The national goal of the new Government is greater economic growth. But it will be delivered and experienced locally, with a new statutory duty for every authority to have a growth plan. So as councils and combined authorities turn to this task, it's fair to ask what growth really means in different parts of England.
At Inner Circle Consulting we have worked on growth plans, inclusive economy strategies and business cases for growth for combined authorities, core cities, county unitaries, London boroughs and emerging devolution partners. In every case ‘growth' is the common denominator yet there are wild variations in how that is expressed locally, how it delivers authorities' wider strategic objectives and how each one meets challenges and decides a delivery approach.
Those differences stem in part from differences in how gross value added (GVA) growth translates, or not, into wider measures of prosperity in different places. Growth plans and strategies that are focused on driving up one simple measure of total economic output risk falling well wide of the mark. Councils and combined authorities must respond to the agenda and strategic priorities of national government, but they are primarily accountable and responsible to their local residents, partners and stakeholders – who are rightly invested in what growth achieves for a place, rather than just the existence of growth.
Levelling up, as a slogan, captured the imagination of places because it recognised that economic prosperity is about how it's felt in our streets and communities and not on a spreadsheet at the ONS. Levelling up as is over – but the appetite and impatience to see change and improvement in many places across the country remains strong.
Our multidisciplinary team, which covers regeneration, housing, development, public service reform and transformation, thinks about place as a system, and how life and life chances are shaped by growth. Consequently, we understand that growth needs to be about a lot more than shifts in GVA. We've worked with our clients to develop a range of indicators that express place prosperity and vitality across business, productivity, employment, housing, transport and environment to provide a wider view of how prosperity is experienced in a place set against a measure of pure GVA.
The results have been striking. In one rural county GVA growth had been consistent, but wider measures of place had been in decline since 2016. In a city, rapid progress in some key indicators far outpaced what was happening with GVA, which had largely flatlined. The key drivers and components of growth and prosperity across different places and how this relates to total economic output are not consistent.
More and more councils are embarking on growth plans and this will only increase in the coming months. There is huge opportunity for local government to seize this agenda and make sure it's a local agenda delivered on a national scale, rather than a Whitehall template shoehorned into hundreds of different council style guides. This means establishing the best systems, partnerships and approaches to meaningful delivery that reflect specific local circumstances, so we get the right outcomes in the right places. Now is the time to seize that chance.
Matthew Bennett is a managing consultant at Inner Circle Consulting
