Centre for Cities

Bremner, Core Cities & Me

Liverpool did a great job staging the Core Cities Summit this week. I've done a lot of conferences, and this was one of the best.

Speakers included the amazing Kjell Nordstrom (+ crazy powerpoint), a turbo-charged Will Hutton (Summit chair Jon Sopel couldn't shut him up), and the multi-faced Rory Bremner (more on him in a minute...).

In my speech at the Summit gala dinner, I said there was a lot of consensus between the Core Cities - but a lot of unanswered questions, too.

We all agree on this:

• Cities are vital to our national economy - together, the 8 Core City regions are 25% of England's economy.
• Our cities need more financial powers, so they can do more to support their different economies.
• Public spending cuts are coming, and cities need to generate more private sector jobs.
• Cities should collaborate more, and city-regions are a good thing.
• A change of government is quite likely next year.

But here are the tricky questions:

• What about under-performing cities, and the places and people in cities that have been left behind?
• What financial powers do cities want? Exactly which tax and spending powers?
• Can devolution deliver real savings, and how can cities grow their private sector?
• Should all city-regions be statutory and binding, or is it OK for some to be voluntary and informal?
• Are cities ready for a Tory Government? Which might mean no RDAs and more elected mayors.

Rory was the star turn, and did his stuff after my speech. But instead of kicking off with Gordon Brown or David Cameron, he did me. V funny.

Cities and the spending squeeze

UK cities have been boosted over the last decade by loads of public investment and jobs. In many cases (like Newcastle), they've been a bit too dependent on the public sector. With spending cuts looming, cities won't be able to rely as much on the public sector from now on. 

We had a Question Time debate on this last night - with Charles Clarke, Justine Greening and Jeremy Browne.

The fiscal deficit is now huge - most likely £175 billion in this 09-10 fiscal year. Even adjusting for the recession, the structural deficit currently stands at a whopping £90 billion. Have a look at this presentation by my colleague Chris Webber, for all the gory details.

Here are the facts on capital spending and public sector jobs.

Capital spending saw a real increase of 13% between 97-98 and 07-08. That massive injection of cash paid for new housing, transport, schools, hospitals, etc. But capital spend will be cut dramatically in the next Spending Review period (2011-14). That means less cash for housing, transport and regeneration across all cities.

UK cities added 1.2 million net new jobs between 1998-2007. Over two-thirds of these were public sector jobs. In Birmingham, the number of public sector jobs increased by 80k - but the number of private sector jobs fell by 55k. Cities like Birmingham will need to reverse that trend over the next decade.

The three main parties have started talking about spending cuts - but they all need to set out more detail between now and the General Election.

• Labour says it will halve the deficit by 2013-14, but Gordon Brown set out a lot of new spending commitments in his conference speech in Brighton.
• George Osborne told the Tory conference in Manchester that he will cut spending by £7bn a year, but that's only one-sixth of what's needed to halve the deficit by 2014.
• Vince Cable set out his slightly longer list of cuts in Bournemouth - including a public sector pay freeze, scrapping RDAs, and halving Train to Gain budgets. But that's still not enough.

Once all these cuts start, what will happen to all that talk about financial devolution? Last night, Clarke and Greening agreed that cities should still get more financial powers:

• Clarke said cities need 3-5 year spending settlements from the Treasury, and more income streams - like local authority bonds for new infrastructure. He said Labour has been too timid on financial devolution, over the past 12 years.
• Greening set out the Tories' Control Shift proposals - which would reduce ring-fencing and allow cities to retain some business rate revenue. But she conceded that a George Osborne Treasury would keep a tight grip from the centre.

So, here's the big question. If there's a Tory Govt next year, will "Control Shift" result in "fiscal shift" from central govt to cities? Unlikely, I reckon, in the near term. Small steps will be the approach.

But the case for giving cities more tax and spend powers is still strong. De-layering all those tiers of governance, accelerating Total Place, pooling budgets with city-regions, giving the business rate back to cities. All these things would devolve and deliver smarter spending.

Worldmapper

Just spotted Worldmapper - a fantastic collection of maps, that re-sizes the world based on loads of different variables.

This one is a map of the UK, based on population size rather than land mass. Look at the massive bulge that is London and the Greater South East. And the almost non-existent twigs that are Wales. Kind of obvious, but still a great visual.

There are over 600 global maps on Worldmapper based on things like scientific research, house prices, and city growth.

