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12:00 AM 23rd October 2024
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Local Growth Plans Still Lack The Details To Deliver For The Government’s Mission

 
Image by Kevin Norris from Pixabay
Image by Kevin Norris from Pixabay
Local growth plans risk being a missed opportunity unless the government provides clarity over their purpose, and mayors’ powers and funding, warns a new Institute for Government report.

The new IfG report says Keir Starmer and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner made an early impact by asking England’s 12 mayors to develop ‘local growth plans’ – to contribute to Labour’s growth mission – but warns that the government needs to get its sequencing right over the next few months if these plans are to play a useful role.

Published today, Local Growth Plans: How government should support a place-based approach to its national growth mission, finds that local growth plans can be an important way for local leaders to set out how they will use their powers to drive local growth, but the report finds that mayors do not yet have enough information to do this well. A failure to provide clarity risks wasting capacity and resource in local places and missing an opportunity for place-based policies to make a genuine impact on economic growth across the country.

The new IfG report, based on conversations with external experts, those in central and local government, and those with experience of previous local plans, says the government should use the budget to clarify the purpose of these plans and how they fit with other policies.

The report’s recommendations for ensuring the local growth plans deliver include:

Focusing local growth plans on how local levers will drive growth

Align local growth plan timelines with the devolution framework and the national industrial strategy

Put in a different timetable for places that do not yet have devolution deals

Include additional powers and funding flexibility in the devolution framework

Let local leaders own local growth plans should be owned by local leaders, with Whitehall providing evidence bases and ensuring plans add up

Central government should provide funding and expertise to help local areas deliver their plans


The government made a strong start to its regional growth agenda by emphasising mayors’ role in driving national growth. Local growth plans can be a good way to ensure mayors use their powers and funding to strategically prioritise the projects and sectors that will best drive growth. But for them to do this well, they need to know more about the government’s national growth strategy and the levers they will control.
Thomas Pope, Deputy Chief Economist at the Institute for Government and one of the authors of the report