Levelling Up White Paper should let country devolve

The Localis think tank has argued that ministers must seize the opportunity of its Levelling Up White Paper to ensure that every part of the country has the freedom to achieve dynamic growth.

The organisation’s new report, A Plan for Local Growth, calls on government to ensure the recently-announced Levelling Up White Paper supports community control of high-street regeneration, accelerates devolved skills reforms and defines a clear role for local authorities and their economic partners in driving economic development and meeting net zero targets.

The report authors advise on a strict separation between short-term, community-led decision-making for town centre and high-street renewal – which boosts place prosperity – and long-term, high-value central government infrastructure strategies aimed at raising historic low-levels of productivity.

Additionally, Localis has recommended that the Levelling Up White Paper should: create pathways to community autonomy as a vehicle for hyperlocal, small-scale and patient financing of regeneration; build a framework for devolution to Skills Advisory Panels to facilitate local collaboration between employers, providers and education authorities to further accelerate the push to improve skill levels; create a clear role for the local state in driving towards the skills for net zero; and clarify and codify the role for existing institutions of the local state particularly local authorities in LEPs – in driving economic development.

Joe Fyans, Localis’s head of research, said: “Any government plans to move forward with devolution need to prioritise the task of restoring the nation’s economic and social fortunes and should not be fixated by the view that doing so inevitably means ringing in the changes to the governance structures of the local state.

“Ultimately, if an English devolution settlement is to achieve success, we will need a central government that does not micromanage every last line of local public expenditure or devise strategies that affect the destinies of places in the abstract, without consultation or deep understanding of local context.”