Lord Heseltine, the man in charge of allocating the government's Regional Growth Fund, has said the coalition made a 'mistake' in abolishing the Regional Development Agencies.
In a candid comment piece in The Times newspaper on 23 August, Mr Heseltine claims the RDAs had provided a bridge between localities and Whitehall, and warns that government departments are now busy creating their own 'empires' in the regions.
While Mr Heseltine does not claim that this dispersed approach to localism adopted by the likes of the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions is damaging, he warns: 'Good results will be difficult to achieve unless the reforms are carried out with commitment and determination by local authorities'.
Mr Heseltine, a former Cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, is currently in charge of allocating the £1.2bn RGF as part of the government's plan to kick-start growth across Britain’s moribund local economies.
But in his Times article, he urges ministers to go further in empowering local leaders to help drive growth plans – and to not focus on the 12 areas recently earmarked as those that will host a new generation of directly elected mayors.