The map of English language is particularly good - and very similar to the map of internet users in 1990.

 

Alastair Campbell hands out Regeneration Awards

Met Alastair Campbell tonight - he was handing out the prizes at the Regeneration & Renewal Awards. It was a black tie do, but R&R forgot to tell me it was black tie. I made up for it by telling AC I'm from near Burnley - which seemed to get me off the hook.

The Master of Spin dropped quite a few names - like Ronnie and Nancy, Maggie and Denis, HRH and Philip. And told quite a funny story about Tony Blair eyeing up Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands - which I can't quite believe. 

Back to the Awards - winners included:

• Kensington Regeneration, Liverpool (community-led organisation of the year)
• Lancashire County Council (tackling worklessness)
• Castleford Bridge (best-designed regeneration development)
• St Stephen's, Hull (mixed-use project of the year)
• And the LSE's marvellous Anne Power (lifetime achievement)

There should have been an award for Elephant in the Room - which would have gone to The Economy.

The regeneration industry is facing is toughest time in living memory. Three factors are conspiring against the very places that need to be revived.

First, the recession stopped regeneration in its tracks about a year ago - it was unfinished business, and it didn't quite get round to sorting out the most isolated and deprived areas.

Second, the recession seems to have hit regeneration target areas worse than others - Northern cities like Hull, Barnsley, Doncaster and Wigan have seen higher increases in unemployment than their larger neighbours like Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester.

Third, when the upturn does come around, private developers are more likely to get started on relatively low-risk projects in larger, already-buoyant areas - because there won't be as much government cash to throw around.

Regeneration is all about reversing decline in places that have struggled to cope with recent structural changes to our economy - globalisation, the shift from manufacturing to services, the increasing demand for higher-skilled workers.

As some of tonight's winners demonstrate - like Lancashire County Council's success in tackling worklessness, and Islington's award for boosting its local economy - regeneration is also about people, jobs, skills, and the economy (stupid).

Unfortunately, regeneration still ends up being too much about new shiny buildings - and not enough about building up the skills of people who live in these areas, so they can access the job opportunities that emerge from new retail and other developments.

It's no accident that Hull and other cities have been hit hard by the recession. They've got a relatively low skills profile - not just a need for more modern physical infrastructure.

Yes, we need the property industry to get back on its feet. But we also need just as much effort to sort out the structural skills gaps that hold back many of our lagging urban areas.

As our Cities Manifesto says, cities should be given more responsibility for skilling up their own workforce. That means cutting back the bewildering array of skills quangos, and giving cities more control over skills and training budgets - so they can tackle their own jobless problems on their doorstep.

The Wire: is Speke really like Baltimore?

Loads of coverage today for Chris Grayling's talk about British inner cities and The Wire.

In case you missed it, the Tory shadow home secretary said that our inner cities - like Speke in Liverpool, and Moss Side in Manchester - are now like the most dangerous drug-dealing, gun-toting streets in Baltimore.

Here's Chris Grayling on More4News - and here's one of the more sensible reactions, from Michael White.

I won't get bogged down in a point-by-point rebuttal of Grayling's comments. But the following is probably a good summary: (1) It's August,and therefore open season for headline-grabbing speeches from politicians, (2) Baltimore's murder rate is far higher than Manchester's or Liverpool's, but has fallen sharply over the last decade, and (3) total crime levels in the Speke area have fallen over the last year.

I did just want to share one story with you...

In 2002, I took newly-elected MP David Miliband round Baltimore - and introduced him to then-mayor Martin O'Malley - who is now Governor of Maryland. Inside City Hall, Miliband asked O'Malley about some new TV programme. O'Malley wasn't too happy about it - said it was making him and the rest of the city government look like "a bunch of crooks". He was talking about Series 1 of The Wire...

O'Malley had just set up CitiStat - an award-winning programme, based on the CompStat model pioneered by Mayor Giuliani in New York City. It measured and published results on service delivery across the city - and was instrumental in cleaning up the city, reducing crime, and yes - tackling drugs.

After Miliband's visit, I took a team of Whitehall civil servants round Baltimore - including senior bods from the Treasury and the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit. They were all impressed by the CitiStat model - which helped cut violent crime by 40% during O'Malley's six years as mayor, and won Harvard's Innovations in American Government Award in 2004.

So although Baltimore might look like a bad model for UK cities, it does actually offer some lessons in tackling crime - and of course has a directly-elected mayor. Not all bad, then... 

