Tag Archives: regional development agencies

Opinion: Regional planning – it mattered not one jot

By Andy Boddington | Mon 15th October 2012 - 4:53 pm

It is a general rule of life that the longer a document is, the less it matters. I have just read all 1,374 pages of the Strategic Environmental Assessment for the revocation of the South East Plan, published last week. Does this document matter? Not one jot, except for one important lesson, which I’ll come to in a moment.

Everything regional is out of favour at the moment. Quite rightly, too. When I lived in Oxfordshire I did not feel that I belonged to “the South East”. Now I live in Shropshire, I do not for a moment

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: banking and business

By Mark Pack | Mon 24th May 2010 - 10:20 am

Welcome to the first in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

For all the importance and controversy associated with banking reform, it is also one of the areas where cross-party agreement is easiest – because once you’ve decided that major reform is necessary, the differences of approach are essentially ones of pragmatic detail rather than principle. Some at the free-market or state control fringes may beg to differ, but it’s a debate about what will or won’t work rather than what political philosophers do or …

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Mark Pack

Chaos engulfs Conservative position on Regional Development Agencies

By Mark Pack | Tue 2nd February 2010 - 8:55 am

Back in December I reported how Caroline Spelman had dropped the Conservative Party’s policy of abolishing Regional Development Agencies. Then last week Ken Clarke was reported as ordering a review of the nine English RDAs to decide what to do with them, but now the Conservative Party has denied there’s a review. So there’s going to abolish them, but not and going to review them, but not. All clear I trust?

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Mark Pack

Spelman drops Conservative pledges to abolish RDAs

By Mark Pack | Thu 3rd December 2009 - 11:40 am

So, what is the Conservative Party policy on Regional Development Agencies (RDAs)?

Well, here is Iain Dale on the matter in February:

Cameron Reinforces Pledge to Abolish RDA’s & Assemblies
David Cameron has given an interview to BBC South East, to be shown at lunchtime tomorrow in which he pledges to abolish Regional Development Agencies. Good. There had been some speculation that the Tories were wavering on that commitment.

Or here is what Public Servant magazine reported last year of both Cameron and Eric Pickles:

Tory leader David Cameron has confirmed what Public Servant magazine reported in its April issue, that the Conservatives

…

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