Why Clause 58 of the English Devolution Bill matters for Place Management
With the Second Reading of the English Community Empowerment Bill scheduled for 2nd September, the Institute of Place Management is sharing this blog by a number of IPM Fellows and Senior Fellows to help stimulate conversation about what the legislation could mean in practice. We know the Bill presents opportunities - but also risks if local governance reform becomes a tick-box exercise. This blog sets out IPM’s early thinking, and doesn't necessarily say we have all the answers, so we are inviting feedback and discussion from members, partners, and place leaders to help shape a constructive response in the weeks ahead.
Jean Ball SFIPM, Chris Gregory FIPM, Graham Galpin FIPM, Ian Harvey SFIPM
You can share your feedback on the blog to the group via ipm@mmu.ac.uk with the comments shared with the group above.
Local governance is arguably broken at the neighbourhood level. Despite decades of reform, too many places lack the partnership capacity, leadership skills, and coordination mechanisms required to manage change locally. In town centres and neighbourhoods across the country, community voices are too often absent from decision-making, while local delivery suffers from poor coordination, short-termism, and a lack of shared vision.
The English Community Empowerment Bill could offer a rare opportunity to address this, by introducing a new legal duty on principal local authorities to ensure effective governance at a hyper-local level. However, this duty will only deliver transformation if places build the practical infrastructure to support it.
In introducing the new bill, government pledges that decisions will be made with communities, not done to them, an approach echoed in a range of current policies, with the Civil Society Covenant advocating place-based partnership arrangements that build on local strengths and meet local needs, and the NHS Ten Year Plan proposing that significant licence to tailor the approach to local need, meaning the service offer will look different in rural communities, coastal towns or deprived inner cities. The "Backing your Business" plan notes the role of place management in successful places with a lack capacity and expertise for place management within councils can also be a barrier to positive change.
Place managers will be all to aware of a long-held recognition that many towns fall between the cracks: too small for a Business Improvement District, too far from combined authority investment, and increasingly cut adrift as local authority budgets shrink. Yet these places still need active, visible, and accountable place management. So how can they sustain this in the face of diminishing public funding? The answer arguably lies in decentralised, entrepreneurial and community-led governance which aligns with the very principles of localism and civic empowerment now being promoted in the Devolution Bill.
The future of place governance must be adaptable. Not every town needs a BID, a mayor, or a masterplan, although every place needs responsibility and action to be taken for its care and future. Through low-cost, self-funding models, and a more inclusive devolution agenda, towns can rise to this challenge, although they need support, recognition, and a seat at the table.
The current plans for Devolution propose the adoption of both strategic authorities and unitary authorities, whilst also providing the opportunity for both of these to work with place-based organisations as partners in supporting and delivering services and positive change at the hyper-local level. This is generally the scale which place managers operate within and we why propose the consideration of creating a cluster of organisations at this level, to form what could be termed Place Teams.
Place Teams might represent an average population of approximately 10,000 residents and could be made up of representatives of a range of organisations, which may include business associations, residents’ groups, voluntary organisations and parish councils. Importantly, any Place Team should also include place management bodies, such as Business Improvement Districts and Town Centre Partnerships, where these are present, and the overall intention of the Place Team would be to create effective links with the larger authorities to ensure that placed-based areas are part of the new governance structures. In doing this, they could ensure effective two way communication and locally-identified improvements, therefore avoiding their places falling between the cracks created by the new governance structures.
Whilst there remain a range of questions regarding what will emerge from the Devolution Bill and the effectiveness of any new governance which may emerge, the we considers that local players should begin to consider coming together to form a Place Team in order both to establish firm footing for their long term vitality and to avoid missing an opportunity to influence locally-identified improvements for the people who live, work, learn, invest and play in their place for generations to come.
Clause 58 of the English Community Empowerment Bill could well represent the next step forward for Place Management - but only if it is implemented with the right support, resources, and recognition for the role of professional place leaders.
About the author
Formed in 2006, the Institute of Place Management is the international professional body that supports people committed to developing, managing and making places better.