PS Little-known fact = Grayling is the Shadow Minister for Liverpool. Apparently, lots of different Tory shadows each adopted a city back in 2006 - e.g. Alan Duncan is Shadow Minister for Newcastle, and George Osborne is Shadow Minister for Manchester. Currently, we have a batch of Regional Ministers - looks like these will be replaced by Cities Ministers, if the Tories win next year.

Richard Reeves: alter ego

Intriguing comment piece from Demos director Richard Reeves in The Observer yesterday. He sets out some insights (no doubt well-sourced) on the policies of a future Tory Govt - cutting back on middle-class tax breaks, civil service reform, and a localism bill.

Reeves also contends that the progressive wing of the Conservative Party is now in the ascendancy, give or take a few diehard shire Tories. See some reactions here and here.

Even more intriguing that Demos - which under Geoff Mulgan was the breeding ground for New Labour - is now positioning itself as open to both Labour and the Tories. George Osborne now sits on its advisory panel, and James Purnell recently launched his Open Left project on the Demos platform.

Reeves isn't exactly a fan of Gordon Brown. In June, he wrote about the tension within the PM between the radical reformer and the "power-hoarding central statist". Ouch.

I don't know Richard, but feel like I should. Back in 2006, Patricia Hewitt made a beeline for me at a fancy ippr dinner. Beating a path to my table from quite a distance, waving and smiling, I did wonder what Patricia wanted. All was revealed soon enough, but only when she got within inches of me: "Oh...sorry...I thought you were Richard Reeves."

Cheers, Patricia.

Manchester International Festival

I've been in Manchester the last few days, doing the day job (talking about city-regions in Salford) - but have also seen a couple of things at the Manchester International Festival. Our chair, Tom Bloxham, is also chair of the Festival - which started two years ago, and this year staged original new work from major acts like Kraftwerk and Antony and the Johnsons.

Richard Leese - leader of Manchester City Council, and also on our board - was raving about the Festival today. His favourite was It Felt Like A Kiss - which apparently involved walking round a disused building, to an original Damon Albarn soundtrack. 

I saw Rufus Wainwright's first opera Prima Donna on Sunday, at the Palace Theatre. I'm not a massive opera fan, but do like Rufus - and the Festival scored a big coup in getting him to premiere this one in Manchester. The Palace itself had its heyday in the 30s, with acts like Judy Garland and Noel Coward. But it was hit by a German bomb in 1940 and struggled through the 60s and 70s, until it was revived by an Arts Council grant in the early 80s. I remember going to see Jesus Christ Superstar there on a school trip in 1981... 

Tonight I saw Everybody Loves a Winner at my favourite theatre, the Royal Exchange - an amazing theatre in the round, literally suspended from the roof of the former Cotton Exchange, which used to be the largest room for commerce in the world. It was damaged by a more recent bomb - the IRA one in 1996. It re-opened two years later, and has since become part of the Manchester renaissance story. In tonight's show, the theatre was transformed into a bingo hall - and, much to my delight, lots of the cast were former Corrie actors.

Which leads me to a slightly different event - the Conservative Party Conference, coming to Manchester in October. We'll be there, as part of the Urban Hub. But even more excitingly, Eric Pickles and Bill Roache (aka Ken Barlow) will be co-hosting a pub quiz at...wait for it... the Palace Theatre. Rufus, you've been warned.

Honestly, Davids

David Miliband was pretty honest tonight about the Government's record. Delivering the annual John Smith Memorial Lecture, he highlighted the successes - e.g. massive investment in health and education - but admitted that Labour needs to go a lot further in other areas.

He admitted that transport policy has not changed enough, the low carbon revolution has not yet happened - and devolution has been too modest: "Funding has been raised and some powers devolved (to local government), but the shift in the balance of power from Whitehall to Town Hall has not yet happened." And he conceded: "Inequality is still higher than it should be. The housing supply is not yet adequate."

Miliband also set out his plans for renewing the Labour Party, based on his view that "the traditional political structures of mainstream political parties are dying".

Meanwhile, the other David (Cameron) today returned to his control shift agenda, promising once again "a sweeping and radical redistribution of power" and this time delivering a diatribe against quangos.

I was quite surprised not to see RDAs in Cameron's speech - but they got a mention in his speech to the LGA last week: "Housing and planning powers are going to be stripped from regional government and given to local government...and what's more you'll have the power to form local enterprise partnerships so that you can abolish the regional development agencies."

