back into work
• Helping businesses to innovate
• Providing additional support for
specific sectors

Support for housing
• Support for the mortgage market
• Investment in affordable housing
• Supporting regeneration programmes

Support for consumers
• Helping family finances
• Helping families to pay their mortgage or rent
• Supporting families in meeting fuel
and other bills
• Assistance for those in debt or
struggling to make ends meet

It’s good to see that the RDA is actively seeking VCS support in shaping its investments to support businesses and households affected by the economic situation.

My colleague Stephen Fox has prepared this draft response to the government’s consultation (see regionalisation driver) feeding in Regional Forum members’ experience and concerns:

RESPONSE BY THE YORKSHIRE AND HUMBER REGIONAL FORUM ON BEHALF OF VOLUNTARY AND COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS TO THE CONSULTATION ON ‘PROSPEROUS PLACES; TAKING FORWARD THE REVIEW OF SUB-NATIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND REGENERATION’

The Regional Forum is the strategic organisation for the voluntary and community sector, (VCS), in the Yorkshire and Humber region. The Forum promotes and supports the contribution of the VCS in improving the quality of life for people, and especially those who are disconnected from society and the economy, or who live in disadvantaged communities across our region.

The Forum has consulted widely with its members and with other organisations. The Forum facilitated a Focus Group event which was attended by representatives from a wide range of regional VCS organisations and members of the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Environment Forum. This response is informed by the outcomes of those discussions.

Introduction

The Regional Forum welcomes the opportunity to respond to the consultation on the Review of Sub- National Economic Development and Regeneration. We recognise the importance of measures to strengthen economic performance in regions, cities, and localities throughout the country, and we particularly welcome the commitment to tackle persistent pockets of deprivation. We support the principle that decisions should be made at the right spatial level by devolving powers and responsibilities, and the intention that the RDAs will delegate their single pot of funding where appropriate. We also welcome measures designed to simplify the complexity of regional strategies. The Regional Forum has, however, identified a number of issues, and we make some suggestions for changes to the proposals as they currently stand.

1. Stronger Partnerships for Economic Growth

• The Regional Forum consultation revealed concern amongst the VCS about the key premise that partnerships should be strengthened with the principle aim of achieving economic growth. It was felt that a more appropriate title would be; “stronger partnerships for sustainable development”. The current proposals focus almost exclusively on delivering economic growth, and in so doing fail to recognise the importance of synergy between the economy, social, and environmental objectives.

Economic growth and development have to encompass social and environmental objectives; otherwise they cannot be truly sustainable. If the purpose of forming stronger partnerships is simply to deliver a narrowly defined economic improvement focussing on Gross Value Added, we would have serious concern for the future well being of people and communities, who are likely to feel increasingly disconnected from the decision making process because they do not benefit from economic growth. In any case, this approach, without specific and targeted work to tackle exclusion and promote civil society and environmental protection, will fail to address disadvantage and disconnection, which in turn are themselves inhibitors of economic progress. This will be particularly the case in rural areas, where the emphasis on GVA consistently under values the need to support the dynamism and sustainability of rural communities. The need to support rural economies and the contribution of specific sectors, (e.g. agriculture) to rural life is clear, but not to the exclusion of civil society and community in these areas.

• The proposed duty on local authorities to carry out economic assessments in their areas should link explicitly with other local concerns and objectives such as those in Sustainable Community Strategies, and should not elevate economic growth above those wider issues. We believe that the duty on economic assessment should be accompanied by an equal duty on environmental and social assessment.

• The Regional Forum believes that the role of local authorities needs to be clarified. The Government should set out the safeguards, procedures, and mechanisms which will help local authorities to carry out the conflicting role of scrutinising the activities of RDAs whilst also being in receipt of funding from them. Under current proposals much of the integrated Regional Strategy will be delivered by local authorities on behalf of RDAs, and the scrutiny of these authorities as they undertake this proposed role is a vital but as yet undefined part of the governance arrangements which need to be clarified.

