As the current Parliament draws to a close, cities minister Greg Clark reflects on his ministerial career over the past five years and his achievements in planning, localism and decentralisation, City Deals and local growth.
The MJ has indulged me in allowing me to look back on my last five years in the coalition government, during which time I have held a number of posts, all of which have involved working closely with local government and its supporters.
It has been a challenging time for local government – to mend the nation's balance sheet councils have had to take a big share of the savings required.
But local government has risen to meet the challenge with capability and responsibility such that public satisfaction with local government has risen even when budgets have fallen.
As I have said before, Whitehall has many lessons to learn from town halls, and my conviction that devolving more powers and revenue to localities is in the national interest as well as the local interest has been deepened by the experience of working with local leaders over the last five years.
The National Planning Policy Framework
It was a great honour to get the call from the Prime Minister in May 2010 offering me the position of minister of state in the Department for Communities and Local Government, a portfolio which included town and country planning.
It was daunting because it was abundantly clear that our planning system was in dire need of a root and branch overhaul.
And I was to be charged with overseeing this: reforming a system that was drowning in policy directives and guidance notes and statements and all the while building fewer, not more, homes for a growing population.
It would have been easy to make a few token tweaks to existing policy, and to declare the job done.
But that would have been to duck the responsibility that comes with being in government to think seriously about how things can be better than they are, and not to duck attendant controversy, but to make substantial reforms.
I was fortunate to be well advised; planners in local government, industry, and environmental and heritage groups helped me and my officials as we went exhaustively through the over 1,000 pages of inherited policy.
Following a thorough consultation in which we weighed carefully every suggestion, I published the 52 pages that comprise the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which was eventually launched in March 2012.
I am proud of what we achieved.
Even the voices that were most hostile during the consultation recognised that – perhaps despite their expectations – their contributions were listened to and acted upon in the final version, and were generous in welcoming it.
Planning, as every councillor and local government officer knows, excites passions and always will.
And it is right that it should do so because what we build will shape the lives not just of ourselves but of generations to come.
Planning policy is now much clearer and more accessible to everyone who uses it.
Planning approvals – residential and commercial – are rising and it is notable that only three years since an exceptionally heated debate that preceded its publication no-one serious now advocates replacing the NPPF and returning to the old system.
Decentralisation and Localism
In December 2010, not much more than six months after the Coalition Government was formed, I concluded the parliamentary stage of the Localism Act.
This provided the necessary legislative foundation for the direction that the Government embarked on: a determination to bring about a radical shift of power from our over-centralised state to local communities.
We had started on an important journey, a journey which still has a long way to go.
Alongside the publication of the Localism Bill, as it became known, came the formation of the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs).
I spoke at the launch of the very first one in the Palace of Westminster in November 2010, where I recall that Mike Burton of The MJ was among the first to ask a question.
Eventually, 39 LEPs were formed and they could not have been more different from the old Regional Development Agencies (RDAs).
The RDAs were nine top-down neat divisions of the country determined from Whitehall and by Whitehall, with vast overheads to cover expensive regional offices and a lot of bureaucracy.
The LEPs' geography, by contrast, is locally determined, not centrally dictated, reflecting the actual economic geography of the places they cover.
As institutions LEPs are still young, but I think it is possible already to recognise a number of big benefits they are bringing.
One is the sense of a relevant geography that reflects how people live and work, which is likely to go beyond traditional administrative boundaries – something that countries all over the world are recognising it is important to organise around.
A second is the degree of partnership and common endeavour that they involve.
The fact that the LEPs are chaired by, and contain many local businesses, reflects the obvious interest that business and councils have in the future of their area.
The degree of joint working between neighbouring authorities is better than ever, reinforced by serving together through the LEPs.
And the fact that many other big players in local economies are represented on LEP boards strengthens their ability to act for the area.
As Minister of Universities I have been delighted that every single LEP has at least one vice chancellor or principal on its board – not because they were required to do so by the Government, but because their position as local economic leaders is so evident.
The City Deals and Michael Heseltine's No Stone Unturned
In 2011, the Prime Minister asked me to take on an additional responsibility as Minister for Cities.
The first thing I did was to travel the country to spend time meeting and listening to the leaders of our great cities.
It was clear that the ambition for change was there and that a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn't do.
Indeed, the imposition of uniformity had held our cities back.
Every place had a different history, different character, different needs so had to be treated with individual respect.
And to help a city prosper was not at the expense of another place, but would help the nation prosper too.
