Regional planning tensions: planning for economic ... - CiteSeerX

Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 2003, volume 21, pages 225 ^ 239

DOI:10.1068/c0221

Regional planning tensions: planning for economic growth and sustainable development in two contrasting English regions David Counsell, Graham Haughton

Centre for City and Regional Studies, Department of Geography, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, England; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Received 25 February 2002; in revised form 30 July 2002

Abstract. The new regional governance arrangements for England are raising profound challenges for the integration of planning, sustainable-development, and economic-development strategies. The authors examine how tensions are emerging in respect of efforts to provide employment sites for large-scale inward investments, using the contrasting experiences of the South East and North East of England during the period 1997 ^ 2001. Some major ideological faultlines between national control over plan making and regional aspirations to devise distinctive approaches to planning for regional development are revealed.

Reemergent regional planning and the new regional governance After many years in the political wilderness, regional planning in England began to reemerge as an active policy arena from the late 1980s. This is an important but as yet underexplored part of the `rescaling' of English governance over the last two decades. There has been considerable work already on the new regional development agencies and regional economic development (for example, Deas and Ward, 2000; Gibbs and Jonas, 2001; Jones and MacLeod, 1999; Robson et al, 2000) and there is also an emerging body of work on the resurgence in regional planning (for example, Baker et al, 1999; Murdoch, 2000; Murdoch and Norton, 2001). Although there have been useful overviews of how the two systems combine, there has been little empirical analysis of the tensions between them (Murdoch and Tewdwr-Jones, 1999; Roberts and Lloyd, 2000). This is both surprising and problematic, as regional planning is almost invariably central to many of the key policies used to promote regional economic development. Indeed, many of the key regional economic policy debates, on employment land in particular, have risen to public prominence through the regional planning process. In this paper we examine the ways in which the new arrangements for regional planning and regional economic development have been closely entwined, looking particularly at the constraining politics of development in the South East and the North East of England. Our aim is to examine the tensions surrounding designations of major new sites for employment land through regional planning guidance (RPG). The formal status of RPG means that the debates in each region attracted contributions from a wide range of actors, each lobbying for its own distinctive position, often based on very particular interpretations of sustainable development. In addition, we seek to unpick some of the complex ties between local, regional, and national actors in developing RPG. Our analysis allows us to examine how different groups of actors have attempted to work the systems for developing RPG and, to an extent, regional economic strategies, in order to achieve their own interests. In doing this they have had to grapple with the complex and rather slippery notion of sustainable development, which is intended to help underpin and tie together the two sets of strategy in each region.

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D Counsell, G Haughton

In addressing these issues we draw on material gathered during a three-year study of regional planning in all the English regions, conducted between 2000 and 2002. As part of this we have conducted 119 face-to-face interviews with key actors involved in regional planning, including local and central government planners, regional planning bodies, development industry lobbyists, environmental lobbyists, regional development agencies, and statutory government agencies, such as the Environment Agency, English Nature, and the Countryside Agency. These interviews were sometimes undertaken before examinations in public, but mainly afterwards when the process had begun to unfold further. Where the timing might have influenced an interviewee's comments we make this clear in the text. In addition, we have collected and analysed all the published draft and final versions of RPG, attended many of the relevant debates during the examinations in public for the draft RPG documents, and collected position papers from many of the key stakeholdersöfor instance press releases, reports, and written submissions to examinations in public. Because it occurred before the project began we were not able to attend the examination in public for the South East. Searching for a new `regional fix': neocorporatism revisited? The strengthening of regional policy and regional governance structure since the election of New Labour in 1997 has been accompanied by a growing academic critique of state power in relation to this scale of policy activity. Of particular interest to our work have been concerns about the dangers of ascribing too much causal power to policy actions at any particular scale, without consideration of more complex interscalar (local ^ regional ^ global) political and economic processes and, indeed, structures (Jones, 2001; Jones and McLeod, 1999; Swyngedouw, 1997). From this perspective, we need to examine not only how the new regional institutions operate at the regional scale, but also how they are part of a wider reordering of roles across actors at different scales. In addition, as Gibbs and Jonas (2001) highlight, the new regional institutions need to be seen not as end products of a particular process of regulatory reform, but as being sites of continuing contestation over their roles and responsibilities, where we might well expect marked variations in practices between regions. A central concern, and rhetorical device, for the Labour government has been to build more competitive regions through its regional policies, enabling all regions to compete in a global marketplace. As Fairclough (2000) notes, globalisation tends to be central to New Labour language, where global economic change is constructed as an uncontrollable and unavoidable force, which politicians can respond to only by facilitating rather than challenging. In the face of `globalisation' the nation-state is argued to be, if not quite powerless, certainly not as powerful as it once was. This links to academic debates about the restructuring of the state as part of neoliberalist reforms to increase competitiveness. Particularly important have been debates about the `hollowing out' of the nation-state, where the state is seen to be restructuring to engage with new actors in new ways, in order to meet the challenges it faces, with power being reworked vertically and horizontally; for instance, with the development of supranational bodies and agreements (for example, European Union directives), and the greater use of partnerships for local policy delivery. However, the `hollowing out of the state' thesis does not simply assume a loss of national state powers but, rather, a reconfiguration of powers across different scales and actors (Jessop, 1998; Newman, 2001). The nation-state is not so much disempowered as differently empowered as it seeks to co-opt new actors at different scales in pursuit of its policies for continuing economic growth. Part of this redistribution of powers reflects a belief that the former hierarchical model of state powers was not working effectively and that new ways of bringing together public, private, and