• There is a lack of clarity about how responsibilities and powers at a variety of spatial levels will be integrated and what is appropriately delivered at what level. In addition, political changes in local authorities will inevitably shift priorities, and so the critical relationship between the local and the regional requires much clearer delineation.

• There is concern amongst the VCS organisations the Regional Forum consulted about the scrutiny role of the proposed Leaders Forum. There is a built in tension in the scrutiny role for bodies both receiving funds and scrutinising the source of those arrangements. This is why it is critically important to include social and environmental stakeholders in the scrutiny process.

• The SNR proposals recognise the importance of effective stakeholder involvement in new partnership arrangements, but leave the organisation of this to individual regions. We agree that there should be flexibility and autonomy for regions to decide the detail. However, we believe that there needs to be some way of providing safeguards to strengthen the requirement for partners and stakeholders to be involved in the dialogue from the start. The Third Sector must be fully engaged in the regional discussions. Its contribution to the economy, to society, and to the environmental agenda has been recognised by the government. In addition, its proven ability to engage effectively with hard to reach communities is pivotal to the achievement of sustainable economic development, as well as to designing programmes that work well and to managing their implementation.

• The proposed abolition of the Regional Assemblies is leading to concerns about the potential exclusion of the Social, Economic, and Environment partners from the process, and thus the weakening of good governance. Experience in Yorkshire and the Humber demonstrates that these partners have been able to reflect a diversity of experience and have added the civic society dimension to regional decision making and scrutiny. Partners bring connection to communities and diversity of experience. They also articulate the interests and concerns of communities of interest that are not geographically defined and provide first hand understanding of how programmes actually work on the ground. Social and environmental partners should be guaranteed a meaningful role in the development of regional policy, before their wealth of experience is lost to the process.

• The contribution of social, environmental, and economic partners adds an important dimension to decision making and should sit alongside the legitimate leadership role of elected members. If the existing arrangements under the Regional Assembly have been effective and positive in their contribution and if multi sector partnerships are a recognised way of running LSPs for example, then this principle should continue to apply to the regional and sub regional levels.

• Engagement and partner involvement has to be adequately resourced. The level of working proposed in the SNR consultation will require appropriate capacity if governance arrangements in the region are to be dynamic and fit for the future.

• As they stand, the SNR proposals focus on process and function to the detriment of vision. The Regional Forum believes that everyone operating at regional level must embrace the culture of partnership and collaboration. In these proposals the RDAs will be given the responsibility for leading on effective stakeholder engagement. This will require them to have a positive focus on effective engagement to ensure that these new arrangements do not increase citizen and partner disengagement from the decision making process. RDAs will need to promote a vision of partnership working which is truly inclusive, and one which reflects the diverse interests and concerns of the regions. This will be crucial to the successful development and the subsequent delivery of a single integrated regional strategy. The Yorkshire and Humber region has developed a culture of shared ownership of regional policies and strategies; it is hard to see how the current proposals will sustain this.

Recommendations:

• All programmes should be ‘sustainability proofed’ to agreed standards by all the stakeholders who have an interest in them, especially the RDAs, who need to have sustainable development at the heart of what they do.

• At the regional level, instead of one overarching economic development objective, RDAs should retain the mix of region-specific targets in the Tasking Framework so that they can respond to varying social and environmental needs. Specifically, Government must commit to not limiting RDA horizons with a single, overarching economic growth objective.

• The governance and composition of new RDA Boards should reflect the diversity of the people whom they represent, and the integrated nature of their economic, environmental, and social responsibilities.

• Arrangements for independent regional scrutiny must be clear, effective, and appropriately resourced. Wider options for democratically accountable regional governance should be explored. These should not automatically exclude existing Regional Assembly arrangements where the region feels that these have been effective.

