If the Government wants to raise national productivity, it needs to commit to the timely delivery of regional transport priorities and allow more resources generated locally to be spent locally.
This is the message of the eight English regions in their advice to the Treasury on next July’s Comprehensive Spending Review, which will set public spending for the period up to 2011, against a tight economic backdrop.
Asked to provide advice on how ‘we better use existing public expenditure levels to achieve the Government’s regional economic performance and regeneration targets’, the regional assemblies have urged that Whitehall commitment to delivery is strengthened and local government finance rules loosened.
The North West, Yorkshire and Humber, East of England, South East, East Midlands, and South West regional assemblies and development agencies all urged government departments and agencies to formally commit to delivering infrastructure to improve economic performance.
In Yorkshire and Humber, delivery of the regional spatial strategy has been undermined by ‘government agencies not heeding our advice and ministers introducing new programmes outside our priorities’.
The North West – frustrated at the postponement of the M6 upgrade from Birmingham to Manchester – and South East both suggest that Whitehall departments formally agree to regional priorities by signing new regional public service agreements.
‘Saying we’ll build it in 2017 or afterwards isn’t good enough. We need alignment between transport and economic development,’ said Steve Barwick, director of strategy at the NWRA.
Most regions have told the Treasury there is a need for longer-term programmes to be agreed, so that regions know what trunk, local authority and rail schemes will be delivered in the next 20 years before plans for new homes and jobs are agreed. Currently, there are only indications of funding for trunk roads of ‘regional’ significance and local authority schemes up to 2016.
Timely decisions are also urged by the South East, which stresses that the A3 Hindhead improvement rose in cost by 55% while the secretary of state made a decision. ‘Smarter working within the Government will make transport budgets go further,’ the region advises.