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voluntary bodies at different scales need to be explored. Within the governance literature this is generally discussed in terms of the ways in which public policy is increasingly steered through new mechanisms, including partnerships of interest groups, rather than simply pushed down hierarchically from one level of government to another. The new regional bodies being created for economic development and planning in England seem to fit neatly into this kind of schema, as they involve differing forms of partnerships for devising and carrying through their strategies and plans. According to Jessop (2000, page 11), the expanded governance arrangements, with their emphasis on partnership, networking, and consensus brokering, are not intended ``to return Britain to a discredited corporatism'' but rather to address the limitations of state, market, and mixed-economic solutions to complex economic, political, and social problems. (We would add environmental problems to this list.) Despite Jessop's warning note that the political intention is not to return to old-style tripartite corporatism (essentially employer bodies, trade unions, and state offices), a return to Offe's (1985) analysis of (neo)corporatism reveals some striking parallels with and insights into the way in which regional institutions have been inserted into British governance systems in the past ten years. There are major differences too, not least because British new regionalism attempts to be far more wide ranging in its power brokering than was traditional tripartite corporatism. Jessop's (2000) notion of the strategic selectivity of the state is in part based on a critique of the privileging of class in Offe's approach to corporatism, with Jessop arguing that the state strategically manages processes of incorporation into state policy structures. Nonetheless, reexamination of Offe's original work provides some useful insights into how the creation of a newly empowered regional structure of governance is altering power flows between actors and across different policy scales. Offe's (1985) analysis focuses on attempts to build new mediating, consensusbrokering structures between representative bodies for capital, labour, and the state, looking at how these influence the ways in which power is distributed between these actors and also between the state and civil society. He argues that corporatist approaches were developed in response to particular deficiencies of the institutions of democratic government, offering ways of compensating for these by attempting to depoliticise and reduce conflicts by incorporating selected representative bodies into the policy process. However, he argues that corporatism works in ways which are inherently asymmetrical in the redistribution of power. So, even though many organisations may be affected by the processes of institutionalisation, which grant them the political status to engage in policy formation, they differ greatly in their ability to use their new-found status to influence policy. Although developed to analyse very different circumstances, it is possible to see parallels to the way in which regional planning in England has been developed in recent years. For instance, power is unevenly distributed in the new arrangements, as private interests have the main power of economic sanction öthrough not investing or releasing land for development in particular areas where planners would have them develop. However, in contrast to Offe's analysis, we would need to highlight that, whereas other pressure groups, such as those promoting social housing or environmental causes, lack this power of sanction, they may be able to use their membership base to develop alternative sources of legitimacy and power with which to sway the political process. Unlike in Offe's work, the labour movement is a marginal player, and indeed it is deliberately constructed as such by the state, and some of Offe's class-based analysis is not helpful in studying alliances in planning which often transcend class lines (Healey et al, 1988; Jessop, 1998; 2000).

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Extending Offe's (1985, pages 246 ^ 247) arguments a little, corporatist-style approaches may be politically popular on three grounds. First, they can reduce conflicts, if partner organisations can help control the attitudes and behaviour of their members. Second, they can reduce the likelihood of institutions obstructing the policies which they have been partly responsible for devising. Third, they can help shift responsibility for failures away from government alone whilst retaining the possibility of governments claiming credit for any successes. Again, it is possible to see some immediate possible connections with the way in which the new institutions for English regional planning and economic development are being developed. Recent efforts to devise and inset a new tier of regional structures are at heart a political project, based on a critique of the failings of the existing distribution of powers between central and local government in particular. Offe (1985) reminds us that the newly devised systems are also likely to contain marked asymmetries of power which need to be subjected to critical analysis. Some of these asymmetries can usefully be analysed with the aid of Jessop's (1998) work on the strategic selectivity of the state, in which he shows how the state retains power over the `how', `where', and `who' of engagement in its different coordinating mechanisms, effectively controlling which interests are privileged and which marginalised. Moreover, the state retains the capacity to decide the levels of symbolic and material support it is willing to afford policies which emerge from various policy networks and governance systems. Our analysis draws both on Offe's and on Jessop's work to help examine recent processes of regional policy formation work across policy sectors, across policy scales, and across different policy actors. Conflicting or complementary? Processes for regional planning and regional economic development in England Regional bodies and their role in creating new regional plans and strategies