2. A New Single Integrated Regional Strategy

The Regional Forum welcomes, in principle, the proposal to bring the range of current regional strategies under one over-arching integrated strategy. However, our consultation revealed a number of concerns;

• The objectives set out for the IRS seem to focus on economic growth above all else. We would like to see objectives that have a much more balanced and ambitious vision including the promotion of an improved quality of life for all; tackling exclusion and disadvantage; promoting spatial and economic elements that are designed to promote public health; community economic development that supports the development of civic society, and the enhancement of the natural environment and green economy.

• There is serious concern that sustainable development does not sit at the heart of the proposals for a single regional strategy. The emphasis seems to be on achieving narrow economic objectives and not the wider imperatives of sustainable development. The references to sustainability in the proposals suggest that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means; it is more than simply ‘sustaining’ economic growth.

• There is confusion about the status of existing Regional Sustainable Development Frameworks or Integrated Regional Frameworks. There is a significant amount of work that has already been done but it is not clear how this fits with the proposed IRS. Clarity is needed on this, because it would be a real waste if the foundations for current partnership working were to be ignored.

• The requirement for RDAs to be economic development agencies with clear economic objectives does not sit easily with the new responsibility to be the Regional Planning body. The existing Spatial Strategies will become part of the new IRS, the purpose of which is to deliver integrated social, economic and environmental outcomes. If the RDAs are to be successful in this new capacity, they will need to reflect local and sub regional interests, as well as arriving at a credible consensus for regional delivery. RDAs will need to develop the capacity to lead on this; both internally and in terms of utilising existing expertise in the region.

• Previous regional strategy processes, (example Housing and Spatial), have often failed to reflect rural needs. We need to ensure that this pattern is not repeated with the Single Integrated Regional Strategy.

• The creation and delivery of regional strategy should be the responsibility of the region, subject only to “the lightest of touches” from central government so the flexibility outlined in the proposals is welcomed. Regional strategy should also be clearly seen to add value to local activity, and not be seen as in some way ‘more important’. People should be very clear about the purpose of the IRS, and how it sits with local priorities like Local Area Agreements, and national government priorities. At the present time this clarity is missing.

• The IRS needs to be ‘fit for purpose’ for each region. There is concern that the current proposals will not deliver this.

• The Regional Forum believes that the timescale set out in the proposals for developing and implementing the IRS is unrealistic. 24 months from start to finish suggests that speed is more important than realism. RDAs are unlikely to agree with local authorities quickly, local authorities are unlikely to agree between themselves, and BERR and CLG are unlikely to agree at both official and Ministerial levels within 2 months! The proposed arrangements also assume that all the other regional stakeholders whose communities of interest need to be included will find the mechanism satisfactory.

• The Forum likes the idea of an Examination in Public to look at the preferred strategy but there needs to be further detail about how this would work in practice. Would, for example, the findings be binding, or subject to government approval?

• How will public engagement with the IRS and the wider SNR be achieved? If the government is serious about empowering citizens and re-connecting them with the political process how does it intend to engage them or their representatives with this agenda?

Recommendations:

• Sustainable Development should be at the core of the IRS.

• National standards for community, VCS, and other stakeholder engagement should be incorporated into any guidance issued by the government for developing the IRS.

3. The Role of Local Authorities and the Economic Assessment Duty

The Forum has a number of specific observations to make about the proposed economic assessment duty;

• The Economic Assessment should not be too narrow. We refer to our earlier point about sustainable development and the need to ensure that the focus is on an area’s holistic needs for its communities. This is what elected local councillors are there to do, but it also needs to happen at regional level. Clearly it is important to ensure that the local economy is understood and particularly in terms of what drives it, but the economy is not an end in itself.

• The Regional Forum recommends that the Economic Assessment should be based on the definition of Sustainable Development used in ‘Securing Our Future’, the Government’s own Sustainable development strategy. This is; ‘the simple idea of ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come’.

• We believe that the economic assessment process should be flexible and visibly fit for the purposes set out in the consultation. For example, the needs of rural areas are different to urban areas and the process should reflect this.

