It was always going to be messy, changing from a regionally based, very bureaucratic, business support body to a number of, hopefully, more flexible ones. And the media has been drip feeding ‘who’s fallen out with who’ stories since the region’s local authorities were first written to at the end of June, and invited to submit proposals for the new partnerships.

To some extent this was inevitable, given that there isn‘t a prescribed model for LEPs, and that they will take multiple forms to suit particular local circumstances. This is, after all, what localism is all about. However, it hasn’t been the coalition government’s finest hour, with the lack of clarity over the future for RDAs, and the apparent infighting between ministers, giving the impression that policy was being made on the hoof.

The dust, thankfully, is beginning to settle. Birmingham, for example, has announced that it will be forming a partnership with neighbours such as Solihull, Tamworth and Lichfield. This makes perfect sense, particularly given that Solihull’s main economic assets, such as the airport and he NEC, are already linked with the second city. And of course a number of people in Solihull, Tamworth and Lichfield, will work in Birmingham. With skills and training forming such a key element of the new partnership arrangements, there’s a ‘bottom up’ logic to this particular LEP that should stand it in good stead in the years to come.

Now the new partnerships are coming together, it’s time for the government to give some more details about how they will actually work in practice. We know that local businesses will now be on an ‘equal footing’ with local authorities, and the preference for the new bodies to be led by someone from the business community is to be welcomed.  And we know that they will be democratically accountable local people through their local councils. It’s also apparent that the LEPs will have a role in determining local issues such as planning and housing, transport and infrastructure, employment, enterprise and supporting business start-ups.

However, at the time of writing we are still awaiting the White Paper on the government’s approach to sub-national growth. What we do know is that the LEPs will not inherit all the functions previously held by the RDAs. Regional Spatial Strategies have already been abolished, inward investment looks set to be coordinated on a national level by UK Trade and Investment and business support will be transferred to the centre.

There is much still to be decided, however, with the inward investment functions of the RDAs potentially being inherited by local councils, should they make a convincing enough case.

Of course, there’s unlikely to be any central funding for the new bodies and quite how effective they can be without adequate investment is of concern. They may end up inheriting the land banks of the RDAs, when they’re formally abolished in 2012, but running costs will have to come from cash strapped local councils pooling resources. The RDAs cost over £2.3bn a year, so it’s pretty clear that there’s an economic imperative to setting up the new structures.

The LEPs, then, will have to adopt a private sector ’can do’ attitude right from the off and first in their sights should be attracting investment from the new £1bn Regional Growth Fund. Launched next year to support the economies of those regions most hit by public sector cutbacks, as well as those with the most potential for private sector growth, it’s vital that the West Midlands makes a convincing case for substantial  financial assistance.

In many ways this will be the litmus test for the new LEPs. The deadline for applications should be by the end of December this year, with a view to decisions on successful bids being announced by the end of February 2011. By then the new LEPs, spearheaded by business leaders, democratically accountable and reflecting natural economic boundaries, will be firmly established and officially recognised by the government.

Our diverse region, which has a GDP of £94 billion and a population of 5.2 million, will have a number of flexible bodies in place, then, ready to fight for investment and support. For the first time local businesses will be right at the centre of the policies and plans to steer us out of the economic downturn.

Power, according to the Plan, will be taken away from Whitehall and put into the hands of people and communities. And the Localism Bill, the mechanism for this huge transfer of power, will pave the way for 12 cities to have elected mayors from May 2012. So, Birmingham could get a (political) mayor in less than two years time.

But what about the referendum? Well that, it appears, is to come afterwards, perhaps a year or two after the first mayors are elected. It will be a ‘confirmatory’ referendum and contrary to what I’m sure most people are expecting, the ’in favour’ threshold could very well be set much lower than 50%. The government, it appears, is keen to avoid the embarrassment of Labour‘s Regional Assembly referenda, an exercise in the transfer of power which spectacularly failed to ignite public interest.

My guess is that the current leaders in these 12 cities will be renamed mayors in 2012, and that an election won’t take place for a good few years afterwards, certainly not until after a referendum regarding the new posts. All should become clearer in November, when the groundwork for the Bill is done and ’options’ are developed for the transition to mayors. It’s starting to look more and more, though, that Birmingham will get an elected mayor regardless of whether we actually want one or not. Which is not quite the localism that many of us would have had in mind.

But it could turn out to be a turning point, a great big libertarian stick in the ground, the (big) opportunity we’ve all been waiting for. In the face of tough economic times, and harder ones ahead, perhaps this is just what some of us need: the chance to measure ourselves against the ‘good’ that we do, rather than the money we make. Maybe there is more to life than just paid work (important, of course, though that is – volunteering won‘t pay the bills, after all… that‘s kind of the point). Life could, in fact, also be about mucking in, helping out, improving your immediate surroundings, your ‘neighbourhood’. Less: petitions, letter writing and criticism, then, more: DIY, direct action and ‘doing stuff for nothing’.