The number and range of regional bodies have grown rapidly in the past decade. Regional planning was reintroduced in the early 1990s in a fairly weak form, by a Conservative government responding to political concern about green-belt incursion and rapid growth in new house building. Concern was particularly strong in the outer `shire' counties of the regions, usually regarded as Conservative heartlands, with worries about threats to quality of life and, often, house prices (Breheny, 1992; Murdoch and Norton, 2001). A further nod towards regionalism came with the creation of Government Offices for the Regions in 1994, aiming to provide a stronger regional coordination role for central government departments (Murdoch and Norton, 2001; Newman, 2001). More powerful in some of the less prosperous regions, simply because of the money attached to them, were the arrangements for spending European Union (EU) regional structural funds, which required regional `social partners' to work together to create strategies within which the funds could be spent. Since the Labour government came to power in 1997 English regionalism has gathered pace, with new regional institutions established to take forward the regional agendaömost notably the regional development agencies (RDAs). RDAs present themselves as being widely based partnerships, with a strong private sector input on their boards. Though intended to be `regional' in composition, RDA board members are appointed by central government. Their primary remit is regional economic development, albeit with a requirement to promote sustainable development. In the absence of a democratically elected tier of regional government in England, the RDAs are expected to consult with and report on their strategies to regional assemblies. Regional assemblies, previously sometimes known as regional chambers, are public ^ private partnerships using the indirect electoral legitimacy of nominated local councillors,


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plus other key regional stakeholders (Newman, 2001). The newly empowered regional assemblies operate on a voluntary basis but have growing responsibilities, based not least on the expectation that they will be a key agency in any move towards future directly elected regional governments (DTLR, 2002). At present, however, their powers are rather limited. For instance, they must be consulted by RDAs on their strategies, and indeed are deemed to be a central mechanism for holding RDAs to account, yet they have no statutory power to make RDAs change their strategies (Deas and Ward, 2000; Jones, 2001). Regional planning, by contrast, has seen accountability brokered through regional planning bodies (RPBs), which are consortia of local authorities in each region. As part of the new arrangements for regional planning introduced since 1997, RPBs have been charged with producing draft RPG, involving consultation with other stakeholders. After a public examination in front of a government-appointed panel, which produces its own report, responsibility for revising the draft RPG passes to the secretary of state (central government), being carried forward mainly by the Government Office for the Region. As part of the shift towards building regional capacity in advance of bidding for elected regional government status, regional assemblies and RPBs are expected to merge over time, with responsibility for producing draft RPG shifting to the merged body. Regional economic strategies and regional planning guidance

What we can begin to see emerging is a complex web of new regional institutions, each with different and distinctive responsibilities. This inevitably creates the potential for tensions to emerge, as the various strategies being prepared have differing mandates and also differing accountability structures. Regional economic strategies (RESs) are the responsibility of the RDAs, and were produced over a fairly short time period of around six months during 1999. Although considerable public consultation did take place, it is not always clear how much impact these processes had on the formation of the strategy. Consultation processes often seemed fragmented to the outsider, sometimes involving carefully selected audiences and stage-managed processes which were not open to general scrutiny. By contrast, RPG has a much longer gestation period and much greater scope for formal public debate, through consultation and active engagement with key actors in the production of policy drafts, opportunities for written comment on published drafts throughout, and the formal examination in public. In policy terms, RESs and RPGs are intended to be complementary, without one having priority over the other, with the processes of consultation expected to reduce areas of disjuncture. In practice, whichever of the two documents was produced first has tended to set the tone for subsequent debates. This was an issue for our case studies, with the sustainable-developmentoriented draft RPG preceding the production of the RES for the South East, whereas in the North East the more economic-development-oriented RES was produced at around the same time as the draft RPG. Although the importance of timing cannot be proven, what is clear is that successful regional economic development requires complementary successful spatial planning practices, not least in terms of providing land for employment sites, and infrastructure provision, including transport and housing for workers. In practice, however, tensions almost inevitably emerge, as the different traditions, and indeed philosophical bases, of planning and economic development come into conflict. For all of its consultations and collaboration, planning remains part of the formal state apparatus of `real regulation' formally and inextricably linked into hierarchical local and national planning policy regimes. The role of the state in regulating the operation of the planning system

