Devolution needs to get social. For too long the poor, low-paid and unemployed have been seen as a cost, with successive national policies seeking to reduce welfare budgets and cut spending on community activity. This is folly. Investing in the poor and society should be seen as investment in economic potential and productive capacity. Moving forward, this inversion of thinking and action has to be a key part of devolution.
Voluntary sector leaders have said the devolution process should be reformed to ensure charities are properly represented as service providers.
Since Theresa May took office as prime minister of the UK in July there has been a great deal of speculation about how – if at all – powers over tax rates and local spending will be devolved to local authorities, as promised by the country’s former chancellor George Osborne.
One third of civil servants should be moved outside London as part of the devolution of powers to local areas, according to a new report from the Policy Exchange.
For too long, we have either turned a blind eye to poverty and disadvantage or hoped that a general rising tide of economic wealth would trickle down. It’s time to reboot prevailing local economic policy – argues Neil McInroy – which is failing the poorest in society.
Devolution in the UK is failing to address the country’s pressing political, social and economic problems, according to a report.
Devolution deals with councils are being squeezed by ‘narrow negotiations’ with Whitehall that were ‘stacked in favour of the status quo’, a new report has claimed.
Theresa May must rethink devolution to stop post-Brexit Britons feeling even more abandoned by the Government, report finds.
Leeds City Council leader Judith Blake has called for a fresh push to end Yorkshire’s devolution deadlock in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union.
Devolution is a great opportunity. After years of oppressive centralisation, devolution deals offer local and combined authorities a chance to break free and forge their own distinctive economic and social destiny. Devolution is not, however, without significant risks and challenges. Our new joint paper ‘The Real Deal: Pushing the parameters of devolution deals’, a collaboration between the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) and the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), explores the restrictions in the current devolution agenda, and presents ideas for new types of deals, heralding a more progressive devolution.
The University of Manchester and Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) play host to the Making Devolution Work conference next week. To mark the event CLES’s Chief Executive Neil McInroy writes the first of a series of blogs around the conference, examining what devolution could mean for the region and country.
