"HEZZA plan to revive regions backed by Chancellor”, the headlines shouted – but, as ever, the truth is rather different.

The Budget run-up saw George Osborne – the man who was definitely not for turning yesterday – appear to think again over Whitehall’s iron grip on power and purse-strings.

He announced he was “accepting” Lord Heseltine’s “bold ideas” to unleash towns and cities to deliver economic growth by making their own decisions. Toothless local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) would be given bulging “single funding pots”, with the cash stripped from reluctant central government.

Now, there is much to welcome in the Chancellor’s move, not least the fact that LEPs are, finally, getting some money – after starting life literally penniless.

In addition, Lord Heseltine’s call for Whitehall civil servants to be sent north to work with “local growth teams” – clusters of LEPs – on economic strategies has been accepted.

And it appears LEPs will grab more influence over the spending of hundreds of millions of pounds of EU investment aid, a crucial issue in the North-East.

But the crux of the Heseltine plan was for LEPs to control £17.5bn annual budgets, by Whitehall handing over funding streams that support growth.

The Chancellor’s intention is to hand over only housing, transport (which was already being devolved) and skills, minus the crucial pot for apprenticeships.

Staying in Whitehall are responsibility for job support schemes – which have been privatised anyway, of course – and doling out cash from the Regional Growth Fund.

Similarly, Lord Heseltine called for £6.5bna- year of capital spending to be handed over, but – with the welcome exception of transport – this appears to be staying put.

Meanwhile, business support schemes will continue to be run from London, after a plan to beef-up Chambers of Commerce to do the job was thrown out.

As a result, the Treasury admitted the “single funding pots” would contain only “lowish billions” – not the £17.5bn suggested by Hezza.

Now, there may be very good reasons not to trust fledgling LEPs – partnerships of business and local authority leaders – with such huge sums of public money.

But that only underlines the huge blunder when the regional development agencies (RDAs) were axed with no adequate structures to replace them.

Furthermore, even this Heseltine-lite plan will not start until 2015 – by which time the regions will have been starved of economic development muscle for five long years.

Only this week, the think-tank IPPR North calculated that axing the One North East RDA cost up to 120,000 jobs, because of a breakdown in foreign investment.

Mr Heseltine entitled his study No Stone Unturned – to urge ministers to bust every gut to help the regions.

But it appears they are still being tossed a few pebbles only.

SIR WILLIAM FERGUS MONTGOMERY, a former Conservative MP and aide to Margaret Thatcher, died this week. No, I’d never heard of him either.

However, South Shields-born, he won Newcastle East at the 1959 election – the only Conservative to have ever held the constituency.

It seems unthinkable that a modern-day Sir William Fergus Montgomery will win in any Northern city in 2015 – which helps explain David Cameron’s current crisis.