Sustainability and RDAs – between guidance and reality.

Converting a grand scheme to reality is never easy. In many ways the passage of Regional Development Agencies from twinkle in the eye of a Labour opposition to organisations which are already looked to as the early focus of regional economies in England has been remarkably smooth. The drive of ministers to cut through the interminable arguments about boundaries, to complete the legislation early in the life of the Labour Government, to grasp hold of the appointments procedure and set a tight timescale for the production of regional economic plans has produced an undoubted success. The RDAs may still be judged in terms of their ultimate trajectory: are they a part of a wider drive to elected regional government, or is that it? This question has, though, obscured the very real achievements of the early stages of the lives of the RDAs themselves. In terms of what was initially proposed, the RDAs have confounded their critics and established their credentials.

So, other then fussing about where the accountability issue fits in, can we now sit back and relax? Well, not exactly. As with any design, the first models to roll off the production lines have greater or lesser design faults: whether these faults can be cured by minor repair work or only by major re-engineering depends on the road testing.

One possible design fault that may or may not cure itself lies with the whole relationship of RDAs to the Governments overall sustainability strategy. The early evidence of the economic programmes of the RDAs suggests that some further engineering may be needed.

The intention of the Government in setting up the RDAs is clear. One of the five primary purposes of each agency as set out in the Act is ‘to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom where it is relevant to its area to do so’. This clearly lies fully within the approach set out by the Government in the consultative paper ‘sustainability counts’ In the foreword to this paper the Deputy Prime Minister states that

‘The Government is committed to a new way of thinking. One which puts environmental, social and economic concerns alongside each other at the heart of decision-making."

So far so good. One would expect the RDAs to take this integration of thinking on board as they develop their strategies. But here the plan starts to go off course a little.

The first problem is contained in the guidance to the RDAs from the Government about how they should construct their plans. This document ‘RDAs Regional Strategies – building partnerships for prosperity’ sets out among other things, a series of indicators which will allow the RDA to take the pulse of the ‘state of the region’. Surprisingly, very little of the extensive list of sustainability indicators set out at national level in ‘sustainability counts’ appears to percolate down to regional level. Indeed, only one indicator ‘% of new homes built on previously developed land’ seems to have any relevance to the measurement of the sustainability of the economic programmes being advocated by RDAs. This omission was pointed out by the Environment Transport and Regions Select committee in their report on the early progress of the RDAs in May 1999. The government accepted the thrust of this criticism in their response to the Committee, published in October 1999. ‘Much of the data for the national sustainable development indicators was not reliable at a regional level or simply not available’ they stated and ‘….we are now in the process of looking at the types of information available at regional level and identifying where there are data gaps’.

The problem was that, in the meantime, RDAs had been steaming ahead with the construction of their programmes, based on the existing set of indicators.

The second problem is perhaps more fundamental. This relates to the function, and primacy of Regional Planning Guidance in the context of the RDAs plans. Who runs whom? In their evidence to the Select committee the Government did not see this as a serious problem. They did not consider that the relationship between RDAs plans and Regional Planning Guidance should be hierarchical: there would not be a need for formal mechanisms to resolve conflicts, which could, they suggested be resolved through ‘dialogue and collaboration’.

Let us hope this is right, but the signs are not propitious, at least from the point of view of a detached analysis of the potential for crossed wires. What if a Regional Development Agency proposes and pursues a policy which is inimical to the Regional Policy Guidance set out for its region? There is, apparently, no mechanism to defuse the conflict. We might expect from the headline duties with which each are charged that they would be mindful in the construction of plans of each other’s existence. Regional Policy Guidance across England has, indeed, been full of references to sustainability, as a scoping study for the DETR records. This study also records a view on the relationship of indicators used by Regional Policy Guidance and the list of RDA indicators. It is noted that ‘traffic indicators and levels of household waste do not feature although both might be seen as key aspects of sustainable development (one of the RDAs purposes)’. The report records that ‘it is expected that each RDA will…develop a more comprehensive list of indicators relevant to their particular region’ and points out that further government work to regionalise national sustainability indicators may help in this respect. ‘It is at this level that the greatest opportunity for integration between the work of the RDA and the RPG will occur’, the report concludes. ‘However, how this will occur in practice remains to be seen’.