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(articulated in large part through planning policy guidance notes and RPG for each region) ensures that national policy is incorporated into development plans (structure plans and local plans) prepared by local authorities. These plans provide the basis for making decisions on individual development proposals and, as Healey (1999) suggests, this hierarchical system means that policy articulated at the national level exercises a pervasive power over local policymaking. There are other regional strategies in preparation too, including regional transport strategies (as part of RPG), and perhaps most importantly, regional sustainable development frameworks (RSDFs). The RSDFs are intended to ``define a high level vision with wide-ranging support, for moving towards sustainable development in the region, considering the key social, economic, environmental and resources issues and the interrelationship between them'' (DETR, 2000, page 1). These frameworks are expected to be agreed by regional assemblies, although they may be produced by other crosssectoral regional bodies such as the voluntary regional roundtables for sustainable development. As previously noted, the European Commission has also been active in promoting regional frameworks for economic development in England, through its allocation of substantial structural funds for regenerating run-down regions. Indeed, the immediate predecessors of most of the regional economic strategies produced in 1999 were the regional strategy documents produced in the early 1990s at the behest of the Commission as it sought to encourage the national government to develop a more strategic approach to the allocation of regional structural funds (Haughton et al, 1999). In the field of planning, the European presence has been felt through the process of creating the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), the sustainable development frameworks, the Green Paper on the Urban Environment (CEC, 1990), and the implementation of directives on issues such as habitat, environmental impact assessment, and strategic environmental assessment. Contested views of sustainable development

As we have already intimated, sustainable development is a sufficiently ambiguous and contested concept that it can be appropriated and moulded by organisations which are attempting to justify very differing development paths (Gibbs and Jonas, 2001; Hajer, 1995). Central to this are the attempts of this concept to integrate economic, social, and environmental aspirations, which creates the potential for different actors to overtly or otherwise prioritise one element over the others. The Labour government has adopted a particular and distinctive definition of sustainable development, with four key objectives: high and stable economic growth and employment; social progress which meets the needs of everyone; effective protection of the environment; and prudent use of natural resources (DETR, 1999). Here the very use of the word `high' in relation to economic growth gives it a sense of prioritisation over the environmental aims, for which less directive, more cautious, words such as `prudent' and èffective' are used. Nonetheless, continuing government support has meant that over the past ten years the concept of sustainable development has become central to planning in Englandömeaning that it can no longer be dismissed by any organisation which wishes to be taken seriously. On the other hand, how the concept is interpreted in shaping strategies, policies, and implementation is still very much open to dispute (Gibbs and Jonas, 2001). At the regional level, sustainable development is expected to be addressed in all the different forms of regional strategies. The RDAs, for example, are charged with contributing towards the achievement of sustainable development (Benneworth et al, 2002; Gibbs and Jonas, 2001), and RPG is expected to take forward the


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government's sustainable-development agenda. These expectations are reinforced by central government's requirement that sustainability appraisals are undertaken both of RESs and of RPG. As noted earlier, RSDFs have been prepared in each region, and these are expected to inform all other related strategies in the region. Sustainable development is important in the present analysis because of the role of regional planning in constraining urban sprawl. Antisprawl policies are justified by the expectation that they can help reduce road traffic and therefore contribute to energy efficiency and reduced congestion. Moreover, reducing the opportunities for the outward spread of development can help stimulate investment in the redevelopment of rundown parts of the urban fabric, reduce the costs of providing new infrastructure, and minimise the loss of rural land to housing, employment sites, and roads (Haughton and Hunter, 1994; Power, 2001). In this paper we focus on the provision of large-scale greenfield sites, through the new regional planning guidance system, which has become a major source of tension. Though popular with developers, their opponents see such developments as inherently unsustainable, and as leading to sprawl and more road traffic. It is how the resulting tensions are played out in our two contrasting regions which provides the focus for the following two sections. Growth management and promotion in the South East of England With London at its centre, the South East has the largest regional population in England (18.1 million, including London). The formal boundaries for `the south east region' have been rather fluid, even in recent times. In particular, the South East as defined for regional economic development was different from that defined for regional planning purposes. In 2001 the boundaries were harmonised when, for regional planning purposes, three countiesöBedfordshire, Essex, and Hertfordshireöwere shifted from the South East region to the East of England region. Confusingly, therefore, when we are talking about the development of an economic strategy for `the South East', this did not include these three counties, but during the process of RPG preparation they were included. The South East is the most prosperous region in England in terms of GDP per capita and lowest levels of unemployment. However, this general pattern of growth and prosperity in the South East has brought its own problemsönot least how to ensure that some of the benefits of this prosperity filter through to the deprived coastal towns, inner urban, and rural areas of the region and also how to ensure that unbridled growth does not undermine the quality of life which underpins the overall growth of the region (Allen et al, 1998; Peck and Tickell, 1995). As such, a key issue for planners in the region has been how to cope with the scale and the pattern of development in ways that allow economic growth to continue, whilst at the same time not neglecting less prosperous areas and providing an attractive environment. During the late 1980s and 1990s there had been a backlash against the pro-growth ethic, which resulted in political and media campaigns against the scale of development which householdformation forecasts and economic development aspirations would suggest is needed. This antigrowth sentiment is especially strong in the shire counties in the South East and is directed particularly towards housing (Breheny, 1992; Murdoch, 2000). Regional economic strategy