• The economic assessment duty will apparently only apply to upper tier authorities. In areas where there are two tiers of local authority we believe that the economic assessment duty should be discharged jointly. This will help avoid a situation where County priorities dominate the agenda, and people who live in Districts feel marginalised. This is particularly relevant in rural areas.

• There is little in the proposals to show how local authorities will be able to do more than carry out an economic assessment; in other words exert control over greater resources. What happens to the Assessment after it has been completed? LAs will still have to get approval from higher level authorities and prove their capacity. They will need the tools, resources, and flexibility to make a difference in their areas.

• Although the proposals “encourage” local authorities to consult more widely than the key delivery partners identified, there is no obligation for them to do so. We believe that there should be a duty on LAs to conduct the assessments in a spirit of partnership. The Voluntary and Community Sector must be a key partner in this process because it has a unique knowledge of disadvantage and exclusion at a local and regional level. It is also able to make the link between economic growth and social welfare.

Recommendations:

• The government should provide greater clarity regarding both the purpose of the proposed economic assessment, and the role of local authorities in both the assessment and any subsequent economic development activity.

• The government should provide greater clarity about the proposed relationship between local authorities, RDAs, and central government in relation to the delivery of economic programmes at local level.

4. General Points

• The arrangements for scrutiny of the proposed new governance arrangements need to be clear, effective, and appropriately resourced.

• The Forum does not understand how the proposals in the SNR sit with the government’s intention to devolve powers to local communities. The initiative may well be seen as a ‘top down’ approach designed to drive forward the economic priority more quickly.

• The voluntary and community sector in the Yorkshire and Humber region expects to be a key partner in the preparation of the Single Regional Strategy. We believe that we can undertake a vital delivery role and that we should be part of its development for the reasons outlined above.

• Economically, socially and environmentally deprived communities are the ones that tend to be most alienated from the democratic process. This means, in turn, that the democratic process fails to engage and represent them. The ‘environment’ may not have obvious or established champions of any kind. The VCS does give a voice to these communities, and to environmental sectors; it is our role. Therefore, we have a moral and practical reason for being fully engaged with the structures and partnerships the SNR is talking about. We would like to see some recognition of this in the proposals contained in the consultation, and some priority given to ensuring that this is reflected in the actions that follow.

16 June 2008

Yorkshire and the Humber Regional Forum
Suite D10,
Joseph’s Well,
Hanover Walk,
Leeds LS3 1AB

Tel – 0113 394 2300
E mail – stephen.fox@regionalforum.org.uk

Registered Charity No: 1076540

Regionalisation:-

My colleague Stephen Fox has prepared this draft response to the government’s consultation (see regionalisation driver) feeding in Regional Forum members’ experience and concerns:

I’ve removed the draft and added a new “news” item with the final version of the consultation.

Yorkshire Futures Regional Inequalities Report by Roger Tym and Partners, November 2007

This report prepared for Yorkshire Futures synthesises research and statistics in inequalities in the Yorkshire and Humber region. It adopts a definition of inequality that describes the extent to which people in the region are able (or nor) to do “something”. The report covers three main areas:
 Income and labour markets
 Communities and environment
 Health

This report is not exhaustive. It is limited to the use of existing data and looks at this data primarily through the lenses of:
 Social class
 Gender
 Ethnicity
 Geography (local authority district).

Whilst the report is not exhaustive or especially nuanced there are some interesting conclusions drawn through the use of longitudinal data. This shows the “hardening” of inequality in specific parts of the region in relation to income, education and health. It is worth noting the finding that community cohesion is adversely affected by the lack of educational attainment, community facilities and affluence rather than migration or settled minority populations. On many of the indicators, although the gap is narrowing on the UK average, the region still lags behind.

As with many works of this type that draw together statistics from diverse sources there is a risk of misinterpreting correlations for causal relationships. Closer inspection shows that for example, housing is not just a functional need for a home but location close to employment is at least as important as affordability. Other issues are skirted round completely – the gender pay gap, which the regional ESF programme is supposed to address, is barely mentioned.