I distilled this into a new concept: that of City Deals – striking a bargain between central government and the cities to devolve powers and resources if each place could demonstrate convincingly that such a deal would be good for the country as well as good for that city.
We negotiated – hard, and in person – with the eight biggest cities outside London.
We established a cabinet committee to act as a sort of Dragons' Den to stress test each proposed deal.
And we concluded deals that genuinely did transfer powers and resources from Whitehall to our cities – whether it was over skills in Sheffield, urban regeneration in Liverpool and Newcastle, or a financial earn-back with the Treasury in Manchester.
The negotiations were tough but I never experienced the slightest difficulty in working with leaders who were from opposing political parties.
There was – and is – a shared determination to do what is right for the city and the country.
The success of the City Deals was noticed, and we extended them to smaller cities like Cambridge, Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland.
And then, quite rightly, places outside cities said they wanted to participate.
I was keen to expand the programme and was pleased to have the support of Lord Heseltine.
Michael instantly recognised that our programme owed much to the work he did as Environment Secretary in Margaret Thatcher's government.
Commissioned by George Osborne, he wrote a substantial report – No Stone Unturned in Pursuit of Growth – which he published in 2012.
It recommended that we take the City Deals and go further – challenging the business and council leaders in every place in the country to assess the economic strengths and opportunities in their area, and to say what they would do differently if they had the chance; and to take from central government departments budgets that were controlled in Whitehall, but which could be made available locally if there was a credible plan to achieve more with the money than if it were spent remotely from London.
This work formed the basis for the Local Growth Fund which the chancellor resourced with £12bn of capital taken from Whitehall departments and to be made available to localities across England.
Local Growth Fund
In October 2013 I was appointed to the Cabinet Office to lead a cross Whitehall-team to make this happen.
I found Michael Heseltine an office with me in the Treasury building, and we set about encouraging people to work together and begin our push to devolve powers and resources out of Whitehall.
In late 2013 we laid down a challenge to the LEPs, much as we had before with the City Deals: we charged each LEP with forging a Strategic Economic Plan for their area.
Michael and I then embarked on criss-crossing the country meeting all the LEPs, usually on their home ground, to scrutinise their proposals and challenge them to make the most of the opportunity.
By the time we got to the deadline for submission of proposals for the first round of the Local Growth Fund the propositions were so compelling that my colleagues agreed to allocate not just the £1bn intended, but £6bn in forward commitments to plans that offered excellent value for money by leveraging in private and local funds alongside the devolved capital from central government.
In July 2014, the Prime Minister launched the first round of Growth Deals, appropriately in Birmingham, city of Joseph Chamberlain, whose leadership of that great city helped drive the prosperity not only of the city but of the nation.
Minister for the Future
Exactly one week after the launch of the Local Growth Fund, there was a major Cabinet reshuffle.
I was appointed to be Minister of Universities, Science and Cities.
One of my colleagues, reflecting on the content of each of the three parts of my portfolio, summed it up well: ‘ah yes', he said, ‘the Ministry for the Future'.
As I have travelled the country visiting campuses and laboratories it has been gratifying to find that I already knew many of the vice chancellors of the universities and many of the science leaders through their work on local growth through the LEPs.
Naturally, alongside the enhanced portfolio, the march of devolution proceeds apace, with much of the running, pleasingly, being taken up by the local civic and business leaders themselves.
And what next?
Readers of The MJ are going to be disappointed if you were expecting me to predict the precise outcome of the next General Election.
But I will say this: increased devolution of power and resources to local civic and business leaders is now unstoppable.
In recent months we have built on the success of the Manchester City Deal with a transformational agreement signed by the chancellor with the leaders of the Greater Manchester authorities.
It devolves huge powers over transport, skills, health and social care to the city and establishes a directly elected mayor who will instantly become one of the most important figures in the nation.
The Chancellor has made it clear that the offer is not restricted to Greater Manchester and the path to my door is becoming well worn with other places who are putting together proposals that follow the ambition and excitement that has attended the Greater Manchester agreement
Just as we extended City Deals to the rest of the country through Growth Deals so there is an opportunity for our counties, unitaries and districts to put forward proposals.
They will find an enthusiast in me, looking to build on the momentum we have established.
In five years, we have not reversed a century of centralisation.
There is more to do, and I am determined, given the opportunity, in the next Parliament to get on with it.
But reflecting on a tumultuous five years, I am convinced that we have changed the direction of how Britain is governed.
The question is no longer about whether to decentralise but how rapid and extensive the transfer of powers should be.
Greg Clark is cities minister