The South East of England Development Agency (SEEDA) published its RES for the South East, Building a World Class Region, in October 1999. The RES proposes to increase the region's economic competitiveness through seven region-wide programmes, of which one is creating a world-class environment. The environmental emphasis is

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mainly on improving the infrastructure of the region in ways which promote sustainable development, including transport, water, and waste, plus a concern to understand and anticipate the potential effects of climate change better. The programme theme of `world-class transport' also identifies congestion as a major impediment to growth. Relative to most of the RESs of the late 1990s, the South East's shows a reasonable level of awareness of the need to integrate sustainable development concerns within the strategy. Regional planning guidance for the South East (RPG9)

Arrangements for regional planning in the South East are fairly long standing, with the main agency being SERPLAN, the Standing Conference of Local Authorities in the South East, involving local authority planners and politicians. SERPLAN has been responsible for producing draft RPG through the 1990s, providing a forum for debate particularly around the allocation of housing numbers between the different local authorities. Allen et al (1998, page 125) go so far as to say that SERPLAN's ``main purpose seems to have been to provide an arena within which planning authorities are able to negotiate about pushing growth away from their backyards.'' The critical point they raise here and in other parts of their analysis concerns the profoundly politicised debates going on within the region during the 1980s and 1990s, as more prosperous areas sought to preserve or promote the conditions of their prosperity without taking responsibility for problems elsewhere in the region. The draft RPG for the South East was particularly notable for the way in which SERPLAN recognised the importance of sustainable development and the need to reconcile economic growth with environmental protection. Work on A Sustainable Development Strategy for the South East began during the mid-1990s, with the production of a series of sustainability principles in 1995, and a first draft plan in late 1997 (SERPLAN, 1997). Although it had been working towards a review under the old arrangements for RPG, SERPLAN found itself piloting the new arrangements. The draft regional strategy was published for consultation with regional stakeholders in April 1998 and, after modification, was submitted to the secretary of state in November 1998. In placing sustainable development at its heart, the draft RPG sought to address it in an integrated way, based on six policy themes: environmental enhancement and natural resource management; encouraging economic success; opportunity and equity; regeneration and renewal; concentrating development; and sustainable transport. The public examination of the draft RPG took place in May and June 1999 and the panel issued its report in October of the same year. Public interest was considerable, but very much focused on the single big issue of the scale of new housing development. The secretary of state issued `proposed changes' to the RPG in March 2000, and a further draft revised RPG was issued in December 2000 incorporating a reduced level of housing. The final version RPG was published in March 2001 (GOSE, 2001). Economic growth versus sustainable development in the South East

Two major planning concerns emerged during the debates around the RPG for the South East. First, the extent to which environmental constraints should be allowed to hold back a growing economy. Second, and related, whether to attempt to redirect economic development to disadvantaged parts of the region or to `let it rip' in areas of high growth potential. In the original SERPLAN strategy the policy for economic development in the South East was to give priority to the less prosperous parts of the region, referred to as `priority areas for economic regeneration' (PAERs), including areas such as Thames Gateway. This strategy also proposed constraining development in designated areas of


