Ministers agree Localism Bill amendment to allow cities to bid for more powers

The government this week accepted an amendment to the Localism Bill that will allow England's largest cities to make their case for new powers to be devolved from Whitehall.

Ministers said the additional provisions could allow city leaders to set their own policies and drive faster growth.

According to the Department for Communities and Local Government, “this amendment opens the door to greater local control over investment to drive growth, for example for housing and planning, economic development, or pooling resources and effort across functioning economic areas.

“It means cities can be more joined-up about local investment, moving on from case by case funding applications, saving time and money."

The UK's 'Core Cities' urban areas - Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield – account for 27% of the national economy.

The DCLG said that research by the Core Cities Group had forecast that if these cities were given greater freedoms they would be able to deliver an extra one million jobs and £44bn to the economy in the next decade.

Cities Minister Greg Clark said: "Dynamic cities are essential to faster economic growth across the UK so it's vital they have the means to exploit their potential. We are determined to see UK cities given greater control over their economic destiny, allowing them to compete on the global stage.

"In the future UK cities will be able to bid for freedom to set their own distinctive policies. When they come up with innovative proposals for doing things differently, we will devolve the powers cities need to drive private sector growth and create jobs."

Chris Murray, Director of the Core Cities Group, said: “Core Cities very much welcome the government's acceptance of this amendment, which has achieved good cross-party support.

“The performance of our biggest cities is critical to the national economy, and we know that there is a strong relationship between the levels of decentralisation cities have in other countries and how competitive they are. At a challenging economic moment, we need to set our cities free to really deliver, and this change in the law will allow that to happen."

The Localism Bill is currently at the report stage in the House of Lords. In other developments, it emerged that local authorities could still be obliged to have a code of conduct – containing certain core mandatory elements – after ministers signalled they would make concessions on the proposed local government standards regime.

Lord Taylor of Holbeach offered to set up a meeting between himself, fellow government minister Baroness Hanham and peers unhappy with what they called “serious deficiencies” in the draft legislation.