Searching for right way forward

ONE of the greatest mysteries of modern life is how the North-East can have voted overwhelmingly, by four to one, not to have a regional assembly, only to wake up the following day to discover that a regional assembly already existed and had no intention of going away.

Indeed, since the referendum, the assembly appears to have come out of hiding. It has released the Regional Spatial Strategy. Hidden behind this tedious-sounding title is an exciting vision of how the North-East will develop in the next 15 years.

So exciting, in fact, that it has got people across rural Durham and within inner city Middlesbrough jumping up and down complaining that it is going to prevent them from developing as they wish.

Then they wonder how they can change it, only to discover that because the assembly is unelected, it is not the easiest group to persuade of the error of its ways.

As they try to find the right people to lobby, they discover that, like an onion, there are many layers of appointed people sitting in partnerships trying to influence things.

And like an onion, it makes some people want to weep.

But, before we get carried away in our condemnation, we must at least try to understand the motivation that has caused this labyrinth of links to grow under Labour.

Like so much, it is essentially a Conservative idea.

In the early 1990s, seeing how reviled groups such as Teesside Development Corporation had become, Michael Heseltine created City Challenge. Cities now had to bid for Government money - and as part of their bid, just like a bid to host the Olympics, they had to show the whole community was committed.

This concept of local involvement was taken on by Labour after 1997. The regional development agencies should, of course, be overseen by local people. And so the regional assembly was born.

Indeed, local people should be drawing up the strategies that guide the agencies, and they should be involved in implementing those strategies.

Of course, they should be driving forward their own towns, working in partnership with their police, health officials, businesspeople etc.

And so a network of partnerships of appointed people was born. It now involves huge numbers of local people looking after local affairs.

Durham City's Local Strategic Partnership has 140 members, Darlington's has 11 local groups, so practically every estate has a partnership, all working on making the community healthier, wealthier, safer and wiser (and, in some cases, greener to boot).

It is a network that is expanding rapidly all the time.

Barely a day goes by in the North-East without some form of new "community empowerment network" being added to the family. Stockton and Gateshead are also pioneering "local area agreements", in which local partnerships are having a say in the provision of services such as policing and public health.

The cynics will say there is too much hot air pumped out at these partnership meetings, and that there is too much Government control of what these partnerships can pump out hot air about.

They might also wonder why a local councillor is picking up his allowance if the community empowerment network in his ward is getting things done. And they might conclude there are not any bobbies on the beat any more because all the police are at partnership meetings.

But the major problem must be that if an ordinary person does not like what is going on, there is not a lot they can do about it. The lines of accountability are far too blurred for retribution to be taken through the ballot box.

Judging by a letter that appeared in The Northern Echo on Wednesday, even Durham's council leaders are exasperated by their inability to shape certain area's of the assembly's spatial strategy.

Of course, a directly elected regional assembly would have altered all of that. But after the big 'No', where does the North-East go from here?

In our family tree, the councils are still major players, spending hundreds of millions of pounds and employing tens of thousands of people.

But unitary authorities, such as in the Tees Valley, are regarded as the way forward, especially as John Prescott and the Tories both like, for different reasons, directly elected mayors.

This would mean a re-drawing of boundaries and responsibilities in County Durham and North Yorkshire. This time, it could be that Darlington and Hartlepool - among the smallest unitaries in the country - are thrown into the pot and you end up with a directly elected mayor running the newly formed councils of south Durham, north Dur-ham and east Durham.

These mayors would then meet to create a directly elected regional assembly.

Or would this mean taking Darlington and Hartlepool out of the Tees Valley and destroying the sub-regional culture that is springing up under One NorthEast?

Is there such a thing as the Tees Valley? Is it very separate from Durham? Do they both belong to a region? Or, with powerful mayors, might they be able to stand on their own? In fact, would these mayors not be strengthened further by taking over the responsibilities of the regional development agencies?

Before the big 'No', the Government had a coherent policy and it was edging towards fulfilling it. Now, with the election approaching and manifestos needing to be sent to the printers, it is back to the drawing board with a question that needs urgently to be answered: "Life after the big 'No': where does the North-East go from here?

THE Northern Echo's fringe meeting - Life after the Big 'No': Where Does the North-East Go From Here? -will be at 7.30pm tomorrow.

Speakers will be Darlington MP Alan Milburn, Labour's election supremo; Ray Mallon, the directly elected mayor of Middlesbrough; John Elliott, North-East Says No campaign leader; and Andrew Sugden, director of policy at the North-East Chamber of Commerce.

The debate, chaired by the paper's editor, Peter Barron, will be in Room C2 of The Sage centre. Admission is free and open to all conference delegates.

A full report will appear in Monday's paper.