Royal Town Planning Institute
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Patron HRH The Prince of Wales KG KT PC GCB
22 January 2015
Dear Helen Bamford,
RESPONSE TO CONSULTATION: Proposal to use a Legislative Reform Order to give local authorities greater flexibility in forming a combined authority or economic prosperity board
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the above consultation. The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) is the largest professional institute for planners in Europe, representing some 23,000 spatial planners. The Institute seeks to advance the science and art of spatial planning for the benefit of the public. As well as promoting spatial planning, the RTPI develops and shapes policy affecting the built environment, works to raise professional standards and supports members through continuous education, training and development.
Yours Faithfully,
Joseph Kilroy
Policy Officer
Royal Town Planning Institute
41 Botolph Lane, London EC3R 8DL
+44 (0)20 7929 9469 | | @JosephPKilroy
RTPI is in favour of stronger collaboration across functional economic areas and giving more flexibility to Local Authorities (LAs); therefore in principle we support this proposal. In the end, these boundaries should be local decisions. It shouldn’t be for central government to say what the boundaries of combined authorities are, and any legislation that facilitates this kind of local decision is welcome.
We do however regret that the government's proposals continue to restrict Combined Authorities (CAs) to transport, economic development and regeneration. As stands there is a "strategic gap" in planning powers, with strategic planning between authorities not taking place on the scale that issues such as housing demand manifest themselves. With this in mind it would be sensible for it CAs to be permitted to exercise strategic planning powers.
Question 1: do you agree that the proposal to enable local authorities that do not have contiguous boundaries to form combined authorities and economic prosperity boards will reduce a burden to collaboration? Why?
These are sensible proposals. The safeguards that the government proposes, and the ways of operationalising them to ensure that there would be no adverse effects on any intervening district also seem sensible.
Policy making on the basis of functional economic areas (FEAs) rather than administrative or physical boundaries has a number of benefits. It allows more straightforward comparisons across areas on measures of social and economic performance, and avoids arbitrary differences created by traditional boundaries. If used as the unit of focus for policymaking FEAs align policymakers’ reach with the area, and lead to fewer unintended consequences for other nearby areas. Therefore where a group of LAs do not have contiguous boundaries but nevertheless represent an FEA it makes sense to enable local authorities to establish combined authorities and economic prosperity boards.
While traditional administrative boundaries clearly still serve a purpose, some of the challenges facing LAs (e.g. Housing, employment, transport) suggest that the boundaries that need to be applied at each level are often very different from many current boundaries. Such challenges often need coordination across a wider area than a single administrative boundary, and often will require local authorities that do not have contiguous boundaries to work together.
In many parts of the country there is currently a democratic deficit whereby decisions taken in one area critically affect the well-being of communities elsewhere who have no effective voice in the decision-making process. If FEAs aligned with the voting population this would some way to solving this democratic deficit and would also create further incentives to develop effective policy.
The lack of a clear definition and/or map of national FEAs is an ongoing issue, which does hinder this kind of functional governance. However enabling local authorities (where they to resemble FEAs) that do not have contiguous boundaries to form combined authorities is a step in the right direction.
Making policy decisions at the appropriate geographic scale (i.e. where they have an effect) will not only increase the likelihood of effective implementation; it will also make it easier to ensure that a degree of fairness between localities is observed.
Finally, any combined authority must include all the relevant authorities (i.e. district, county, city, region), although this may need to be a two step process. Cities like Oxford, Cambridge and Norwich need to work on an equal footing with their economically-linked counties to support economic growth. Therefore they should gain unitary status, as a precursor to joining their county in combined authority-style arrangements. This would enable them to ensure that public transport effectively connects people in and around the city with jobs and businesses; or the power to deliver the housing that the growing city economy needs.
Question 2: do you agree that the proposed safeguards are necessary and sufficient? Why?
The safeguards proposed seem sensible, namely that to change the area of a CA or completely dissolve it would still require existing procedures. It will need secondary legislation to require CAs to establish overview and scrutiny arrangements.
It is appropriate that councils should have input into what counts as an appropriate functional economic area. However, deciding on what counts as a FEA should be done via a rigorous analysis of a multitude of factors, so it is crucial that the LA has access to the relevant data when coming to this decision/forming this opinion. The lack of clear, common definitions for functional urban areas has hindered the application of the concept in policy terms. Recent studies of areas in the UK and Europe present a range of different potential definitions and typologies of FEAs. This lack of definitional clarity presents problems not only for deciding what an appropriate FEA is, but also for meaningful comparisons in the performance of areas.
Travel to Work Areas (TTWAs) have been floated as a potential candidate for FEAs, but have been criticised for not including urban cores, and for not capturing commuting patterns of highly skilled individuals.
