Centre for Cities

Plain English, please

Regular readers will know I can't stand the jargon that tends to dominate the world of local government - dreadful cliches like level playing field, which pops up all the time at regeneration conferences.

Rather splendidly, the Local Government Association has today published a list of 200 words that the public sector should avoid using. Unveiling the list, LGA chair Margaret Eaton said, "During the recession, it is vital that we explain to people in plain English how to get access to the 800 different services that local government provides."

Spot on, Margaret. (Does that mean we can go back to jargon, once the recession is over, I wonder??)

The LGA List has been sent to every council in the land. It includes classics like "blue-sky thinking", "direction of travel" and "thinking outside the box" - plus a few more recent ones:

• "Place-shaping" (I blame Michael Lyons for that one)
• "Single conversation" (that's Bob Kerslake)
• "Sustainable communities" (Prezza made that one up)

The LGA helpfully translates the 200 forbidden words into plain English, but does slip up a few times. For example, "cautiously welcome" = "devil in the detail", and "coterminosity" = "all singing from the same hymn sheet" - which is just as bad, I reckon.

I'd also add a few others:

• "Preparing for the upturn"
• "From recession to recovery"
• "It's not all doom and gloom"

PS I'm chairing the R&R National Conference in Birmingham on the 31st. Bob Kerslake, John Healey, etc  are speaking. I'll be dinging a bell and charging them a quid every time they utter one of those jargon words. Should be fun.

Recession and migration

A year ago, the UK economy was doing so well that we had record employment levels and loads of unfilled vacancies - a record 29.5 million people were in work in the first quarter of 2008, and there were around 678k unfilled vacancies.

Before the recession hit in mid-08, there were plenty of jobs to go round and not enough skilled workers to fill them. Employers were finding it hard to fill vacancies - and the Government was trying to move long-term benefit claimants into those vacancies. Remember those days?

Meanwhile, migrants from Eastern Europe were still very much in demand, and there was no real evidence of direct competition between A8 migrants and the local workforce - despite popular assumptions of displacement and job-stealing.

Here's what the then DWP Minister, Stephen Timms, said:

"Employment is still rising and there are plenty of jobs available for people looking for work...Migrants from Eastern Europe have been a benefit to our economy, allowing companies to grow and create more jobs...These migrants have not taken jobs away from British workers and have not impacted on wages."

The macro picture has changed quite a lot since then.

Unemployment is set to top 2 million this week, vacancies have fallen by 30% over the past year to 479k and Britons are taking whatever work they can. "Hard-to-fill" jobs aren't that hard to fill any more. According to yesterday's Observer, there are now 10 jobseekers for every vacancy in the UK.

Our latest report, Accession to Recession, reveals the impact of A8 migration on job markets in Bristol and Hull. See today's coverage in The Times, Telegraph and Guardian.

A8 migration - which started in mid-2004 - is now for the first time taking place against the backdrop of increased competition for jobs. For example, there are 22 jobseekers for every vacancy in Hull - and 5 jobseekers for every vacancy in Bristol.

So far, cities like Bristol and Hull have seen no mass exodus of A8 migrants. Yes, fewer migrants have been arriving from Poland in the last few months - but they haven't all gone home. Bristol, for example, is home to a well-established and growing Polish community. Hull's A8 migrants tend to be younger and more mobile - but while the Polish economy is doing no better than ours, they won't all be rushing home just yet.

Our report reaches these main conclusions:

• As the recession deepens, we could start to see more direct competition between Eastern European migrants and local jobseekers that have recently been made unemployed.
• So far, the real barrier facing the long-term workless in cities like Hull hasn't been migration - but the workings of the benefits system, job quality and a skills deficit. The Government needs to do more to break down worklessness and the benefits trap. JobCentre Plus should also collaborate more with migrant recruitment agencies.
• Longer term, cities like Bristol should implement an immigrant economic integration strategy, to ensure that long-staying A8 workers are encouraged to play their full part in their city's economy. 

British jobs for British workers looks a bit simplistic now, doesn't it?

Pennine Lancashire

I've just spent a long weekend in Pennine Lancashire - mainly to see the family, near Clitheroe - but I also popped in to see Blackburn with Darwen Council this afternoon.