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economic pressure (AEPs), that is, high-growth areas such as the arc to the west of London. Inevitably perhaps, this constraint policy was deeply unpopular with the pro-development lobby. During our interviews, one pro-development group talked of the naivity of planners thinking that regeneration could be supported by ``strangling the richer areas''. The contrast between the SERPLAN approach for regional planning and that of SEEDA for the RES is evident in their approaches to sustainable development. The terminology becomes critical at this stage, with the RES policy being to sustain, not constrain, growth in areas of economic success. Sustainable growth in this context becomes sustaining economic growth, with little clear linkage to concerns about environmental constraints in areas of development pressure. Interestingly, the economic strategy does express concern that economic growth is being impeded by congestion, access problems, and restrictions on the development of new business parks. After the public examination of the draft RPG for the South East, the examination panel recommended that constraints on economic growth in the region should not be included. It explicitly rejected the case for a more restrictive approach in AEPs: ``Nowhere in the region should economic enterprise be frustrated save for strong and manifestly demonstrable local environmental reasons. Neither congestion nor labour supply should be used as a reason for frustrating the proper development of the regional economy to world-class'' (Crow and Whittaker, 1999, page 35). The panel also recommended weakening the policy on helping struggling areas (the PAERs), recommending that measures taken to assist them should not adversely affect or constrain the economically buoyant areas. As such, the panel proposed a shift from the SERPLAN approach of giving priority to the regeneration of less prosperous parts of the region, and toward the RES approach of prioritising support for economic growth in the buoyant areas. The main players in regional planning at this stage used the media to express their concerns, fuelling a series of scare stories and counterscare stories about the alleged dangers of allowing further housing development and economic growth to occur (for a fuller discussion, see Counsell and Haughton, 2001). Given our comparison with the North East, one intriguing story line set out was how development pressures should be deflected to more `needy' northern regions. For instance, John Redwood, the Conservative shadow environment secretary, ``called for new development to be directed towards abandoned industrial areas of the north'' (Evening Standard 1999b), as did the SERPLAN director Brian Wilson who, when interviewed about the panel report, was worried `àbout concentrating so much economic activity in the South East when it is much more necessary in the north of England'' (Evening Standard 1999a). Sustainable development was also invoked in the growth-constraint cause, with the panel's report described by the SERPLAN director as showing `àpparent disregard for the principle of sustainability in the area'' (Evening Standard 1999a). Given our interest in power struggles, it is interesting that some media accounts took on the antigrowth sentiment to the extent of questioning the motives and credibility of oganisations promoting growth. Here, the chief ènemy' was seen to be the House Builders Federation (HBF)öan unusual bogey man for some of the more probusiness press: `ìn one corner are the sprawlers. They include the `concrete the world' lobby of the House Builders Federation'' (The Times 2000). On the other side of the debate, the Independent (1999) identified an `ùnlikely alliance'' being established to oppose development between ``Friends of the Earth and Conservative activists''. Not surprisingly, this highly politicised and public debate led the government to consider its proposed changes carefully, given that which ever way it leant it was going

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to face opposition. In the final version of the RPG (RPG9), the government adopted a middle road on the issue of PAERs: priority is given to the deprived Thames Gateway area, but the policy on other PAERs is weakened. The public examination panel's recommendation to delete reference to AEPs was accepted, but a separate policy was included on the western arc, encouraging local strategies for areas where congestion or labour-supply shortages are constraining growth. When interviewed local planners, sometimes expressed a sense of confusion about the messages they were receiving: ``So far as the Areas of Economic Regeneration went, and the attempts to manage economic pressures in the west of the region went, there seemed to be clear areas of conflict with the RES which was wanting to exploit the strengths of the region'' (interview with local planning officer, after `proposed changes', 2000). In the final version of RPG for the South East it was argued that there was no regional case for the review of green-belt boundaries. This has created a dilemma for local authorities in areas such as the western arc, where planners should be looking to support job growth but without being able to release large plots of additional land for housing. The danger of this is that it will simply lead to more long-distance commuting by workers who cannot afford to live close to where they work; reducing their standard of living and adding to congestion on roads and public transport systems. It is difficult to see this as any more likely to promote environmental improvement than any of the other options put forward for RPG in the South East. Going for growth: strategies for the North East of England The North East of England generally emerges as the most disadvantaged English region based on most socioeconomic criteria, including GDP per head and unemployment. It has a long history of deindustrialisation and experimentation with regional policy aimed at reviving its fortunes, dating back at least to the 1930s. With just 2.6 million inhabitants it is also the least populated region. There are three major industrial conurbations based on the valleys of the Rivers Tees, Tyne, and Wear, plus an extensive rural hinterland. Reflecting its very different economic and social situation, the key regional planning concern has been to help turn a declining economy into a growing one, supported by a predominantly pro-growth local politics (Tomaney and Ward, 2001). Indeed, the prevailing political culture in the North East is one of accommodating development if at all possible, and as such the planning system is often seen as a negative, potentially constraining, influence. This said, in the recent past planning policies have been stretched to accommodate a number of inward-investment schemes on large greenfield sites, including Samsung, Siemens, and Nissan. This attitude has resulted in there being less tension between the RDA and the RPB than in the South East. Instead, tensions have emerged in the latter stages of the RPG-preparation process, when pro-development regional aspirations have been trimmed to fit with national planning policy. Regional economic strategy for the North East

