A commentary on the City Deals in the UK

• Author: David Hillier,Martin Wynn,Peter Jones,Daphne Comfort
• Date: 01 August 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1661
• Published date: 01 August 2017

COMMENTARY

A commentary on the City Deals in the UK

Peter Jones

1

|Martin Wynn

1

|David Hillier

2*

|Daphne Comfort

1

1

Business School, University of

Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

2

Centre for Police Sciences, University of

South Wales, Wales, UK

Correspondence

Peter Jones, Business School, University of

Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK.

Email: pjones@glos.ac.uk

Within the UK, City Deals, essentially bespoke packages of funding and decision‐making

negotiated between national government and local authorities, are increasingly taking centre

stage in promoting economic growth. Each City Deal is seen to reflect the needs of individual

cities and their surrounding regions, and each has its own distinctive funding and development

agenda. Although the City Deal model has been broadly welcomed by national and local political

leaders, concerns have been more widely expressed about its operation and effectiveness. This

paper outlines the development and characteristics of the City Deals programme and offers a

reflective commentary on a number of issues surrounding the programme, namely, accountability

and evaluation, the relationship between the local and national states, the role of planning, and

sustainable development.

1|INTRODUCTION

In laying the foundations the UK's first wave of “City Deals”in 2011

Nick Clegg, then Deputy Prime Minister stressed the Coalition

Government's commitment “to building a more diverse and sustainable

economy”and argued that “as major engines of growth, our cities have

a crucial role to play”(Her Majesty's [HM] Government, 2011). City

Deals are “bespoke packages of funding and devolved decision‐making

powers negotiated between central government and local authorities

and/or Local Enterprise Partnerships and other local bodies”(Ward,

2016) and can be seen as part of the embodiment of the 2011 Localism

Act, which sought to devolve more decision‐making powers from

central government back into the hands of individuals, communities,

and local authorities. Essentially a City Deal “is an agreement between

government and a city. It gives the city and its surrounding area certain

powers and freedom to: take charge and responsibility of decisions

that affect their area; do what they think is best to help businesses

grow, create economic growth”and “decide how public money should

be spent”(Gov. UK, 2013). O'Brien and Pike (2015) argued that “City

deals have been used primarily to incentivise coalitions of local state

actors in several areas to develop strategies and identify and prioritise

propositions or ‘asks’of UK and devolved governments, to fund,

finance and deliver infrastructure, and to formulate and implement

new initiatives in policy areas such as skills and business support.”

In the years since 2011, the City Deal model has gained momen-

tum within the UK, and it has generally been broadly welcomed by

national and local political leaders. When the first wave of City Deals

were established Keith Wakefield, the then Leader of Leeds Council,

for example, emphasised that “The City Deal package represents an

historic devolution of powers from Whitehall that we have long argued

for”and claimed that “for the first time we'll have the ability to drive

our own economic strategy and make much needed investment in

our infrastructure”(Core Cities, 2012). However during the past

5 years, increasing concerns have begun to be expressed about how

the model is being operation and about its long‐term effectiveness.

In reviewing the first wave of City Deals, the National Audit Office

(2015), for example, concluded that “delivering the deals will require

long‐term commitment from government and cities to monitor

projects and deals as a whole”, that “without a shared approach to

measuring the impact of the programmes both sides' understanding

of their impact will remain limited,”and that “it is too early to say if

the deals will have any overall impact on economic growth.”With this

in mind, this commentary paper outlines the development and

characteristics of the developing City Deals programme within the

UK and offers a reflective commentary on some of the challenges that

the City Deal model is encountering.

2|THE CITY DEALS

In developing the thinking underpinning the launch of the City Deals,

HM Government suggested that “cities are the engines of growth

and they will be critical to our economic recovery”but argued that

“the new enterprises and employment that the country desperately

needs requires a dynamic local leadership to drive economic growth

on the ground”(HM Government, 2011). Each City Deal was seen to

*

Sadly, David Hillier died after a short illness on May 4, 2017. For many years, he

was Head of Geography and latterly an Emeritus Professor in the Centre for

Police Sciences, at the University of South Wales. His research interests were

in urban policy and design, sustainability and retailing.

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1661

J Public Affairs. 2017;17:e1661.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1661

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of6