Blackburn has recently joined forces with five other councils - Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle, Ribble Valley and Rossendale - to form the new Pennine Lancashire Multi Area Agreement. The MAA was signed in Downing Street in January, and is one of the ten now up and running. Pennine Lancashire was the brainchild of the late Tony Wilson and his partner, Yvette Livesey.

Pennine Lancashire has a population of around 520k, but has seen a net outflow of people in recent years. Its economy is over reliant on a declining manufacturing base - 25% of all employment in the area is in manufacturing, and over 20k manufacturing jobs were lost there between 1995-2005.

The area has high levels of benefit dependency, concentrations of worklessness and under-performance on higher-level skills. The 2007 Indices of Multiple Deprivation showed that the area is performing relatively less well now, compared to 2004 - mainly because of poor housing stock and over 30% worklessness.

Despite this under-performance, Pennine Lancashire does have some reasons to be cheerful - for example, its high-value aerospace sector includes major employers like BAe Systems and Rolls Royce. And other growing sectors have done well recently, including advanced engineering and electronics. 

Critically, transport connectivity between Blackburn, Burnley, etc and the rest of the North West is inadequate, and a significant barrier to economic growth. This is something we pointed out last year, in our City Links report - which highlighted the need for better transport links between e.g. Burnley and Greater Manchester. Currently, only 2.6% and 3.6% of resident employees in Burnley and Blackburn commute into Manchester - partly because the rail links are so rubbish. It takes about 90 minutes to get from Burnley to Manchester by train.

So it's good to see that Pennine Lancashire's MAA includes plans to upgrade the Clitheroe-Manchester Raillink, East Lancashire Railway and Todmorden Curve with new and improved rail services. These will provide better connections from e.g. Blackburn and Burnley to Manchester, over 2009-14, allowing Blackburn and Burnley residents to access job opportunities in Greater Manchester - once the recession is over, of course. The funding for these improvements would need to be sourced by the local authorities, but the amounts involved aren't that big - about £9m for the Clitheroe-Manchester upgrade.       

One of the main purposes of the Centre for Cities is to put forward practical policy proposals that can actually be implemented. So I was pleased to see this one taken up by the Pennine Lancashire councils. And glad that the Department for Transport has agreed to explore these options. I understand that big-hitters like Jack Straw have given their personal backing to these rail improvements. And all six councils in Pennine Lancashire are behind the plans.

So, despite the recession and the real challenges facing Blackburn and Burnley, this is a good example of how councils can work together and prioritise some much-needed transport improvement. 

Eco-towns study

CLG has just published a financial viability study on the latest line-up of possible eco-town schemes. First, a quick re-cap...

Eco-towns were first announced by Gordon Brown, during his leadership "campaign" in summer 2007. The Government later promised 5 eco-towns by 2016, and another 5 by 2020. They sounded like a good idea at the time - trailblazers for new carbon-efficient communities, and part of the 3m new homes target.

But they've have had a rough ride so far - the longlist of schemes has changed a lot, the green credentials of the programme have been questioned, and the credit crunch has raised major questions about the viability of the programme.

We've been encouraging Ministers to avoid the numbers game, and pick only the very best schemes - even if that means only two or three. We also warned last summer, that the deteriorating housing market would spell trouble for eco-towns.

This viability study is part of the Government's consultation on eco-towns, which is due to end on 30 April. Ministers will decide on the final shortlist later this year. Each scheme will then need to go through the normal planning procedures, in the same way as any other development, before actual building can start. Most of the proposed schemes in this study aim to start building houses around 2011-13.

Eight schemes have been assessed in this study by CLG’s advisers (led by PwC). Three other alternative schemes have been added in, but these are not directly comparable. Together, the 11 schemes would build 77k homes over 20-30 years. But they won't all get selected, so the final number will be lower than that.

The study contains loads of health warnings - all developments are at an “early stage”, the conclusions are only “indicative” and “subject to change”, and should be treated with “extreme care”. The 30-year assessment assumes a relatively strong recovery in house prices, to (pre-2007) levels by 2011 - but admits this is highly uncertain:

“Due to the current unprecedented turmoil in the housing market, predicting future values and house price inflation as well as build costs is extremely problematic....Should house prices and demand not recover in the medium to long-term then this would have a significant negative impact on the viability of eco-town proposals.”

