What do England’s towns need from devolution post-Brexit?

Yet perhaps more concerning is what Brexit has so starkly revealed about the state of regional inequality, which ominously is only expected to be made worse by the differential impacts of Brexit on UK regions. There’s been a lot of debate about the causes of Brexit, linking to concerns over national sovereignty, immigration and a growing mistrust of politicians, as well as differences relating to age, education and social attitudes. However, the biggest indicator of whether a place voted to Leave or Remain, as research in Regional Studies shows, was local economic prosperity. Supported overwhelmingly in the UK’s most deprived places, Brexit exposed what has since been termed a ‘geography of discontent’, driven by decades of economic decline in a post-industrial economy that serves the interests of a branded ‘urban elite’.

This has sparked policy debate about the importance of cities and towns beyond the core cities, disrupting established ideas about the UK’s growth model. The Centre for Towns in particular has been a major contributor to the discussion. Yet, in spite of promises for ‘inclusive growth’ from a government that “received the message”, little has been done in reality. The prospect of Local Industrial Strategies and a Shared Prosperity Fund offered some hope, however these have been slow to progress with little guidance as to what these will actually look like once and if they do eventually get off the ground. Therefore, beyond slogans that sound politically appetising, action is needed, and this will require something radically different to the pre-2016 attempt to redistribute powers and resources behind the veil of ‘devolution’.

Devolution has been termed the ‘golden thread’ of Brexit for offering the potential for local places to have more say over how they grow, though the form that this takes will be critical to achieving this ambition. In 2010, the election of a new Coalition government brought a ‘devolution agenda’ with promises of more freedoms and resources at the local level in England. This led to the creation of a number of new growth coalitions between public and private interests, and brought a different approach to central-local negotiation based on deal-making. In the context of austerity, however, English devolution has been heavily criticised for its limited geographical reach and for offering little in the way of local empowerment. And the danger, as ever, in a period of uncertainty such as that brought about by Brexit is that central control increases, demonstrated by the lack of local voice in the Brexit process in the absence of any sort of framework for local consultation. Still, we have to hope that key lessons are learnt and that English devolution going forward offers the potential for growth in all towns and cities, whose leaders might also be better placed to provide the solutions to the problem of uneven development that government has persistently failed to respond to. And, importantly, leaders outside the core cities are showing that they are up for the challenge, with the Key Cities Group insisting in their recent report: ‘give key cities the tools and we will do the job’.