Blears gives green light to sub-regional jobs boost

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears unveiled thirteen sub-regions that are drawing up proposals to boost jobs, transport, investment and housing through greater co-operation today.

The areas which span the country from the North East to South West will potentially receive new powers to collaborate in promoting prosperity and development as part of the Government's drive to ensure that every region benefits from rising national prosperity.

Each area is producing their own plans to tackle the key issues in their area rather than follow a prescribed approach by central Government. South Yorkshire for example is prioritising improving housing, whereas Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole will boost skills and capitalise on hosting Olympic sailing competitions. Almost all proposals have tackling worklessness as a key priority.

Ms Blears said that Britain's city centres have undergone a major transformation since 1997, but there are still deep rooted pockets of deprivation in and around them that need to be tackled thought these crucial new measures.

The new plans will enable local government to transcend traditional administrative and structural boundaries and deliver solutions that cover entire commuter routes, housing and employment markets for the first time through Multi Area Agreements (MAAs).

She announced that the Government is working with each interested area to develop MAAs which will allow them to set their priorities on how to increase competitiveness and quality of life. The sub-regions aim to have all agreed their own MAAs locally and with the Government by June 2008.

The Government has slashed Whitehall controls on councils from 1,200 to just 198 allowing them to select up to 35 priority areas to tackle through Local Area Agreements from next April. MAAs will allow sub-regions to use this innovative new approach across administrative boundaries.

New guidance on MAAs will be published shortly as well as a consultation on a new duty for councils to tackle worklessness.

Currently councils have only limited powers to collaborate effectively on specific transport issues. The Government will explore the scope for extending powers in areas such as regeneration, jobs, skills, housing and environmental protections.

Speaking at the Core Cities Summit in Nottingham Hazel Blears said:

"We have seen a major transformation in our city centres since 1997 but we know there are still pockets of deprivation in and around them that must be tackled. By strengthening city-regions and giving all local councils a new duty to promote jobs and tackle worklessness we are giving local leaders real tools to spread prosperity and improve quality of life for all.

"There is no top-down Government imposed approach to MAAs, councils must come forward with their own proposals that recognise the distinctive histories and needs of our modern cities. We have set the foundations by freeing them from excessive Whitehall control and are establishing the right framework to help them deliver."

Local Government Minister John Healey also published a new report at the conference on eight leading European cities including Sheffield that are beacons for regeneration. The COMPETE report finds that where cities use their distinctiveness and get all the key players working to a common vision they can achieve major results.

The report heaps praise on the regeneration of Sheffield City Centre. Britain's fifth largest city suffered from the severe decline in manufacturing on the late 1970s and 1980s, which has now been turned round by becoming a European leader in using Public Private Partnerships to boost regeneration. The council used its strong leadership to unite the action of local agencies through a joint masterplan to diversify the economy delivering new jobs, improve transport links and create a vibrant and safe city centre that is attractive to investors and visitors.

Sheffield now has a new Winter Gardens, Peace Gardens and Millenium Square, new concert venue, improved station and a range of attractive office spaces and hotels. A new £500m retail quarter will create a thriving shopping area in the heart of the city. 27% (90,000) of the city's jobs are now based in the city centre, and Sheffield now contains around 50% of the jobs in the South Yorkshire region.

John Healey added that cities would be able to capitalise on new range of funding instruments being put in place for councils to provide new infrastructure including Business Rate Supplements, Planning Charges, prudential borrowing and work-place parking schemes.

Business Rate Supplements alone could provide up to £28m in Greater Manchester per year, £27.5m in the West Midlands, £10m in Leeds, £5.9m in Sheffield, £4.8 in Bristol, £4.2 in Nottingham and £4m in Newcastle. They have been developed following extensive debate and discussions with business groups and the additional funding would be used to invest in projects to boost economic development.

John Healey said:

"This new report is a welcome reminder of both the scale of the competitiveness challenge facing our cities and the great success story that Sheffield and our other industrial cities have shown. As the State of English Cities report showed last year, our cities are back but need to do better if they are to enter the premier league of top performing cities in Europe and beyond.

"That is why alongside new financial freedoms we are putting in place we must also ensure that our cities are able to build relationships with businesses, reach out beyond administrative boundaries and deliver not just services but improved opportunities to people though jobs, skills, investment, housing and transport."

Notes to Editors

1. The thirteen areas working with the Government on Multi-Area Agreements are:

Tyne and Wear: Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside and South Tyneside plus northern parts of County Durham, South East Northumberland and the Tyne Valley.

