Other regional government

The Government has recently carried out a Sub-National Review (SNR) of powers relating to economic development, which significantly affects governance in the eight English regions outside London.

Regional decision-making mainly relates to economic development, through the Regional Development Agencies. Other regional bodies also exist, although these are predominantly the regional delivery arms of national organisations with nationally-set objectives and targets. This has the potential to make regional scrutiny a difficult business.
 
Up until now, there have been eight Regional Assemblies, with statutory responsibility to hold their respective Regional Development Agencies to account. The SNR, however, involves the abolition of these Assemblies (by April 2010) with scrutiny responsibilities for RDAs and the Regional Spatial Strategy (the new document defining economic development and other priorities for the region) passing to new regional select committees and regional grand committees at Westminster. The SNR also suggests that regional Leaders’ Boards will be able to take on part of the role of holding RDAs to account through the Leaders' local democratic mandates.
 
It will still be open to local authorities to join together to scrutinise issues of sub-regional and regional concern. Powers to do so have been enhanced by the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, and the creation of “city regions” in some parts of the country raises the real possibility that local authorities will begin working with each other to carry out this kind of regional scrutiny work in the future, despite the lack of a statutory requirement to do so.