Creating a single new council from the eight currently operating will be a huge change. With devolution, the aim is to kick-start sustainable economic recovery.
Powers over transport and infrastructure will help us shape the places of the future. Devolved skills budgets will get the support young people need.
It would help to level up places struggling to keep pace with the UK’s most prosperous locations.
David Skelton catalogues the snobbish abuse heaped by progressive intellectuals on workers in neglected towns.
The more radical his plans are, the more resistance there will be. But one can’t serve up a municipal omelette without breaking eggs.
Local leaders must be given the power to take greater responsibility in achieving net zero.
The further the act of leaving the EU recedes, the more 2019’s Tory voters will move on – as two recent by-elections reminded us.
Local initiatives should not be blocked by the Labour Government. The Levelling Up Fund and Shared Prosperity Fund are very welcome.
The first of a mini-series of pieces on ConHome this week about the most distinctive of the Prime Minister’s big aims.
The key theme in the Planning White Paper is local consent, which could unlock the door to new development.
Some good things, a few bad ones, some absences – and an opportunity missed not so much to level up Britain as to level with voters.
With a new devolution settlement councils can boost economic growth and provide improvements to the services people rely upon every day.
The final piece in a ConservativeHome mini-series this week on the railways after Covid.
The Government can’t deliver levelling up without more supply-side change, localism and public service reform.
The Government has a choice. Local solutions with limited funding – or £10 billion on centralised non-solutions.