The key conclusion from this report is that there is an increased polarisation in the region (and the UK) in terms of opportunity to access the range of factors that are required in combination with each other to connect people to opportunity.

The full report can be downloaded (in three sections) from the Yorkshire Futures website.

I will link sections of the report to individual driver pages and then collate those on this page.

Labour Market
Poverty and Inequality

The Sub-National review is a key driver for the VCS in the regions outside London. It consolidates economic and social planning roles in the Regional Development Agencies and may have the unintended consequence of removing the participation of the Social, Environmental and Economic Partners from through the dissolution of the regional assemblies.

Two Regional Forum Briefings are available here

and here

The consultation runs to the 20th June 2008. More information is on the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform website

Regional Climate Change Action Plan
Mark Crowe (with information supplied by Paul Mosley WWF and YHREF)

Climate Change – It’s Everybody’s Business

I’ve just started to get involved with climate change as part of my work. It’s not that I’m not aware of climate change as an issue, like everyone else I’d like to use my car less, ride my bike more, buy more locally produced food, recycle more, use less energy in my house or even generate my own. It’s just making those changes takes that little bit more effort. Sometimes I need a bit more help from businesses, from the council and from voluntary organisations.

Working on a regional climate change action plan would be great way to link how I do my bit for the planet, with what the VCS does directly and indirectly to reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse gasses and with some of the policy and funding programme development work the Regional Forum has been involved in over the years where environmental issues have had a growing significance as part of the sustainability debate. Sustainability is about how the region can achieve economic growth that supports and benefits all parts of society and recognises that the environment is not a limitless resource for either deliberate exploitation or incidental damage, As one colleague put it to me “broadly, what’s good for the environment is good for people, and vice versa.”

The Climate Change Action Plan is being developed by the regional bodies such as the RDA, the Assembly, the Environment Agency, local authorities, DEFRA and of course the VCS (principally through the representatives from the Regional Environment Forum). As a result the action plan is set firmly in the context of the strategies and targets of those public agencies, although without any direct resources of its own to deliver. In terms of the differing nature of the agendas of these public agencies in tackling climate change a whole series of nuances and subtle (and not so subtle) distinctions became apparent to me.

The fact is that, compared to other regions, Yorkshire and the Humber produces disproportionately more carbon; consumes proportionately less carbon and is disproportionately adversely affected by the consequences of climate change. This leads to the first level of distinction in climate change: mitigation and adaption. Mitigation – actions to limit changes in the climate; adaptation – actions that help people and agencies in the region change what they do to cope with the immediate consequences of climate change.

Adaptation focuses on the physical consequences of climate change – river flooding e.g. planning implications, building of flood defences; planned retreat from areas suffering from coastal erosion; land use changes in terms of suitable agriculture. There are other human consequences of climate change – longer, dryer, hotter summers such as the one that led to an increase in the mortality rates among elderly people in France in 2006. Adaptation in cases like this means adapting public services to take account of these kinds of consequences of climate change.

Mitigation falls into two sets of actions which aim to reduce the emissions that cause climate change (CO2 and greenhouse gasses). These are actions to reduce the production of carbon emissions by industry, businesses (e.g. in packaging), public bodies, private transport among others. There are also actions that can be taken to reduce the consumption of carbon by individuals – the kinds of things I want to do more of in my everyday life and the kind of things I need help with.

There are regional targets for the reduction of carbon usage/ production and action plan seemed to me to be a great way of linking the kind of things I do to those regional targets – although I probably spend more time than the average person thinking about strategies in a positive way. Even so the purpose of the Climate Change Action Plan will be to influence the delivery strategies of public agencies.

This is the fundamental paradox – strategies in the region (like the Regional Economic Strategy and the Regional Spatial Strategy) have targets for economic growth, increased productivity but the consequence of this is increased emissions. They also have the regional targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Is the trade off this: lower individual carbon consumption so that the regional economy can afford to grow and therefore allow greater carbon emissions? Or are there ways of reducing consumption and production that also have other benefits?

