By Mike Emmerich & Irene Guillet

When there’s a beer named after a Government initiative, something unusual is happening. Thus it is with the Northern Powerhouse. What’s more, the beer in question, a first joint concoction of the Bradford and Leeds Breweries, is a deliberate homage to the spirit of intercity cooperation. And yet to a lot of people the Powerhouse is a failure (because the North-South gap remains) or a con (the work of a Chancellor bent on devolving cuts to gullible local politicians). A little over eighteen months after it was launched, this idea is consumer product, a failure and a conspiracy, or so some would have you believe. There is evidence to sustain only the first of these.

The Great Western Cities released its report ‘Britain’s Western Powerhouse’, authored by Metro Dynamics, last Friday. The launch of the report has received widespread press coverage at both a national and local level, reflecting the level of interest in devolution more broadly across the country.

By Mike Emmerich (with thanks to Helen Pidd) 

This week's Economist newspaper carries an article on the BBC's move to Manchester under the heading "Not So Grim Up North" for which I supplied a couple of quotes. Judging from the messages I've had and (by my standards) significant feedback on Twitter, one quote in particular seems to have struck a chord, namely that the BBC is a handful of moves away from retrenching from the significant relocation it made in Salford Quays.

By Kevin Fenning

Last week saw the release of the Interim Report by Sir Charles Bean on the state of the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The headlines that accompanied the release mostly focussed on the Report’s assertion that the ONS’s move from London to Newport has been detrimental to its performance.

This is unfortunate for two reasons:

Firstly, it unfairly maligns the idea that high quality, highly technical public services can be delivered from outside London. Given the need for the UK to develop alternative hubs of economic strength that complement London’s global city strengths, and the ongoing process of devolution of political and fiscal power to the UK’s other great cities, this is a very troubling message.

By Peter Skalski

Following the spending review and the statement by the Government that it will ‘work towards further devolution deals with other major city regions’, Metro Dynamics have prepared an initial review that summarises and brings together the main details of the deals agreed so far.

By Peter Skalski

Following the spending review and the statement by the Government that it will ‘work towards further devolution deals with other major city regions’, Metro Dynamics have prepared an initial review that summarises and brings together the main details of the deals agreed so far.

By Ben Lucas

The immediate headlines from the Spending Review 2015 will be all about how George Osborne escaped from the straightjacket he had put on himself. This is particularly true with the U-turn on tax credits and the decision not to cut the police and FE budgets. He was hugely helped in this by the OBR happening to find £27bn of extra revenues as result of revised forecasts - proving the old adage that there's always something to be found at the back of the sofa.

But the real significance of the Spending Review lies elsewhere. Two substantial and important shifts are taking place, from the state to the private sector, and from central government to cities. The state may be shrinking to 36% of GDP by the end of the Parliament, but it is business that is being asked to pay for this. This is a fairly ruthless appropriation of Labour policy before the last election. Business will pay the cost of phasing out tax credits in the future through the introduction of the Living Wage and yesterday we learned that the Apprenticeship Levy will raise £11.6bn over the next four years.

By Sarah Whitney

The MJ is running an interesting survey this week  reporting local government’s view of the planned 100% retention of business rates. Almost 90% of chief executives and finance officers surveyed considered that giving local government control of the business rate still didn’t go far enough in terms of fiscal devolution.

Here’s why…

First some history. Prior to 1 April 2013, business rates were collected by local authorities and then remitted to the Exchequer. The Exchequer then redistributed the rates back to local authorities, on a needs-basis, through the Formula Grant System. In that context, variations in business rates, which total approximately £23 billion per annum, were dwarfed by the £548 billion of other tax receipts central government receives. 

By Mike Emmerich

“The average civil servant thinks that cities only ever ask for one of three things in devolution deals: things they can already do, things that don’t make any difference, and things they bloody well can’t have.”

That’s an opening line I often use when speaking on devolution. There is more than a hint of truth in this observation borne from my years of experience with devolution-free devolution deals. Even Greater Manchester, now a poster-child for the government’s devolution agenda, was until recently a serial devolution failure. Despite endless negotiations of local public service agreements, local area agreements and a host of other agreements, there was no devolution.