‘The danger for government is that Gove’s announcement is already too late’

COMMENT: There is no denying the necessity for levelling up. Disparities between the haves and have-nots have been growing for decades. Just recently, behaviour in the Westminster bubble has only served to accentuate the disparity. Even if it were not for the bad taste left in voters’ mouths, it is already two years into a parliamentary term for which ending inequalities was supposed to be a manifesto centrepiece. The danger for government is that levelling up secretary Michael Gove’s announcement is already too late. To regain the support that brought its landslide majority in time for the next election, the government must be mindful that structural changes can be controversial and take forever to implement. The 2030 timeline for 12 missions on productivity, education and transport is well beyond the current parliamentary term. The electorate will be quick to see through short-term, inevitably superficial, reallocations of cash with only transient outcomes. Regions, towns and cities targeted by this policy have seen cuts that the existing £10bn commitment in no way restores. Red meat for the blue wall The trailed plan for more local mayors with access to funds already allocated and the long overdue regulation of privately rented homes seems anaemic in comparison with the challenge. Further demand-side stimulus for home-buying will boost prices and increase private debt. Sure, local government can, and should, be improved. The scandal of exploitative renter slum housing should never have been tolerated in the first place. But could these changes honestly be described as “red meat” sufficient to satisfy the bloodthirsty Tory backbenchers with fragile “blue wall” majorities? These MPs need impacts that will not only impress voters in the short term, but have a convincing chance of sustained value. The government needs a new settlement with local authorities, and councils in turn need to strike a new deal with their citizens. Cash constraints Let’s start from the bottom up. Communities must have more say in plan-making and development management, not out-with local democratic accountability, as proposed in last year’s planning white paper, but as part of the process. Planning reform and levelling up are linked by the perception of local people that investment in development and infrastructure is in their beneficial interest, because that’s how their satisfaction with the outcomes will translate into votes. A commitment to much better local engagement on plan-making, including transparency and digital consultation, is a quick win with long-term benefits. Likewise, perceptions can only be improved by a requirement that developers commit to meaningful consultation on individual schemes, demonstrating how development meets local and national plan and policy criteria. None of the above is possible within the current cash-strapped constraints on planning authorities and the skilled resources they can afford. Local mayors alone are not enough – there’s a campaign in Bristol to scrap theirs.  They need more resources and autonomy. Westminster must get over its instinctive mistrust of local democracy and swallow a prejudice that inhibits a more generous delegation of authority that, yes, may favour councils led by opposition parties. It is critical that policy is thoroughly tested with impact assessments on our ability to meet the 2050 net-zero target. In the structure of delegated power and control I am calling for, a critical prerequisite is that all investment is tested for its contribution to mitigating climate change and that no money is spent on anything that threatens the long-term future. That actually rules out quite a few of the lollipops that a Tory government might otherwise be thinking of to win back voters – new road schemes, in particular. Sustainable development We need to build a consensus about what form sustainable development should take. So long as direction emerges remote from local considerations, people will continue to believe that development decisions are being done to them, not made by them. There is ample evidence from neighbourhood planning that communities understand that new development can bring benefits. There is a slew of well-informed policy development around local control, from No Place Left Behind by Create Streets to Street Votes by Policy Exchange, that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities would do well to adopt. Irrespective of the growing sense that the governing elite exists in a bubble that insulates it from the experience of ordinary citizens, the only hope for a green economy based on sustainable development is that a population increasingly concerned for the welfare of successive generations believes, in good measure, that people have made the choices that most directly affect them. Levelling up prosperity and opportunity requires Westminster to level with local people, trusting in them to make the right decisions. What we have instead is no Rooseveltian “New Deal”. Ben Derbyshire is chair at HTA Design Image © HTA Design