A lot of recent government thinking about cities has fallen victim to these conceptual issues. What is needed now is to prioritise between concepts on the basis of data and analysis.
Work needs to be done to provide data so decisions can be made on what counts as an FEA. Once LAs and the secretary of state have access to this data they can then have a credible view as to whether a proposed area would be an appropriate FEA.
Question 3: do you agree that the proposal to enable a county council to delegate its function to a combined authority for part of the county council’s area will reduce a burden to collaboration? Why?
It clearly makes sense to allow as much flexibility as possible to enable economic issues and opportunities to be addressed. Furthermore this measure will enable authorities to more easily develop a shared agenda across the CA. The benefits of making this change should result in more effective and efficient governance and a greater ability to improve economic and social outcomes.It seems sensible to enable a county council to delegate its function to a combined authority for part of its area where delegation would improve the delivery of that function.
However given that the proposals relate only to the situation where there are constituent district councils, a question that arises is what happens where the county council is now a unitary authority? For example in the North East it might be more sensible for part of Northumberland County Council's transport responsibilities to be combined with those in the metro area. Working on the principle of a function being delivered by the most appropriate level of governance, any amendment to legislation would need to deal with this circumstance too.
Question 4: do you agree that replacing the review and scheme requirements for changes to a combined authority’s or economic prosperity board’s constitution, functions or funding will reduce a burden to collaboration?
There is clearly a difference between forming a new combined authority or economic prosperity board, and changing the constitution or functions, funding arrangements of boundaries of an existing LA or economic prosperity board. There are different amounts of upheaval required in each case and it is therefore sensible to alter arrangements to reflect this. In sum, it seems sensible to simplify the process for a CA to make relatively minor changes to its constitution, functions and funding.
Question 5. Do you agree that the three proposed changes meet the preconditions for use of a Legislative Reform Order as set out above, in particular:
• Do you have views regarding the expected benefits of the proposals as identified in Chapter 3 of this consultation?
No comment
• Is there any empirical evidence that you are aware of that supports the need for these reforms? please provide details
The issue of an authority that isn’t attached to another authority in a combined authority area is particularly related to York, and their desire to join the Leeds city region,
The York Governance Review makes a clear case for the economic interdependency between York and West Yorkshire which forms the basis for York’s membership of the Combined Authority. However, as the legislation currently stands, the City of York Council cannot be a constituent member of the CA as it does not border any of the five West Yorkshire authorities (the boundaries are not ‘contiguous’). Until the legislation can be made fit for purpose, York has been invited to be a non-constituent ‘partner’ member of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
• Are there any non-legislative means that would satisfactorily remedy the difficulty which the proposals intend to address?
As mentioned at the outset there is a ‘strategic gap’ in planning powers. The recent RTPI paper on strategic planning[1] proposes incentive led measures which facilitate strategic planning across boundaries without recourse to legislative changes. Such measures would incentivise collaborative working and reduce the ‘burden’ to collaboration
As it stands there is not enough reason for planning authorities in particular to cooperate and plan strategically, therefore a strategic planning gap has opened up. RTPI proposes that government back up potential statements on issues such as housing, transport and employment (all issues which spill across administrative boundaries) with powerful effective incentives to local authorities to plan properly for the long term and to plan collectively. Not financial incentives to individual households, but genuine benefits to the whole community: transport skills economic development health and housing investment.
We propose offering powerful, effective incentives to local authorities to plan properly for the long term, and to plan collectively. There is already a mechanism to achieve this through the money awarded through Growth Deals and City Deals. Our proposal is that future resources and powers of this kind should only be made available to areas which can demonstrate jointly agreed plans to cater for housing, infrastructure, employment, and transport needs.
Growth and regeneration will not happen unless it is tied in to firm plans for physical and social infrastructure investment, principally by the public sector and associated bodies such as utility companies and transport companies.
Given that we are not seeking at this stage further primary legislative changes, the duty to cooperate will remain on the statute book, but the planning system would not rely on it alone as at present, but it would simply be invoked in cases where incentives had failed to work, which undermine a national interest or where cooperation has been tokenistic or perverse.
The system proposed would enable strategic planning in England to achieve democratic accountability. Whilst this is in our view a matter for local areas to determine for themselves, there is currently a democratic deficit whereby decisions are being taken in one area which critically affect the well being of communities and individuals elsewhere but who have no effective voice.
• Are the proposals put proportionate to the policy objective?
In general yes the proposals are proportionate to the policy objective, and contain adequate safeguards.
• Do the proposals taken as a whole strike a fair balance between the public interest and any person adversely affected by it?
No comment
• Do the proposals remove any necessary protection?
No comment
• Do the proposals prevent any person from continuing to exercise any right or freedom which he might reasonably expect to continue to exercise? If so, please provide details.
No comment
[1] See