Most of the focus on tackling emissions is currently focussed on direct emissions or sectors where it’s easier for the public sector to take action e.g. housing & transport. There’s less interest and action on tackling the wider consumption emissions such as from food.

This opens up a whole new social / environmental campaigns agenda around global responsibility, social change, well being and shifting the emphasis away from a GDP focussed economic system to one more based on well being. There are lots of links on the Beyond GDP website

I liked this one

When we think about growth we have to get beyond growth for its own sake and get towards growth for what purpose? Growth with what consequences? Importantly, how is that growth distributed? If the region is going to reduce emissions how will the impact of those reductions be distributed? Let’s put it more bluntly: who will be affected most? Will communities already disadvantaged by lack of access to services, whether publicly or privately provided find themselves further marginalised?

Now that the region is committed to “sustainable” growth and “sustainable” development the region has to work out what it needs to do to make these things happen. It is easy to deal with new things – building new house building can be done in ways that reduce energy consumption and which deal with changing climate conditions. What is more difficult, more expensive but will make most difference is dealing with the “old” things. This might mean adapting the existing housing stock to make it more energy efficient.

The transition towards a low-carbon economy requires a fundamental change in the way we think about climate change at a local level. This change needs to be about extending regional / local authority and to some extent individual action to include communities and behaviour change.
It is important to shift to addressing carbon consumption in order to ensure the region doesn’t simply shift the burden of our emissions to other regions or countries.

How can we work out what this might mean? The target for the region is a reduction of 25% of 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2016. To try and get a handle on what that means it has been calculated that individuals have to reduce their carbon consumption from 11 tons per person to 8.8 tons per year. If only I knew what a ton of carbon looked like or I knew who produced how much. I’d better use a carbon footprint calculator like this one to work out what I’m contributing to carbon consumption.

But there’s only so much I can do on my own. Services provided by public bodies are major contributors to carbon production and consumption. Whilst local authorities and other public bodies can control how much carbon the produce and consume centrally there’s more that they can do to help me cut down the amount of carbon I consume when I use their services. Does everything have to be delivered centrally somewhere where I have to use my car to get to? Does it only have to be open at peak times so I sit in traffic jams? Could public bodies work with organisations in my community to help more?

Thinking about schools – there are plans to fund “eco-schools” in my district. How about replacing the large secondary school that takes students from a ten mile stretch of valley with two or three smaller eco schools? A more local approach cuts down on transport which helps the environment but it also simplifies issues like childcare and smaller schools can be just as good as large schools in terms of performance and learning experience. It’s not just about efficiency: it’s about effectiveness as well. What’s good for the environment is good for people too.

Fortunately help is at hand from the World Wildlife Fund. There is lots of information for local authorities and local organisations on this in the recent WWF / SEI report on Carbon Footprints – The Right Challenge for Change -Using Carbon Footprint to reduce C02 emissions.

We need to recognise our global responsibility to act-not just on domestic emissions but also on indirect emissions. As a region we also need to rethink our approach to growth through a strategic planning approach that takes a “lifetime cost” approach to carbon and citizen benefit (as a recipient of goods and services). This is not just in terms of large scale construction and infrastructure projects. It’s at the level of the local and the community. By designing climate change adaptation and mitigation factors into community strategies, locality building, transport, planning, community cohesion/ social exclusion it is possible to make the most of “green” opportunities in the redesign of services so that they have a carbon reduction benefit and also mitigate against the consequences of climate change. The mantra of efficiency, efficiency, efficiency in delivery of services has obscured the needs of service users. Effectiveness is at the level of the individual; efficiency at the level of corporation or institution.

It’s more effective and more efficient in the long run to undertake actions which both reduce carbon and mitigate against the effects of climate change. If all you do is to try and balance increases (to grow the economy) and reductions (through lifestyle) you won’t actually get very far, and you will have to mitigate against more extreme climate conditions.

I’m ready to do my bit – are the regional strategies ready to support me?

More information about the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Climate Change Action Plan is available here