Expert round up: how to make the most of city deals

Share in the advice of our expert panel on how cities can best use new powers over transport, education and infrastructure

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• Sarah Marsh
• Guardian Professional, Saturday 23 March 2013 10.28 GMT
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Salford, Greater Manchester – one of the first eight core cities to sign a city deal in 2012. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Neil McInroy is chief executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies

Whitehall needs to be straight: What powers is it willing to devolve? Central government need to cut the process, horsetrading and lay down their red lines. Then cities can have a proper debate on whether they agree with the possibilities or want to play along.

Favouratism must be addressed: City deals need to be underpinned and hooked back into a new national economic narrative. The treasury needs to do things which favour a variety of localities. We've had decades of treasury policy which has favoured the city. Whitehall needs to be more committed to re-addressing this.

Adam Bryan is senior policy manager at Essex county council

Build a relationship between private and public sectors: It is about involving the private sector at the fulcrum of a reformed skills system, where they make the decisions to ensure that provision is driven by employer need. It's about them co-leading the decision making around the major infrastructure investments which will catalyse growth.

Lorna Gibbons is economic development officer at the Borough of Poole

Does competitive bidding help? It depends what the funding is intended to achieve – who and where can deliver the greatest impact. The second wave of city deals was a competition but in the end the government decided to accept all offers for delivery of growth.

Allison Ogden-Newton is chair of the Transition Institute

Geographical boundaries are a concern: Looking at areas of European growth, success stories cannot be captured with the use of city boundaries or terms like urban or rural. It's the magic of what will work that has captured local imagination and the vision of successful leaders.

Tom Stannard is director of policy and communications atBlackburn with Darwen borough council

We need strong partnerships: There's a stronger recognition now that local growth is best driven by meaningful local partnerships that know their areas. I think, irrespective of boundaries, the debate is there to be won on the proper local settlement that should come from this in the medium term.

Darryl Eyers is deputy director and head of economic planning atStaffordshire county council

Do we risk less innovation in the next round of city deals? It will utlimately come down to the appetite of the area for innovation and how compelling a case you can make to government. The cabinet office is very supportive and the first wave has shown that if you have a good enough idea then ministers will want to support it – whether it fits neatly into a core package or not. However, I think the real proof will be seen in November.

Genuine commitment is needed: Leaders of local areas (beyond the city) at a political and business level must be able to work collaboratively, identify genuine priorities, and be ready to challenge the status quo. They must be clear on what is required of government to make the deal work. Genuine commitment from government is also needed to back local areas to make the right decisions.

Lord Shipley is adviser to the minister for cities, Greg Clark

Cities must demonstrate that devolution is sustainable: The truth is that England is hugely dependent on London. The question remains, how do we drive growth outside London? If accountabilities are 'multiple, complex and overlapping' we need to work out how to make them work, as opposed to being barriers.

Phillip Woolley is a partner at Grant Thornton

Let's reward good investment: The initial round of city deals were in my view, perhaps with the exception of Manchester, missing the underpinning of a robust and flexible resourcing model that rewarded good investment decisions and growth performance.

David Marlow is director of Third Life Economics

It's a matter of faith: The faith in local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) and the faith in national agencies seem to be real issues that need further work in putting government's response to Heseltine into practice

Giles Rocca is head of policy and strategy at Westminster city council

Powers need to be fully devolved: I think that there is a risk that governance can be used as a tool for central government to decide how quickly and how far it will go around devolving powers. There are caveats in Heseltine's report about this. In a sense it turns into another bar to jump through.

Tom Bolton is senior analyst at the Centre for Cities thinktank

What happens next is important: Post budget, decisions on whether the single pot will include skills and employment funding are important. We won't know this until the spending review in June. It's a big test for Heseltine implementation.

Businesses can help to get local economic policy right: LEPs need to show that they can represent the wider business constituency in their areas, small or medium enterprises as well as the big employers, for a true picture of business needs and priorities.

You can read the discussion in full here

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Social enterprise podcast #11: Public services

Join Sean McGinty and me for the Guardians latest podcast for social entrepreneurs. This month Sean looks at the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 and what it means for social enterprises

Dust off those headphones and have a listen to what sector experts have to say about the social value act. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

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• Social enterprise podcast #11: Public services

The Work Programme, Emma Harrison and employment subsidy myths

Today it's all about the Work Programme and Workfare and troubled A4E's recently resigned Chair Emma Harrison. It seems everyone has a point of view, as do I. Readers will know I have been writing about the Work Programme and more especially the Future Jobs Fund (FJF) that it replaced for some time.