In its response to the Select committees report, the Government does not change its line: the two bodies are complementary and should work together. It is accepted that ultimately, the Secretary of State might be able, as the progenitor of the guidance which shapes both strategies, to resolve conflicts, but, it is stated ‘this really is a longstop and not something we expect to happen’.

We now, of course, have some of the ‘proof of the pudding’ in the shape of the published strategies of the Regional Development Agencies, delivered to an impressively short time scale. Ministers now have to approve them formally, a process which it is hoped will be complete by the end of 1999.

With some exceptions, they do not make happy reading for those who believe that the conflicts between a sustainability brief and an economic development brief can easily be resolved. The harbinger of this could perhaps be seen in the evidence of some of the RDA Chairmen to the Select committee in February 1999. For enthusiasm they could not be faulted: but time and again they interpreted their strategy as one in which they drove up the GDP of the region by means of inward investment and economic development measures. Typical of the approach was that of Dr. John Bridge, the Chairman of the North Eastern Development Agency who told the committee that these measures will ‘allow us to improve our economic performance above the national average over the next ten years’. Indeed, what was striking was the identity of ambition: almost universally, the aim was to drive the region to perform ‘above the national average’. As in the case of premier league football managers who universally profess their ambition to ‘get into Europe’ to the press at the beginning of the season, one is left feeling that this cannot logically be possible, and as the season unfolds, it is demonstrated.

The development plans reflect this ambition, often at the expense of consideration of section five of the tasks with which the Act charges the RDAs. Whilst all the strategy documents mention sustainability, and some set out proposals to commission studies to monitor the progress towards sustainability that the plans may make, the general impression left by the plans is that sustainability is an add-on, and is not at the heart of the plan, as the government’s overall guidance would seem to require. Neither, in general terms is there a great deal of evidence of the development of separate regional indicators of sustainability within the RDAs planning process as the DETR scoping study suggests may happen. There are honourable exceptions. The North Eastern Development Agency redeems the somewhat gung-ho utterances of its chairman by producing a comprehensive set of targets for ‘a sustainable North East’ which includes plans to measure progress in sourcing electricity from renewable sources, waste arising, river ecosystem quality, and pollution incidents in addition to the received indicator of dwellings on previously developed land. The East Midlands Development Agency is less specific, but sets out a long list of ‘sustainable development indicators for the East Midlands, prepared by regional partners’ which includes among many, wildlife habitats, waste, tranquillity and social cohesion.

We have yet to see how the often impressively ambitious plans for the regions will unfold in practice. It is perhaps a little unfair to level too much criticism at the first published output of untried Agencies. but there remains after reviewing all the documents, a strong sense that the mission of the RDAs is economic development by which is meant growth, industrial expansion, more jobs, new factories and offices and better faster regional infrastructure to glue it all together. The job of wedding it all with the imperative of sustainability is for others, notably the Regional Planning conferences. If the RDAs succeed in their ambitions, therefore, it seems almost inevitable that they will butt up against the concerns of parallel documents. We can already see the beginnings of a ‘war of the quotes’ in the South East where the aims of the Regional Development Agency to drive the region further towards competitiveness with the most advanced European regions jars with the pronouncements of the regional planning conference and the opposition to the inspectors report on the conclusions of the conference.

The enormous efforts of the new RDAs and the early respect they are gaining as genuine motors for regional economies deserve a fair wind, but also require clarity of purpose for the efforts not to be dissipated. A revisiting of indicators and of the relationship of RDAs to Regional Planning guidance may be what is needed.