CLG is also concerned about the public cost of eco-towns. Last year, ex-housing minister Caroline Flint promised that all eco-towns would have excellent transport links. But this study makes clear that the Government has not yet endorsed the costs of any major new infrastructure associated with any eco-town scheme. Which suggests that the Treasury and DfT still need to make their mind up on eco-towns. 

The study rates each of the main eight schemes, according to whether they can generate sufficient value to cover the costs of development "without placing undue risk on the public finances”.

• Weston Otmoor (between Oxford and Bicester) is the biggest scheme, with 15k planned homes - it passes the viability test
• Pennbury (near Leicester) and Middle Quinton (near Stratford on Avon) both look promising, with no need for extra public subsidy.
• Two schemes are not currently viable - Rossington (near Doncaster) and St Austell (near the Eden Project) both have a significant funding gap.
• Three other schemes have some uncertainties - NE Elsenham, Ford Airfield, and Whitehill Bordon

If you've got any views on all this lot, you can email CLG at

ecotowns@communities.gsi.gov.uk

Hazel's annual appraisal - "could do better"

It's annual appraisal time at the Centre for Cities. Like any good employer, we're reviewing the team's performance over the past year, highlighting main achievements and identifying areas for improvement.

Today's Annual Report on Hazel Blears' department is a bit like her annual appraisal - except that it's been done by the Communities and Local Government Committee, not Gordon Brown. It basically says that CLG "could do better".

The CLG Committee has 11 MPs on it - 6 Labour, 3 Tory and 2 LibDem. It's chaired by Phyllis Starkey (MP for Milton Keynes SW), and Clive Betts is on there, too - chair of the All Party Urban Development Group.

CLG was set up in mid-2006, so is still quite a young department. In Dec 2006, a Cabinet Office Capability Review of CLG called on the Department to sharpen its delivery focus and make its policy-making more evidence-based. The CLG Committee's 2007 Report found that CLG "needs urgently to tackle persistent concerns" about its ability to deliver. A more recent Capability Review (Dec 08) found that progress had been made - but CLG was "still some way short of full effectiveness".

Today's Report commends CLG for its recent good progress - e.g. on Decent Homes, responding to the 2007 floods and achieving its 2004 efficiency targets. But overall, CLG's performance "cannot be described as impressive". The Committee says that CLG needs to become a "big hitter" department.

The Committee also has a go at eco-towns, saying "the eco-towns policy is clearly in some difficulty". Only one site has been fully approved so far, and is set to provide fewer than the original minimum of 5,000 new homes. The original goal of delivering up to 100k new homes in eco-towns now looks "highly unlikely to be achieved". Putting eco-towns back on track will be a "difficult task" and a "severe test" of CLG's ability to engage its delivery partners.

We've had our doubts about eco-towns for ages, and the CLG Committee seem to agree with us. CLG recently extended the public consultation on eco-towns, to 30 April. The results of a viability study, carried out by PwC, are due to be announced soon. Meanwhile, CLG has taken the rather prominent eco-towns box off its homepage, possibly in response to my little comment last month.

PS In a classic piece of Whitehall process, the National Audit Office last month completed a Review of Capability Reviews...Apparently, it's not yet possible to figure out whether they represent good value for money.

Two ex-bosses

I've had quite a colourful line-up of bosses - including former Treasury minister, Geoffrey Robinson, and former British Ambassador to the US, Christopher Meyer.

Sir Christopher writes in today's Times, about Gordon's big trip to see Obama. Meyer was running our DC Embassy when Blair first met Bush in 2001 - remember George W's quip about their shared taste for Colgate? Brown is clearly hoping for a much-needed bounce from his address to a joint session of Congress tomorrow. But Meyer doubts whether "any amount of Obama stardust" will affect the outcome of our next general election.

Another ex-boss, John Kingman, appeared before the Treasury Committee this morning - he now runs UK Financial Investments (UKFI), which manages the Government's rather large stake in bailed-out banks like Royal Bank of Scotland.

John is described as "self-effacing but self-confident" - the classic trait of today's Whitehall mandarin. He's also younger than me, which is a constant source of surprise.