INTERVIEW: Ian Curryer, Nottingham City Council – “The only limit is our ambition”

In a TheBusinessDesk.com exclusive, Nottingham City Council CEO Ian Curryer talks to Sam Metcalf about the future for devolution, the pressure to grow the regional economy, the transformation of local government – and the need for business to “step up to the bar”

Last November, local authorities across Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire looked set to agree an historic devolution deal with Government which would have brought new freedoms to grow the regional economy.

Five months on, the deal remains unsigned and only 13 of the 19 councils which formed the original consortium are still committed to it. So what went wrong – and how can the region get devolution back on track?

Ian Curryer, the Chief Executive of Nottingham City Council, is one of the central figures in the negotiation process. Yet he insists that the two cities and counties have not lost out – and that ambitions to raise the profile of the city, the county and the region as a whole remain front and centre of Nottingham’s strategy.

In the first interview he has given since the North Midlands Devolution Deal stalled, he also says the region’s business community must play a key role in making devolution happen.

“Yes, it’s disappointing that we didn’t get the deal signed back in November but as it stands, the timescales mean that no, we haven’t lost out,” he told BusinessDesk. “Devolution is a hugely ambitious process but inherently complicated, and if you look across the country you will see that most of the places discussing devolution are still grappling with those complexities.”

While the devolution process is struggling in the North East, Leeds, East Anglia and the South West, deals for Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester are all proceeding. So shouldn’t we be in the fast lane like Manchester? Curryer says there are significant historical differences between the North West and the North Midlands.

“Manchester is in a different league to everyone else,” he said. “The authorities around Greater Manchester have had 25 years’ experience of working together and nowhere else in the country has that foundation to build on, including ourselves. But could we get to that point in the future? Yes, we can.”

While the Government’s own decision to give individuals councils an opt-out from devolution saw the local deal splinter, Curryer suggests a step-by-step process is still leading the North Midlands in a positive direction. So discussions now centre on setting up a Combined Authority which will allow those councils to commence joint working on key economic issues. But a directly-elected mayor – for which public support has been conspicuously absent – seems unlikely to be an immediate priority.

“This is about the art of the possible and 13 local authorities who want to work together,” Curryer explains. “So we will progress joint working and we will refine our devolution prospectus further because we’ve got a strong starting point. But our geography is obviously different to what it was, and that has implications for the details of the deal we can pursue. And the appetite for a mayor is far from clear at this point.”

What began as an East Midlands Devolution Deal changed to a North Midlands Devolution Deal because it didn’t match the official geography of the region. Whether it should or not raises the question of the ‘L’ word: Leicester. Surely common sense dictates that devolution should be based on the three cities?

“It’s just not that simple,” Curryer said. “The conversations about that have already taken place and as it stands Leicester and Leicestershire have decided to pursue their own plan for a Combined Authority, again with no mayor. So the immediate challenge to working together is that we’re now in different positions in that process.

“But who knows where this process might lead in the long-term? The conversations continue, the relationship between political leaders is good and growing and we want that to carry on.”

One of the reasons why Curryer is keen for the dialogue to continue is a bigger picture which looms over the whole of the Midlands: a pressing need to significantly raise the region’s profile not just nationally but internationally.

“Everyone in business, everyone in politics – everyone who thinks they have a stake in the regional economy – needs to understand that bigger picture,” says Curryer emphatically. “We are in an era when our local economy faces national and international competition, but when local government’s resources are being constrained as never before. So we have to find new ways of working together to respond to opportunities and threats.

“This is what we have to consider when we talk about devolution and raising our profile. There will always be grassroots concerns about major changes – and it is dangerous to run ahead of those concerns. But the city, the county, the region is not an island, and it is even more dangerous for us not to address those challenges. Things cannot continue as they have done.

“This is why, as a City, we have our own international trade strategy developing relationships with China and India. This is why we are bringing together all the various inward investment and city marketing activities under one umbrella, Marketing Nottingham. That is what a Core City has to do.”

It is also the reason why Curryer wants to see a significantly higher profile for this side of the Midlands in the Midlands Engine initiative: a counterweight to the Northern Powerhouse intended to ensure that Government recognises the global economic significance of UK plc’s manufacturing heartland – both politically and financially.

This gets to the heart of why Curryer is so keen to stress that business must play a prominent role not just in devolution, but in regional identity and policies for economic growth.

“This whole process matters to business for three reasons,” Curryer said: “Government wants to push more economic powers out to regions with devolution deals, so if you secure a Combined Authority and Devolution you will get things others haven’t got.

“Secondly, the needs of businesses here are not the same as those in London and the South East. Nor are we as powerful or as well-known. But if we come together in a construct we can make a bigger noise for inward investment, we can draw-up economic policies – like the way we do infrastructure, for example – in a way which suits our needs.

“The third reason is that a larger construct enables us to be a more powerful partner in that Midlands Engine. We have all these marquee Blue Chip businesses here, we have genuine global strengths in advanced manufacturing, life sciences, financial technology and big data and a thriving SME sector. If the Midlands Engine gets traction internationally it is going to drive inward investment choices for businesses coming to the UK. So we need to be an equal partner with Birmingham.”

Curryer cites significant support for a higher profile among East Midlands Chamber of Commerce, the CBI and the FSB. But there is another reason why he wants to see business pitch in as partners with devolution, profile raising and the Midlands Engine. By 2020, the central Government money which routinely supplements revenue raised locally will have dried up.

Sharing services rather than duplicating them will help councils make money go further, but Curryer says that if this Core City is to continue punching its weight in future then the best way to supplement its resources will be to grow business rate revenue by growing the economy.

“By the end of this Parliament, we will be a completely different organisation to what you might have imagined,” he says starkly. “There is a real challenge around providing the service levels we have in the past.

“There will be some growth areas around economies of scale which we need to capture – for example, rather than having numerous small planning departments why don’t we try to do it on a bigger scale where there might be local knowledge joined to a consistent central process? Outsourcing everything won’t work because you would lose too much expertise, but there will be more shared services.

“How successful we are at making this transition depends on business rate growth. If we achieve that well, the council might be smaller, more strategically-focused, but still providing a substantial range of services. If we don’t, we will definitely be smaller, and shrinking back from basic services in a way which is not good for a Core City.”

So a devolution process that is moving forwards only slowly, and substantial resource challenges at a time when the City and the region it is part of needs to shout louder. Yet Curryer says the ingredients for growth are staring us in the face.

He concludes: “There is no need for Nottingham to lose its big city feel, every reason for the region to raise its profile. We have ambitious plans, we have regeneration strategies and we are not doing that to look good but because we think we can grow our way forwards.

“Only last month, we were identified at MIPIM as one of the top 10 European cities for foreign direct investment. There is movement away from London because of the cost of doing business and the hassles of living there.

“We can capture some of that, whether it is business which wants to move or even Government itself, because we have lower costs and an incredibly attractive lifestyle. The only limit is our ambitions.”