Tees Valley: Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees.

Leeds City Region: Barnsley, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, Wakefield, York, North Yorkshire, Selby, Craven and Harrogate.

Hull and Humber Ports: Hull City, East Riding, North East Lincolnshire and North Lincolnshire.

South Yorkshire: Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster.

Greater Manchester: Bolton, Bury, Manchester City Council, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan.

Liverpool City Region: Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley, St Helens, Wirral and Halton.

Fylde Coast: Blackpool , Lancashire, Fylde and Wyre.

Pennine Lancashire: Blackburn, Lancashire and Burnley, Pendle, Rossendale, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley.

Birmingham, Coventry and Black Country: - Birmingham, Solihull, Sandwell, Dudley, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Coventry and Telford and Wrekin.

Partnership for Urban South Hampshire: Portsmouth, Southampton, Hampshire, Southampton, Eastleigh, Fareham, Gosport, Portsmouth and Havant, and parts of the New Forest, Test Valley, Winchester and East Hampshire; along with Hampshire County Council.

Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset

West of England: Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

2. Final decisions on those proposals that will proceed with MAAs will be taken next year. The Government welcomes proposals for MAAs from other areas and will continue to work with them this year and in future.

3. The COMPETE report also showcases how other cities are using these approaches. Barcelona for example focussed on its strengths in creative industries and hosting major events like the Olympic games. This approach is already working well in Liverpool for example where the city council is placing arts and culture at the heart of regeneration in particular by getting many people involved in the Capital of Culture 2008 programme.

Rotterdam has focussed on improving and exploiting transport links to become a major logistics centre, whereas Lyon has joined up work by a cluster of municipalities to deliver major new business and investment. Munich has built strong links between universities, businesses and the public sector to develop a knowledge economy.

Hull and Humber Ports

Sarah Pearson Head of Humber for Yorkshire Forward;

"The Humber city region is committed to delivering its CRDP with the emphasis being on skills and skills development - all four LA leaders have agreed in principle this approach. The aim is to establish more integrator skills delivery working in partnership with employers."

Tees Valley

John Lowther, Director of the Tees Valley Joint Strategy Unit said;

"The Tees Valley Multi Area Agreement will allow us to pool resources to implement an integrated regeneration, transport and housing renewal programme to support the development of our city region economy and improve our economic performance. It will enable major transformational regeneration projects to go ahead which will provide new jobs and homes, enable us to replace outdated terraced housing with new homes built to modern standards and provide a modern improved public transport network which will improve accessibility to jobs."

Bournemouth, Dorset & Poole

Leader of Poole Council, Brian Leverett said:

"Local political leaders, together with our Local Strategic Partnerships and businesses believe that the area's economy is under-performing. We are determined that local authority boundaries will not get in the way of making economic progress and see the Multi Area Agreement as an important way of cementing a new partnership between the public and private sectors. The work will concentrate mainly on the urban area but will also include important linkages to the surrounding market towns"

The MAA's aims will be to deliver increased economic performance by developing the area's infrastructure - both physical in terms of better cross conurbation transport links, bringing forward more employment space and bridging the housing affordability gap as well as by raising skill levels and exploiting the benefits of the 2012 Olympics.

The urban area around Bournemouth and Poole unitary councils is the second largest urban area in South West England with a population approaching 1/2 million. It includes a significant part of Dorset County Council's area. The area is generally considered to be prosperous with world class businesses - for example in the financial services, marine and aero-space industries as well as excellent education opportunities including Bournemouth University.

Partnership for Urban South Hampshire:

The Chairman of the Partnership for Urban South Hampshire, Councillor Sean Woodward, commented:

"The partners of the South Hampshire area are pleased to be working with Government to develop a Multi-Area Agreement. This will be based on our strategy for economically driven growth in the sub-region, with improved economic performance, the creation of almost 60,000 net new jobs by 2026 and the development of a highly skilled workforce.

"In addition, we will seek to ensure that our region's development is matched with investments in infrastructure that will ensure a sustainable future for everyone living, working and visiting South Hampshire."

Leeds City Region:

Chairman of the Leeds City Region Leaders' Board, Councillor Robert Light, said:

The opportunity extended by Government to seek to develop an MAA for the Leeds City Region in the first wave is to be warmly welcomed. Our city region development programme has identified clear potential to focus MAA development on the key economic drivers of improving transport connectivity and addressing labour market skills gaps.

