Is the grass always greener? Making sense of convergence and divergence in regeneration policies in England and Scotland

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the trajectories of regeneration policy discourse and practice in a devolved UK context. Over recent years the asymmetrical nature of devolved governance has intensified, exemplified by a policy of political containment in Scotland and a reconfiguration of sub-national institutional architecture in England. Against a backdrop of the transfusion of Holyrood's devolution agenda and Westminster's localism programme, an empirical analysis of contemporary English and Scottish regeneration policy is provided. We investigate the extent to which perceived divergences in government policy resonate with those at the sharp end of regeneration practice, informed by concepts derived from the policy convergence/divergence literature. The key finding is the coexistence of ideological divergence, replete in political discourse and policy documentation, but growing convergence in actual existing practice, evidenced in the nature, extent and scale of initiatives. The enveloping fiscal context and austere politics, producing what is anticipated to be a protracted period of financial retrenchment, appears to be a defining factor in contemporary urban regeneration policy convergence. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party, a centre left government, in political rhetoric at least, appeared to be attempting to maintain a socially inclusive holistic focus on alleviating socioeconomic disparities through regeneration interventions. Area-based regeneration projects, for example, are often considered to be holistic when they seek to alleviate interlinked social, economic, and environmental issues in an integrated manner, although face criticism when divorced from strategic contexts and other constellations of policies (Pugalis 2013, Matthews Page 2 of 33 2012). Matthews (2013) notes how as part of the national performance management regime in Scotland (i.e. Single Outcome Agreement), the government has developed a suite of sixteen national outcome targets, one of which is a solidarity or social equity target. The Solidarity Target, which has no equivalent in England, is one of Scotland's 'golden rules,' and seeks to increase the total income of all households in Scotland and reduce income inequality by increasing the proportion of that income received by the lowest three deciles¹.Thus, despite changes in governmental administrations, Scotland appears to have experienced more gradual and incremental adjustment of national regeneration policy, albeit with some noteworthy shifts in local practices, which are discussed below.In contrast, England has faced more abrupt changes, which have often been politically-induced. Initially, New Labour adopted a broadly similar policy agenda that confronted the 'wicked' problems of social exclusion (via the Social Exclusion Unit) and deprivation (using Index of Multiple Deprivation to target area based interventions). Thirdly, more effective tools for achieving regeneration (in terms of funding and initiatives). This paper, therefore, seeks to examine this initial hypothe...

The rescaling of sub-national planning: can localism resolve England’s spatial planning conundrum?

“…The subliminal development orientated economic imperatives within the NPPF are evidence that despite the populist rhetoric of localism, the English planning system ultimately still functions as a regulatory system, with a strong central drive to deregulate planning to facilitate economic growth. Recent critiques of the Government's brand of localism suggest it proffers responsibility without commensurate resources (McGuinness, Greenhalgh and Pugalis, 2014) whilst facilitating shrinkage of the state enabling the Government 'to deny responsibility for failure and to claim any success' (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2011, 314). Allmendinger and Haughton (2011) observe that as localism has gained traction in England it has reinforced a crude dualism which states, 'local' good, 'national government' bad.…”

Introduction to devolution and the geographies of policy

“…) and spatial planning (Clifford and Morphet ) to urban regeneration (McGuinness et al . ), the voluntary sector (Woolvin et al . ), and economic development and health policy (MacKinnon ).…”

“…Given the inherent desire of geographers to compare places, all papers in this issue involve some element of comparison between two or more territories of the UK with respect to a particular policy area, ranging from community planning (Pemberton et al 2015) and spatial planning (Clifford and Morphet 2015) to urban regeneration (McGuinness et al 2015), the voluntary sector (Woolvin et al 2015), and economic development and health policy (MacKinnon 2015). The UK model of devolution is permissive of divergence in policy design and implementation compared with many other models internationally, with weak inter-governmental institutions and no central written constitution.…”