Whether it works or not will probably come down to the detail – principally, will people really get the chance to make a contribution, or is this the kind of devolved power that comes with a huge number of bureaucratic, and financial, strings attached? And, convinced as I am, by the argument that power should rest, as far as possible, with the individual, Edmund Burke’s line about paying undue attention to a vocal minority should give us some pause for thought. After all, one man’s Community Organiser is another man’s opportunistic political adversary. But for all that, if the Big Society is to mean anything then it does, ultimately, have to be about decentralising power – if it doesn’t then all that talk about letting people take more control over their lives will just end up sounding like the kind of stuff politicians always tell us when they‘re scrabbling around for the next Big Idea.

“The government can’t create jobs” he said last month. “The government can create the environment which is conducive to the creation of jobs but it cannot create jobs and we mislead ourselves if we believe it can.”

The council’s targets for this largest tranche of money – getting 4,000 people into work, and advising a further 15,000 – were clearly hugely over optimistic. That’s not to say the money has necessarily been wasted, but it’s clearly symptomatic of much wider problems that the fund has been used instead to either plug the gaps of a failing educational system that sees so many young people leave work without the basic skills needed for a job, or has been spent on smoothing over the deficiencies of a benefit system that makes it financially prohibitive for so many people to come off benefits and into work.

And the bigger issue here is Lord Myner’s second point – that what governments can do is create the environment that is conducive to the creation of jobs. And businesses – whether already settled in the city or looking to locate from elsewhere – tend to be in broad agreement on what constitutes that type of ’conducive’ environment. It’s one with a good transport infrastructure, low crime rate, cultural and entertainment amenities on tap as well as access to the basics such as affordable housing and quality education. This is what councils need to remain focused on, not the impossible task of creating private sector jobs in the midst of a severe recession.

The Board’s Chief Exec, Glenys Stacey, is pleased that “trust in local politicians (has) held up favourably compared to people’s views about national politicians.” But the figures are really not that good, with 20% feeling that councillors ‘rarely or never’ tell the truth. And although the questions were asked at the height of the MPs expenses scandal, the results are clearly heading in the wrong direction:

Table: Percentage responses to: How often do you think the following types of people tell the truth?

It would be fascinating to see some examples behind the allegations of mendacity, though. I don’t think that a significant number of councillors ‘fiddle’ their expenses (the rules are strict and the amounts avaliable relatively low) and I don’t believe that they deliberately mislead residents, either. And, besides, non-executive councillors (the majority) don’t tend to be responsible for ‘pushing through’ controversial policies – they’re usually fighting on behalf of residents to counter the effects of ill-thought out legislation, ever mindful that this is the kind of stuff that gets remembered come polling day.

Today’s Birmingham Cabinet Meeting, for example, had over 20 items on the agenda, most of their titles and reports written in the usual impenetrable council style. So the meeting began with an item titled the ‘Reconsideration of Decision Called-In – Multi Area Agreement for Employment and Skills’. And the agenda included the snappily titled item: ’Winning Resources: Local Area Agreement Working Neighbourhoods Fund Strategic Interventions’. Yet both these items – if you can get past the titles - were, and are, extremely important – dealing with the spending of huge amounts of money on trying to tackle perhaps the biggest problem this city faces at the moment – long term, mass unemployment. We should all, as far as we can, be trying to get away from this sort of convoluted language.

Today’s Cabinet Meeting was actually one of the most important for a long time, with decisions being made on the:

‘Highways Maintenance and Management Private Finance Initiative’ – the awarding of a £2.2bn, 25 year, highways’ maintenance contract (one of the biggest PFI contracts in the country).

‘Approval of Academies Process’ – significant progress on the setting up of 3 (controversial) new Academy schools.

‘BMG Birmingham History Galleries Project – Full Business Case’ – the awarding of a £2.9m contract to repair the roof works at the Council House Extension and the submission of a £4.8m bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for the setting up of a History of Birmingham Gallery at the Museum and Art Gallery. It was also agreed to spend £874,000  to cover development work on the project.

Be Active – £9.3m to be spent on an 18 month project to increase participation in sport. All residents may now swim/use the gym at council run leisure centres completely free of charge.

There was much more discussed at Cabinet today, all of it important to residents in Birmingham and not much of it decipherable by those outside of local government. And that’s why we need to ensure our established local media survives this deep recession. After all, somebody needs to help explain what all this stuff means.

July Unemployment Briefing

It seems obvious to me that these powers should only be used for offences that would result in a prison sentence and that council leaders should always be the ones authorising their use. The hypocrisy of the government in blaming councils for snooping in this way is breathtaking. This is a government, after all, that has given the UK the dubious honour of being the most watched state outside of China and Russia, with over 4million CCTV cameras, one for every 14 people. And of course, given our hugely over-centralised system, councils have no choice but to do the government’s bidding. Contact Point, for example, the new ‘national children’s database’, which will include the personal details of every child in the country, is a Labour government creation and councils have no choice put to put it into place.