[Looking back - and looking forwards]
This week has been one which has seen some important developments in the world of ARO.
Monday March 31st saw the release of the consultation document, outlining proposals for legislation to implement aspects of the sub-national review of economic development of regeneration. The document has been jointly released by CLG and BERR, reflecting BERR’s responsibility for regional economic development, and CLG’s overview of disparity, disadvantage and issues around place, neighbourhoods and localities. The move through all recent government documentation has been towards a broader vision of growth – beyond GVA, beyond economic growth in isolation or as an end to itself, providing a more explicit understanding of the opportunities and results that economic growth could or can provide.
This development has meant that there is something of an inevitable schism between regional and local government, not least with those two tiers reporting to different departments. The hope was that this document would provide a real demonstration of how those departments would work together. To some extent, it does. There is something of a dearth of substantive development in the document, over and above the proposals around local economic assessments – something of great interest to ARO members. The suggestions from yesterday’s training on public affairs has meant that I’m now in the process of contacting the Bill drafting team – not an opportunity that I had previously considered, but now of key importance in influencing at the appropriate time and level.
Tuesday was the opening of the LARIA conference. Perhaps due to my being unable to attend more than one day, I didn’t get a real sense of how those in the data and intelligence community at local level would be responding to these recent developments. However, I did see a great presentation by Rob Radburn from Leicester council – he’s an engaging and self-deprecating speaker, and the topics he and his co-presenter (from City University) were really interesting although there was a suggestion that they covered too much in a short time, leaving an audience suffering from information overload. I think, given the right audience, that a day’s event combining Ed Swires-Hennessey and Rob Radburn (good practice in presentation for everyone – then new development – make it interactive and so on) would be a real winner.
Yesterday’s training in London was also very successful, despite not providing me with a magical silver bullet to solve all my public affairs needs! The key messages really reinforced what I already knew – make and maintain contacts, think carefully about your objectives and then use resources wisely to target appropriate routes. A strong argument was made for the need to actually spend some time around the politicians and civil servants you hope to influence – i.e. in Westminster. I’m going to have to make a more convincing argument for the hot-desking idea mooted previously, plus make some plans to attend select committees etc. Having identified this as one of two key roles, I will need to persuade ARO that this is a good investment of time and personnel.