One Northeast, the regional development agency, published its draft regional strategy Unlocking our Potential in August 1999 and the final version in November of that year. Its approach to economic development is to diversify and to create a knowledge-based economy to compete in global markets. As with other English regions, it places an emphasis on attracting inward investment whilst highlighting the need for urban and rural regeneration. Part of the vision for the North East is for it to become a more sustainable society, based on wealth creation. This said, sustainability in relation to environmental concerns barely merits a mention, and instead the word is mostly used as a substitute for `long lasting' in relation to economic development activities and


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neighborhood regeneration. The unbalanced nature of this reading of the sustainable development agenda is hinted at in the official sustainability appraisal of the RES (Robinson Penn, 1999). Regional planning guidance for the North East (RPG1)

The draft RPG for the North East was published by the Association of North East Councils (ANEC) as a consultation document in May 1999. A revised document was published in December of that year and the public examination took place in June 2000. The panel report was published in October (Richardson and Simpson, 2000) and the proposed changes in April 2001. Sustainable development was a recurring theme in the draft RPG, but it was not as clearly focused on environmental issues as was the draft RPG for the South East. One of those responsible for producing the draft RPG explained to us that `ìn the context of the North East sustainable development must give a strong weight to the issue of economic growth or we would be accused of planning for decline'' (interview, before public examination). Our analysis focuses on the debates prompted by the decision to create four additional strategic greenfield sites for inward investment in advance of any identified demand. This and the policy to increase housing numbers ahead of projected demand were contested by environmental bodies such as the Council of the Protection of Rural England and Friends of the Earth. Opposition to the sustainability credentials of the draft RPG focused particularly on the issue of green-belt loss, even though additions were also proposed (Richardson et al, 1999). However, with the media broadly supportive of the pro-development culture of the region, there has been little adverse coverage of the plans for additional housing and investment sites. Both the public examination process and our interviews reveal a more mixed reaction. Local authority planners and the main business lobby groups tended to be equally keen to support expansion plans, often using the rhetoric of sustainable development to support their views. For instance, at the public examination, the HBF representative stated that ``Sustainable development must imply that the North East region provides for a secure economic future for its people, stemming environmentally wasteful out-migration to other regions, and providing the sufficient number of homes required'' (transcribed during public examination). Interestingly, when interviewed by us, one pro-development lobbyist was quite adamant that ``Sustainable development differs depending on what part of the country you're in ... so in this region we strongly support sustainable development but are of the view that economic development has to take precedence) (interview, after public examination). On the other hand, environmental groups found the use of `sustainable development' problematic in various ways: ``There were a lot of the right words ... it talked about the importance of sustainable development ... . But these did not appear to be manifested in the actual proposals.'' When asked how sustainable development was dealt with during RPG preparation, another environmental group representative told us with some irony, `Ì think there is potential for it to be higher up the agenda!'' The malleability of `sustainable development' allowed the term to be used both to defend and to attack policies for greenfield-site developments in the region, in effect reducing its effectiveness as a means of drawing together a consensus around the issue. Inward investment versus sustainable development

The draft RPG identified a need for the region ``to be ahead of the game'' in attracting mobile inward investors by having `àn attractive regional portfolio of sites''. This portfolio of employment sites includes a range of large greenfield sites distributed throughout the region. Not surprisingly, the four additional large-scale greenfield sites