South Yorkshire

Jeff Goode, Director, Transform South Yorkshire:-

"TSY is delighted to be part of the first-wave of MAA's and we are looking forward to delivering improved housing for the sub-region and using the new freedoms and flexibilities to do this."

Liverpool City Region

Dave Moorcroft, Director of Economic Development, said;

"As the Sub-Regional Partnership for Merseyside, TMP has a strong track record of working across six local authorities and the private sector in economic development, investment and tourism activities.

"Working in collaboration with stakeholders, we've produced an Action Plan for the Liverpool City Region which identifies a 3 year investment framework to deliver economic growth.

"We welcome the Minister's proposals to develop new powers to collaborate and will be working with partners to develop Multi Area Agreements to ensure the co-ordination, management and implementation of projects takes place at the most appropriate level."

The six authorities of Greater Merseyside propose to develop an MAA from June 2008 to focus on economic development, skills, employment and transport. The MAA seeks to build on several years of co-operative working between the six authorities on a wide range of issues.

Some of the communities of Greater Merseyside represent some of the most deprived communities in the North West. The MAA will provide the opportunity to focus on both the strategic perspective for the sub-region, whilst concentrating on strengthening partnerships and delivering improved outcomes for it's people.

Greater Manchester:

Mike Emmerich Chief Executive Manchester Enterprises said:

"We envisage an MAA that will provide a meaningful contribution to raising GVA by tackling supply side constraints and thereby raising economic growth. It will enable workless people to have better access to skills training by getting the skills and employment systems to work together.

"It will also provide a welfare to work system designed around the needs of the individual, bringing together the support needs of those needing work regardless of which part of government is responsible for providing the systems."

Birmingham Coventry and Black Country City Region Partnership

Simon Murphy, City Region Project Director said:

We have a de facto MAA through our city strategy to combat worklessness. It is the same thing being developed across eight local authorities making up the sub region.

What we are working on now is how the city strategy and the targets in the new Local Area Agreements can be aligned to create a bigger impact on getting more people off benefits and into skilled, paid employment than would be the case if the processes operated in isolation to each other.

We are investigating how the MAA would add value to what we are doing to achieve those outcomes.

Pennine Lancashire

The Pennine Lancashire Multi Area Agreement aspires to build on the strong co-operation between the seven local authorities in Pennine Lancashire that has been developed over the last few years. The MAA will seek to maximise benefits for around half a million people by maximising co-operation and delivery on the economy, housing, worklessness, sustainable development and transport.

Some of the communities of Pennine Lancashire are amongst the most deprived in the UK and the MAA will provide the Local Authorities and Local Strategic Partnerships with the vehicle to develop greater focus in tackling these issues.

Fylde Coast

The Fylde Coast Multi Area Agreement will underpin a new co-operative approach between the four Local Authorities involved in the Fylde Coast. The MAA will focus on Economic development and tourism, planning and transport, housing, climate change and culture and leisure.

The area is rich in resources and opportunities but includes some deprived communities. The MAA will allow the four authorities and Local Strategic Partnerships to take a strategic approach to tackling these issues in the Fylde Coast, whilst concentrating on joint delivery that will improve the outcomes for people in the sub-region.

Tyne & Wear

The Multi Area Agreement for the Tyne & Wear City Region aims to deliver real improvements in partnership working and economic prosperity. It hopes to support the development of a place that competes with any other region nationally and is internationally recognised as a place for businesses to invest and entrepreneurs to thrive.

It seeks to deliver well educated young people who want to live and work in the city region because of the economic prospects and the outstanding quality of life on offer. It aims to support a highly skilled workforce that is the envy of others and is highly attractive to the private sector.

The Multi Area Agreement aims to use the combined efforts of the public and private sectors to eliminate the productivity gap with the rest of the UK. The main areas of focus in the initial years will be improving transport infrastructure, improving skills, education and access to employment and retaining more graduates in the city region. As a result the city region seeks to become better connected, more prosperous and make the best use of its potential.

West of England Partnership

Terry Wagstaff, Assistant Chief Executive, Bristol City Council, on behalf of the West of England Partnership:

"Our MAA would focus on delivering the outcomes which most benefit residents in Bristol and the West of England. It would improve direction and delivery by strengthening our agreements and working arrangements with sub-regional partners, government and national agencies. Coupled with the opportunities offered by the Sub National Review, an MAA would help us locally in further joining up our agenda and pooling resources, as well as securing appropriate powers and resources from Government and the region."