Newsletter Sign Up
Latest News
Why our cities are key to long-term national prosperity
As we look ahead to the Autumn budget, the first such announcement under the new Labour government, more attention is being paid to Labour’s strategy.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have addressed the stark reality of national finances and the inevitability of making tough decisions, all underlined by a clear commitment to economic growth. In addition, Angela Rayner’s “devolution revolution” pledge highlights the need to transfer powers to local communities across the country.
Every city and town is different, with unique needs, characteristics and stakeholders – needless to say, the strategies required to support their development will vary accordingly. Attempts to come up with nationwide solutions result in a lack of clarity for local authorities’ roles, powers and responsibilities – something that local leaders often express frustrations about. Therefore, it is clear that achieving economic growth cannot involve a one-size-fits-all approach.
Solutions cannot be devised in silos: they require active collaboration between the public and private sectors, academia as well as local communities. Our cities have demonstrated such convening and problem-solving capacity during major black swan events such as the pandemic, by drawing on bespoke local expertise to support their areas’ health and finances. And there is no reason why the same cannot be applied to achieve economic growth and resilience.
This is why Key Cities, a national cross-party network that represents more than 10% of the UK population, has been championing local solutions with national implications that can be scaled and applied to all kinds of urban areas – and their associated rural and coastal places.
Earlier this year, the Key Cities Innovation Network, a group of universities that are associate members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Key Cities, published the Civic Partners in Net Zero report, showcasing local cross-sector innovations to address climate change across six different member councils.
Take the Morecambe Bay Curriculum as one example, where Lancaster University, Lancaster and Morecambe College, University of Cumbria and the Eden Project, got together to connect researchers with educators in local schools and colleges to weave sustainability and place into everyday teaching across all phases of education. The curriculum uses ecosystems surrounding the local Morecambe Bay as a classroom, aiming to empower children and young people to become the changemakers of the future, which can be scaled and applied to different local contexts across the UK.
The report also notes that averting large-scale issues such as the climate emergency requires a stable and realistic framework to stimulate meaningful partnerships, supported by funding mechanisms to deliver scalable innovation across all sectors and regions.
With the change in government, there has been a big question mark on where such funding would come from. With council tax in England frozen for the foreseeable future, it is clear that cities need to figure out alternative ways of securing budgets other than central government allocations and taxes during times of funding shortfall.
Knowledge-sharing and learning between cities can be one way to overcome shared hardships and achieve prosperity. Key Cities has launched an inaugural Leaders’ Survey this year, providing a snapshot of priorities and sentiments from member council leaders across the nation.
The survey findings showed that three in five (60%) of city leaders will be prioritising service redesign and utilising financial reserves to combat the ongoing financial crisis in municipal government, and that the top three most significant financial pressure points facing leaders over the next 12 months are adult social care (33%), children’s social care (27%) and homelessness (27%). In addition, over half of the respondents believe that an increase in central government grant funding should be the main priority for the next 12 months, in relation to local government (53%).
The central government has a vital role to play in helping to effectively transform public services, which can only be achieved by working alongside local authority representatives. The Leaders’ Survey provided an opportunity for cities to collectively voice their shared areas of concern and priority.
While cities are not working under any illusions, there is a renewed sense of collaboration and direction. Since the general election, some of the asks from our Key Cities Manifesto, such as the reinstatement of housebuilding targets, have been immediately met. What the government has achieved in the past two months does lead us to believe that despite the persisting challenges, there is indeed a “light at the end of the tunnel”.
Cities are the essential building blocks of the economy. Together, working with the central government, we can work out and amplify the solutions best tailored for each locality to achieve nationwide resilience and prosperity.
Cllr John Merry is Chair of Key Cities. Key Cities is sponsoring the Outstanding Impact category at the IED Annual Awards 2024. The awards follow the IED Annual Conference 2024 on 6th November. Book your place for the conference and awards dinner here.