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identified proved controversial as they conflicted with national planning policy guidance to minimise greenfield incursions. Those backing the expansion proposals tended to argue that sustainable development in the North East required the priorisation of economic growth in debates which occurred before, during, and after the public examination. Indeed, one pro-development lobby group argued that, when disputes arose on issues such as employment sites, then the pro-growth RES ``should be the defining document ... particularly in this region'' (interview, before the public examination). The tensions around economic development and sustainable development were aired during the public examination, leading the panel (Richardson and Simpson, 2000) to argue in its report that allocating additional greenfield strategic sites would undermine the urban core regeneration aspirations both of the RPG and the RES. The panel report also highlighted that there was an existing oversupply of employment land in the region and that an adequate number of existing strategic sites had already been identified in local plans. The panel therefore recommended deleting two of the proposed new sites and were noncommittal about the other two. Responding to the panel report, in its proposed changes to RPG, central government placed an emphasis on an economic strategy of renewal, and modernisation of existing employment areas. The panel's proposal to delete two inward-investment sites was accepted as part of this overall approach, and an additional site was deleted. Moreover, the identification of additional strategic employment sites was made a matter to be decided in future at the level of RPG, not development plans, removing this issue from the direct remit of local authorities. Unsurprisingly, the local authorities objected to these changes, feeling that they would worsen their competitive positions in relation to other English regions. Consultations about the secretary of state's proposed changes are still on-going as we write (July 2002), as local authorities apply pressure for the reinsertion of the deleted employment sites. Conclusions The focus of much recent work on resurgent regionalism in England has tended to be almost entirely on economic development, with little or nothing being said of the changing role of regional planning. Yet, as the new arrangements for regional economic development and regional planning begin to take more concrete forms, the interrelations between the two are emerging as central to an understanding of the challenges facing the new regional scale of governance, not least because different governance regimes are in place for economic development and for regional planning. Our findings highlight that the new regional systems of governance in England are not constructed in a vacuum, and require continuing negotiations involving the brokers of power both at national and at local policy scales. Drawing on the work of Offe (1985) and Jessop (1998; 2000) in particular, we have analysed the way in which state power has been reworked, and also how alliances between lobby groups differ according to regional circumstancesöagain often working across policy scales. We have also examined how the state has only partly released its reins of power to the new regional systems which it has put in place, retaining ways of exercising its own central authority where it deems it necessary in order to preserve the integrity of its own policies or to protect the interests of those marginalised by the new regional power alliances. The failures of the neocorporatist approaches to regional planning which we highlight here show similarities to those anticipated by Offe (1985)önot least the inability to control the tensions and contradictions caused by incorporating key actors into the policy process, whilst still having to develop policies which will inevitably fail to meet the demands of some of those incorporated into the system. Moreover, one of the key


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mechanisms for diffusing conflicts, that of creating ``crisis-ridden images of reality'' (Offe, 1985, pages 314 ^ 315), has seen the construction of tension-ridden `causal' interpretations of problems (`this crisis is the result of specific actions, omissions and power relations'), rather than more neutral `functional' interpretations (`to address a crisis X must be done'). In the case of regional planning, the development of causal views contributed towards a polarisation of views rather than consensus as different groups continued to blame each other, or the state and quasi-state bureaucracies, for the particular `crisis' which they were attempting to define and insert into the heart of the policy process. The use of `sustainable development' as an acceptable, neutralseeming, mediating concept which might help build consensus also failed, as different actors sought to define and adopt the term in often contradictory ways. One result of the protracted policy negotiations which we have outlined in this paper is that central government intervention in the South East appears to have resulted in the RPG incorporating more growth than was originally considered politically acceptable in the region. By contrast, in the North East the RPG process seems likely to result in less growth being planned than regional partners had wanted. At one level this is a little puzzling, as it appears to go against traditional expectations of national policy supporting more economic development in the less prosperous regions whilst constraining growth from òverheating' regions. Part of the discrepancy may well result from the nature of draft RPGs as being an opening gambit on behalf of consortia of local politicians and their planners as they hand over responsibility for RPG production to central government. However, the clearly evident local ^ regional ^ national tensions about responsibilities also bring into question the more recent approach to regional economic development of allowing regions freedom to compete for inward investment. The result of these seeming contradictions is that the new regional planning system has shown up some fairly fundamental faultlines between local protectionism, regional aspirations, and national control. Or, to put it another way, national growth imperatives and planning policies appear to have taken precedence over regional growth aspirations. Although this might seem to indicate a continuing centralisation of powers through the new regional systems, we need to be wary of such simplistic readings. There were many regional stakeholders who welcomed central government interventions which challenged the aspirations of the dominant regional political groupings, not least those environmental groups which had questioned the need for greenfield incursions in the North East and those pro-development lobbyists in the South East who were happy to see the government relax the proposed constraints. There was always going to be a complex mosaic of winners and losers with the introduction of the new regional systems. Central government interventions, it could be argued, simply ensured that powerful regional policy groupings did not override either the national interest or the interests of marginalised groups in each region. This situation might not be ideal, but then we should not pretend that giving unfettered powers to new regional institutions would be either. The new regional institutions do not replace a sphere of national government policy intervention so much as insert a new system of balances and cross-checks across different policy scales, reminding us of the need to avoid falling into the analytical trap of privileging one scale of policy and politics over another. Acknowledgements. The work presented here has been founded by ESRC grant R000238368 `Changes in regional planning: a new opportunity for sustainable development?' Many thanks to two anonymous referees of this journal for providing helpful suggestions for improvement.

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