City region deals - getting the right parties to the table from the start
History is paved with good intentions. The potential is huge for city region deals to pave the way to stronger integration and improved relationships between central and local government, but these are not the only parties who should have seats at the table. If city region deals are to genuinely make a difference to the future prosperity of a region, then a range of other players must be there from the outset also. This article provides a start-point for determining who these parties should be.
Iwi. Iwi Māori organisations must have a seat as a founding participant. These organisations not only bring knowledge and mana to the deal, they also bring land, investment capital, people and a long term mindset that sits at the heart of the city region deal concept.
Education. Specifically tertiary education institutes – universities, polytechnics, and wananga. These institutes are the powerhouses of human capital, not to mention research and innovation. While there are many research houses, only universities combine upskilling human capital with adding to the sum of human knowledge.
Health sector. How can the health sector be part of the solution, rather than seeing illness as a burden? Healthy people are much more likely to participate in the workforce, improving productivity. And health is a boom industry – it should not be an after-thought for any city region deal.
Developers and investors. Sir Howard Bernstein, the former CEO of Manchester City Council, and key architect of the Greater Manchester City Region Deals, was instrumental in transforming his native city into Britain’s second biggest commercial and business centre, pulling in billions of pounds in investment. He used the GBP100m grant from central government following the IRA bombing in 1996, to leverage hundreds of millions more from business through a newly created public-private sector urban development company – something not previously seen outside of London. A similar objective should sit at the heart of city region deals in New Zealand, particularly in light of recent policy decisions which are designed to make previously uneconomic deals, potentially viable commercial propositions.
Business. The business end of city region deals are jobs. Unless jobs are created, then any such deal should be considered a failure. Jobs require investment by business. Something that won’t happen unless business view a city region as not only investor friendly, but also a great place to live with good infrastructure, particularly transport.
District councils. Often it is the cities that lead the way, and that makes sense considering the economic benefits we know arise from agglomeration of economic units within a city. But the districts often provide the workforce. And they are the pressure valves for population growth. A word of caution however: the natural workforce boundary may not respect council boundaries – or to put it another way, the scope of a deal should not always be dictated by existing council boundaries.
So yes, by all means, let’s have central and local government sit down to talk about a deal. But let’s not forget about all the other voices that are vital to the success of any such deal. Critically, bring these non-government parties to the table before trying to do a deal between central and local government. Why? Because many of these parties already know what it takes to do deals – they do them every day.
