When it comes to matters of plans for regional economies, Henry Leveson-Gower suggests the government might want to start from a different place to the one it is at.
One thing we know for sure with Andy Burham’s new government is that it claims to care about devolving power locally. But there is something odd about inviting places to take charge of their future while expecting them to pursue much the same ambition. Currently each is to discover its competitive strengths, attract investment and supply the skills required by high-growth industries. Presumably, somewhere there is a place whose future does not involve becoming an innovation hub. It would be refreshing to hear from it.
Local Growth Plan guidance expects mayors to support the national growth mission and industrial strategy. It allows local variation, but the destination is largely settled before the conversation begins.
However, buried within the familiar growth language is a potentially disruptive proposition: people who live and work in a place might be better able to decide what it needs. Taken seriously, that should change skills policy considerably. The starting question would become what people need to know and be able to do to sustain a decent life there, including as the climate changes. Much would follow from that apparently modest adjustment.
Room to move
The immediate opportunity is in England, where the government’s devolution strategy is strengthening the role of strategic authorities. Skills are already devolved to the other UK nations. Within England, the new arrangements bring greater regional influence over adult training and connect it with responsibilities for transport, housing and economic development. These connections matter. A training place is of limited use if the last bus home leaves before the course finishes, while an ambitious housing programme needs people who can actually build and adapt homes.
There is a catch. Local Growth Plan guidance expects mayors to support the national growth mission and industrial strategy. It allows local variation, but the destination is largely settled before the conversation begins. We risk giving places more responsibility for delivering an economic model whose purposes they have little opportunity to question. A locally designed vehicle is still heading to the same destination if Whitehall has programmed the satnav.
It would be unfair, though, to suggest that every area has been instructed to chase all eight national growth sectors. The skills planning guidance explicitly allows other local priorities. In devolved areas, regional authorities and employer bodies now work jointly on Local Skills Improvement Plans, with the authority setting out its sector priorities at the outset. Plans must also consider skills for climate adaptation and other environmental goals. There is room to move here, if local leaders choose to use it.
Getting our feet muddy
Maybe they should start by looking at the work on which a place depends, much of which struggles to acquire the glamour of an emerging industry. In a rural catchment, that includes growing food, managing woodland and maintaining the health of soil and water. These activities are connected whether or not they appear in the same policy document. What happens on a hillside affects the farm below it and the town further downstream. A flood does not pause to establish which sector is responsible.
Take Devon and an urban borough such as Lewisham as contrasting illustrations. Devon could build pathways linking farming, forestry, habitat restoration and water management. In Lewisham, horticulture, tree care, drainage and building retrofit could help neighbourhoods cope with heat and heavy rain. Both need ecological knowledge and practical competence, but in different combinations. Neither should have to dress every occupation in technological finery before it qualifies for strategic attention. Knowing when and where to plant a tree deserves a place alongside knowing how to programme a sensor.
If you talk to people who understand land-based industries, they are likely to highlight fragmented training, recruitment difficulties and poor understanding of the careers available. The familiar response is to make a stronger case for each sector. But place offers another route: bring those occupations together around the future of a landscape or neighbourhood. Colleges and employers could develop a common foundation in practical and ecological skills, followed by specialisation. Someone entering through parks maintenance might later move into arboriculture or water management, rather than finding themselves at the end of a narrow training cul-de-sac. Although unfortunately many of those that end up in land-based sectors probably didn’t have a great school experience, so training providers will have to address any acquired allergy to classes, which, for a start, could be a matter of situating the learning outside in a practical context.
Who gets to decide
This is where devolution could become more interesting than a rearrangement of responsibilities. A strategic authority can convene colleges, employers, councils and residents around a shared problem, then connect training with the investment needed to address it. Retrofitting a neighbourhood, for example, creates questions about skills, household finances, procurement and access to work. Tackling these together could turn an aspiration into a programme that people can join and employers can plan around.
Employer involvement is essential, but current vacancies cannot tell us everything a place will need. An organisation with no budget to maintain a wetland will advertise no jobs, however valuable that maintenance might be. Nor should the largest businesses get to define the future simply because they can spare somebody for every meeting. Small growers, community organisations, workers and prospective trainees need a meaningful say. Moving a decision closer to home does not, by itself, stop powerful interests capturing it.
National government must provide stable funding, recognised qualifications and support for areas with the weakest resources.
A key element to this is to develop institutions that make cooperation practical. Several small employers could share placements and supervision, supported by a college. Councils could commission maintenance over longer periods so that employers can offer secure work and invest in training. Residents could help identify neglected needs and judge whether programmes are meeting them. For young people, this would offer paid routes into useful work, with progression; for adult career changers, a way to put existing experience to new use. Calling the jobs green would be the least important part. More broadly councils could move away from procurement through competitive tendering to developing collaborative models for service delivery working with local actors rather than letting services to national conglomerates.
Letting places think
There are limits to what local leaders can do. Devolved adult skills powers do not amount to control of the whole education system, and apprenticeships remain outside those powers. National government must provide stable funding, recognised qualifications and support for areas with the weakest resources. It must also allow success to be judged through the needs being met: homes made more comfortable, landscapes better maintained and people able to earn a decent living doing the work.
I hope at least some local leaders will test that proposition through their skills plans, using the existing scope for local priorities and climate adaptation to build a practical case for wider change. The government need not discover post-growth economics before any of this can begin. It could start by following through on its own claim that places know something Whitehall does not. But it would have to be prepared for them to come back with a different answer. Otherwise, we may find we have devolved everything except the thinking.
