The LEP is dead; long live the CA!  That stands for combined authority, examples of which are now sprouting up across the conurbations of England.

Billing themselves as ‘super transport authorities' they have the appurtenances of mini-RDAs (regional development authorities), give or take the financial muscle to do the great works of investment, infrastructure and development everyone recognises are needed if the economy is to be rebalanced and growth based on foundations stronger than a consumer credit boom and house price inflation.

LEPs – local enterprise partnerships – were invented three years ago as cover for vandalising the RDAs, which were victims of the same ideological spasm that applied to the Audit Commission, along with educational maintenance allowances, the child trust fund and other emblems of a previous era.

But, gimmicky and unfunded, LEPs were doomed. Squeezed uncomfortably between Whitehall empires, they relied on the sudden eruption of altruistic corporate enthusiasm from local business leaders who were simultaneously struggling with recession and withdrawal of bank credit.

Councils – the only organisations in the local economic space capable of taking a systematic and long-term view – were marginalised.  As they flounder, the coalition's approach to local economic development has become both less coherent and more pragmatic.

Coupled with a point blank refusal by Eric Pickles at Communities and Local Government to think about the financial sustainability of authorities has come a realisation on the part of his fellow ministers that without councils nothing much is going to happen – in transport, job creation or skills training.

In transport, we are even seeing the same government that will not countenance public provision of a single national rail franchise allowing local transport authorities to become providers of bus services.

With becoming, but unusual modesty, the Government recently backed the establishment of a research centre at the London School of Economics (supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and Arup) to determine ‘what works' in local economic growth.

Part of the answer has to be rationalisation and upscaling of urban governance – so say Liverpool and the Merseyside authorities, councils in South Yorkshire and the North East, moving along the track already trodden by local authorities in Greater Manchester.

Elsewhere, for example, in greater Birmingham, councils have assumed the mantle
of the LEPs, using them as a vehicle for regional mobilisation.

Where the private sector cannot or will not get its act together in the regions, the town and county halls have to act.

Ideologically, this is going in the wrong direction but the Government is desperate – anxious about reviving the economy outside London and the South and worried, too, about Tory constituencies.

The Conservatives hold just 20 of the 124 urban seats in the North of England and the Midlands.

It is no wonder that we see ministers such as Brandon Lewis applauding this new version of statism or, as he prefers to put it, ‘having all local authority leaders in a room together at one time'.

We must not get carried away.  The Heseltine agenda and proposals for slicing central budgets and functions to the regions of England are not being implemented.

Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin is not inviting councils to tell him whether Heathrow should expand or whether spending £80bn on HS2 is a sensible way of reviving the Midlands and the North.

Nor is he asking Sir Albert Bore or other West Midlands leaders for their views about imposing tolls on the A14 – although they would have an impact on potential development in Birmingham when related to access to Felixstowe.

But, would Sir Albert do anything more than assert the interests of a single region when big infrastructure decisions (such as Heathrow) have a much wider compass?

Here's a paradox: the failure of LEPs has seen the re-emergence of local government as an agent in regional development.  But that is not enough.

Combined authorities need – through the Local Government Association, since there is no alternative – to combine into a national partner for ministers such as McLoughlin, especially when it comes to massive long-term transport decisions.

And, they must speak with a single voice …or else.  As with HS2, local interests will simply be played off against each other and the promise of a new local authority role in development will collapse in bickering and wasteful competition.

David Walker is a freelance journalist and former director of public reporting at the Audit Commission