Mark Sandford

English regionalism through the looking glass: perspectives on the English Question from the North-East and Cornwall

The Governments now-defunct plans for elected regional assemblies in England were principally economic and administrative in focus, and therefore paid little attention to perceptions of regional culture or identity and therefore to questions over regional boundaries. A comparison of two regions of England-Cornwall and the North-East-indicates that regional identity played some role in each. In Cornwall, which is not a standard region, regional campaigners began with an almost ethnonationalist perspective and refocused their campaign on economic and administrative issues. In the North-East, shared economic history and experience characterised the early campaigns, and less successful attempts were made to extrapolate regional identity from this. This relates to historical Labour Party uneasiness about territorial identity, a factor that is far less present in Cornwall.

Signing up to devolution: the prevalence of contract over governance in English devolution policy

ABSTRACT Initial analyses of the ‘devolution deals’ that form the cornerstone of current efforts to devolve power within England assess the policy against conventional governance criteria: accountability, transparency, and the quality of governance systems. In fact, English devolution policy has little connection with territorial governance. Instead, it closely resembles a contractual process, with central government determining the terms on which it will outsource specified programmes and projects to local governments, complete with requirements for ‘business readiness’, implementation plans, evaluation requirements, and future joint working. Accountability, governance and even geography take second place to the aim of improving central policy outcomes via a contract-style relationship. This perspective is styled ‘post-territorial devolution’: it accounts more effectively for the shape of the policy so far than traditional governance perspectives, which are often laced with normative positions.

Territory, power and statecraft: understanding English devolution

ABSTRACT In recent decades, the devolution of power to subnational regional authorities has formed a key element of what has been termed the ‘unravelling’ or ‘unbundling’ of the state in many parts of the world. Even in the United Kingdom, with its distinctive global reputation as a power-hoarding majoritarian democracy, the devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland since 1998 can be located within this broader devolutionary dynamic. In recent years, this process has focused on ‘the English question’ and a reform agenda that claimed to offer a ‘devolution revolution’. This paper offers the first research-led analysis of the scope, scale and implications of these post-2015 reforms to English governance. It utilizes Jim Bulpitt’s statecraft approach to explore the changing nature of centre–periphery relationships within England. The main conclusion has been that a ‘rhetoric–reality gap’ currently exists and a ‘devolution revolution’ has not occurred.

Citizen participation and changing governance: cases of devolution in England

The current process of devolving powers within England constitutes a significant change of governance arrangements. This process of devolution has been widely criticised for including insufficient consultation. This paper assesses whether that criticism is fair. Modifying Archon Fung’s framework for the analysis of public participation mechanisms, we begin by considering whether the depth of public engagement has been limited. Then, by comparing these consultation practices with other examples (including one we have ourselves trialled in pilot experiments), we find that deeper forms of public engagement would have been both possible (though at some financial cost) and productive.

Public services and local government: the end of the principle of ‘funding following duties’

ABSTRACT Recent attention to local government finance in England has focused on the substantial cuts in grant funding during the 2010–15 Parliament. However, the newly introduced Business Rates Retention Scheme, which links the distribution of central funding to business rate revenue raised in each local area, constitutes a historically significant disjuncture in the funding of English local authorities. Since the nineteenth century, with the exception of one short period, funding of English local government has followed statutory duties set by Parliament, a principle which underlay a variety of central control and audit regimes throughout the twentieth century. The new system breaks that link, implying a rejection of responsibility for local services by central government. This plays into demands for greater ‘autonomy’ currently emanating from local authorities, but this may not be a panacea for the stretched financial situation that many of them are experiencing at present.

Policy-making ‘front’ and ‘back’ stage: Assessing the implications for effectiveness and democracy

The aim of this article is to examine the complex interrelationship between ‘front’ and ‘back’ stage policy-making. ‘Front stage’ describes the activities of visible and accountable office holders in elected bodies, constrained by established bureaucratic rules. ‘Back stage’ describes the world of unseen decision-making where public officials are less constrained by formal rules and public scrutiny. Drawing on a recent case study of English devolution in the United Kingdom, this article examines how front and back stage policy-making shape one another and the impact this can have on policy effectiveness and democratic accountability. Findings reveal that policy-makers need to think more explicitly about the interplay between front and back stage activities. In the context of English devolution, the transition from back to front stage has been flawed. Central government’s purposeful strategy of informal negotiations with very few formal objectives has resulted in low stakeholder buy-in, which has mitigated against the potential effectiveness of back stage decision-making.

Westminster Executive Meets Local Government ‘Culture’: Overview and Scrutiny in Three English County Councils

The Local Government Act 2000 established the system of ‘overview and scrutiny’ in a majority of English local authorities. Ostensibly an attempt to transfer some of the features of the parliamentary/government decisionmaking process, the new system has not been able entirely to replace its predecessor. An analysis of three case-study county councils shows that they have adapted the overview and scrutiny system to existing political preferences, which owe much both to existing local government practice and to the prevailing cultures within the councils. Culture has influenced the structure of committees, their relationship to the executive, officer relationships, questioning, and use of the call-in function.

Growing pains: Property taxation and revenue incentives in English local government

Devolution of business rate revenue to English local authorities has been cast as a far-reaching act of fiscal devolution, with the explicit aim of enhancing local economic growth by providing financial incentives to local authorities. The system is based on three tacit assumptions: that local authorities can systematically increase their business rate revenue via local policy decisions, that increasing business rate revenue correlates with growth in the local economy, and that the structural effects of the business rate system upon local authority behaviour and revenue outcomes are negligible. This article makes the first known attempt to analyse the outcomes of the Business Rate Retention Scheme since its inception in 2013, using previously unavailable data from the 2010–17 valuation list for England. Findings indicate that all three of the tacit assumptions can be challenged. Links between local policy and revenue growth are subject to macroeconomic confounders, links between rate revenue and economic growth are ambivalent, and the structure of the system has a decisive effect on individual authority outcomes. The system is not a game of chess, with outcomes based on skill; it is more akin to cards, where results are dependent in part on the cards dealt.

English question or union question? Neither has easy answers

While devolution has provided a stronger political voice for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland since the late 1990s, it is only in the past few years that English public opinion appears to have become exercised by the lack of similar arrangements for England. The renewed debates over the character of the Union after the Scottish independence referendum reveal a desire for ‘fair treatment’ of England within a Union conceived as a partnership of equals. At the same time, numerous proposals have been made for devolution of power within England, reflecting long-held concerns about the territorial hegemony of London. Solutions to the former issue include English votes for English laws and an English Parliament. Solutions to the latter include city-regions, strengthened local government, the first of these appears to be the governments preferred route, in the light of the recent ‘Greater Manchester Agreement’. However, none of these ‘solutions’ can count on being implemented.

Civic Engagement in the English Regions

Peter Mandelson is unlikely to have had the English regions in mind when he said, in March 1998, that ‘it may be that we live in a time when the era of pure representative democracy is coming to an end’ (Sunday Times, Mar 20 1998), but the unusual representative arrangements and range of participants on Regional Chambers suggest that, at the English regional tier, his statement was prescient. Regional Chambers, and regional networks, are characterised by the fact that they treat as equals three different categories of participant: local authority councillors; senior officials and board members of regional executive agencies; and representatives of a wide range of organisations which I define here as part of ‘civil society’. On Regional Chambers, the latter categories of participant are known as Social and Economic Partners (SEPs) or Social, Economic and Environmental Partners (SEEPs); they have also been referred to as ‘community stakeholders’ and ‘ESPs’. I use ‘partners’ or ‘SEPs’ to refer to them in this chapter.