The amazing, and yes, pretty radical Lily Lapenna who believed and then proved that kids can manage money

Social enterprises did stunning well in this week's Observer Britain's 50 New Radicals. As Geoff Mulgan, the CEO at Nesta writes, radicalism is "as British as tea and cakes", and so I would add is social enterprise. The joint venture between Nesta, the innovation agency, and the Guardian Group to find Britain's new radical innovators has sparked some lively debate, mostly about the meaning of radicalism. I'm not sure that was the point or do I think that calling these clever people working to make our society a better place radical is the most interesting thing about them.

Will we get what we deserve with payment by results?

A one-to-one meeting at the Pertemps office in Hull as part of a work programme session for the long-term unemployed. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

There was a divergent discussion yesterday between a number of us on Twitter about payment by results (PBR): does it work or doesn't it? we asked. My point was that despite it being a hot topic, PBR has been around in one form or another for 20 years. Having said that, PBR today isn't just PBR, it's PBR plus.

Racing through Social Enterprise Day with men with moustaches

Latzo lorverly prizes at Livity, Brixton 

For the last few years, Social Enterprise Day has been a real celebration for our world. It's a day when a great many social enterprises make the effort to showcase some or all of what they do. At SEL, we did our bit with a Guardian-supported launch of Spin-out and deliver, our latest publication on new forms of public service providers that go it alone to focus on social value, and an open day at the SEL offices.

At the youth and media company and SEL member, Livity, CEO Sam Conniff had Super Mario in and some guy in a red hat from the Cabinet Office to announce this organisation has organised youth consultation across the UK with Nintendo. This will co-design practical ideas that will make a real and lasting difference to young people. Nintendo intends to start piloting these co-created solutions for and with young people in their own communities as soon as next year.

Over the other side of town, SEL Director June O'Sullivan of LEYF gave this year's Margaret Horn Lecture at the RSA on LEYF research that explores social franchising as a model to tackle the challenges of child poverty. Read her lecture: 'Child poverty: Why social franchising is a giant step in the right direction'.  This event was chaired by Matthew Taylor, chief executive at the RSA.

Spin-out and deliver at the Guardian

Our own Guardian event sparked some really good debate and Matthew Booth, Head of Policy at Ealing Council was fantastic. He explained what was happening at the council and his frank and enthusiastic approach was a breath of fresh air. Participants got stuck in and a good discussion followed that I really enjoyed. As ever Andrew Burnell of City Health Care Partnership was on great form. Andrew is on the board of the Transition Institute (TI) and is as good an advertisement of public sector spin-outs that believe they are the next generation of public servants as you are ever likely to get. He was sporting his Movember moustache which, while impressive in a challenging facial hair sort of way, was no match for the tash of Super Mario. (Movember is an initiative that encourages men to grow moustaches in November to highlight issues and fundraising around men's health.)

Andrew will also be speaking at the TI launch of Social value ethos, its first publication on Monday at GLL facilities in Marshall Street, Westminster. Nick Hurd, the Minister for Civil Society (as seen above and a person who started following me, @aogdennewton on Twitter yesterday), and Sir Stephen Bubb, CEO of ACEVO and TI board member, will also both be there.

Hearing about social enterprise

Back to Social Enterprise Day. I left the Guardian to race back to SEL offices where the staff had done a lovely job smartening us up for a social enterprise drop-in day. We had no idea how many would come, so were chuffed when over 50 social entrepreneurs came through our doors. Mei Hui, SEL's Senior Business Advisor, gave a presentation to over 30 of our guests and the rest met SEL staff and enjoyed some networking.

I had to break of to do a Live Guardian Q & A on, ironically the future of business support for social enterprise following the sad closure of our sister organisation RISE in the South West. During that discussion there were plenty of comments to the effect that everything we do should be paid for at the point of contact. Sitting in on Mei's presentation and listening to the comments from participants, I was struck by how much advice those new social entrepreneurs needed and how utterly unable the vast majority were able to pay for it. In this harsh new economic climate, it is hard to think those people are not our audience. After all, wasn't supporting community development through enterprise why we were set up in the first place?

When Mei, Jillian and I shut up shop at around 7.30pm, we congratulated ourselves on an excellent social enterprise day and wondered about next year: what would the world of social enterprise look like then?