Cameron also did his bit for honesty: "What Britain needs is leadership that is honest about the fact that public spending needs to be reduced." He then encouraged local councils to save money and continue to deliver high-quality services at the same time: "By working closely with other councils, you can cut budgets without cutting services."

PS Audit Commission chief Steve Bundred wins this week's honesty prize. His Observer article yesterday took several swipes at the current rather vacuous debate on public spending. After years of public sector expansion, he says "cuts are inevitable, and perfectly manageable". And based on his experience at Camden Council, he says spending cuts can actually lead to improved services - echoing Cameron's view.

Elections Question Time

I chaired our Question Time event tonight in London, on the eve of the Euro and Local elections on 4 June - and just after the Speaker announced his intention to stand down.

The three main parties' local government reps were on the panel - John Healey (Lab), Caroline Spelman (Con) and Julia Goldsworthy (LD).

Inevitably, the MPs' expenses row dominated the debate. I asked what local government could do to help rebuild trust between voters and politicians. We discussed how far local councillors would be affected by the current debacle. And we squeezed in a question on regeneration funding - but only just.

Such is the febrile atmosphere around Westminster these days, we didn't get anywhere close to talking about LAAs or MAAs.

First, here are the scores on the doors (euro and local). Euro election vote shares in 2004 were: Con 27%, Lab 23%, UKIP 16%, LibDem 15%, Green 15% and BNP 5%. And right now, the share of total councillors are: Con 44%, Lab 24%, LibDem 20%. Those numbers are going to change a lot next month.

Meanwhile, the PM today described Hazel Blears' expenses claim as "totally unacceptable behaviour". Her cheque-writing performance on telly last week has not gone down well. It looks like she won't be Communities Secretary this time next month. Possible successors include Healey himself - or Yvette Cooper, Margaret Beckett.

Here are the main headlines from tonight's debate:

• Healey presented a very gloomy outlook for the Labour Party. His local party campaigners had been "overwhelmed" by the expenses row in the last two weeks. He predicted that UKIP - and BNP - would both do well in next month's elections. Sounds like Labour are going to do very badly in the Euro Elections - my guess is 20% (or less) vote share.

• Healey said that the unfolding "political crash" and "crisis of confidence" in Parliament offered a big opportunity for local government to re-cast itself as a driver of devolution. But the debate tonight highlighted that councillors' expenses could become the next issue - and councillors could get tarnished by the Parliamentary brush.

• Spelman pushed the Tories' recent Control Shift green paper. She called for more transparency and accountability at the national and local levels, and made a rather belated call for particpatory budgeting (which Hazel likes). Healey hit back, calling Control Shift a "let down".

• Goldsworthy didn't much like the Tories' plans for 12 big city mayors - and hit out at part-time quango chiefs. She called for a bigger push for neighbourhood-level empowerment and police accountability - but didn't set out how the LibDems would grapple with the fall-off in capital investment over the next few years. Between now and 2014, Govt capital investment is set to fall from £44bn p.a. to £22 bn p.a..

Finally, Healey clarified that decisions on the £1bn Future Jobs Fund would be taken by "early August" - and new jobs would start to be created 3 months later. So set your alarms for early November...

Hazel's Big Lunch

Just in case the recession is getting you down, here's some cheery news from CLG...

Hazel Blears is encouraging everyone to get involved in the BIG LUNCH on Sunday 19th July. She's written to loads of MPs, and John Healey has written to council chief execs, asking them all to support this national event.

BIG LUNCH is an Eden Project idea, endorsed by big names like Jamie Oliver, Esther Rantzen and Boris Johnson. I don't want to knock it, or sound miserable, and I'm sure Hazel means well....but I'm just not sure that government ministers are the best people to promote something like this.

Hazel is hoping that millions of people across Britain will "get together with their neighbours to share food, drink and conversation". Don't worry if you're a bit shy - Hazel says: "Some of us might be a bit on the shy side. Even if we want to, we might not have got round to introducing ourselves to our neighbours. What better way to change that than by having a street party?"

I can only imagine that Hazel is trying to drum up some kind of Blitz spirit to help us get through the recession. Which is all very well. I just doubt whether loads of unemployed people fancy the idea of sitting down with Hazel, Jamie or Esther and a big bowl of pasta. 

There are currently no lunches on my street. To find out if there's one near you, enter your postcode here.