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CLG officials have quietly approved the roll out of small-scale city-region structures across England. To little fanfare, Eland House last week published an ‘economic note' on functional economic market areas (FEMAs), urging local authorities to consider ‘the benefits of collaborating with neighbouring areas, both when undertaking economic assessments and implementing policy'. The guidance note states ‘key economic markets broadly correspond to sub-regions or city-regions – known as FEMAs – and suggests councils could collaborate to deliver individual services, or groups of services, according to FEMA boundaries, where appropriate. Echoing Eland House's original description of city-regions, a spokesman for CLG explained: ‘The note talks about different ways of identifying the functional area over which a local economy and its key markets operate, as this will not necessarily adhere to, or will most likely cross, administrative boundaries.' The difference between what officials suggest councils could do with FEMA-based sub-regional structures and the two official city-regions in Manchester and Leeds is that FEMAs could involve fluid groups of neighbouring authorities teaming up to provide policies and services. Under the formal city-region plans in Manchester and Leeds, a tightly-defined number of councils have collaborated to provide many services. The document states: ‘There is no universal approach to defining FEMAs. ‘A city's labour market area and hospital catchment area, for example, are unlikely to have similar boundaries. ‘Ideally, FEMAs would be defined on the basis of several markets or catchment areas, which best reflect the drivers of the local economy.' Whitehall sources said FEMAs could help ministers implement the Total Place spending programme backed firmly by communities secretary, John Denham. But the CLG was quick to point out that the FEMA note was not departmental policy. The spokesman said: ‘It is a think piece which provides an overview of the types of issues local authorities may wish to consider.'

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WHITEHALL

Low-key launch for city-region roll out

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