West Midlands has too many identities for a one-size-fits-all label
Jul 30 2010 By Jonathan Walker
After the Government announced it was scrapping the English regions, political editor Jonathan Walker argues that the West Midlands never captured our hearts – but we may still need it.
What connects Sparkbrook’s balti belt and Dudley’s factories with Herefordshire’s dairy farms and Staffordshire’s village fetes?
The answer is that they are all part of the West Midlands, a diverse region with a GDP of £94 billion and a population of 5.2 million.
But that’s set to change. Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has announced he is scrapping the Government office for the West Midlands - and will no longer be using “the arbitrary government regions” as a tier of administration.
The most notable regional agency, Advantage West Midlands, will also to be scrapped.
So what’s left? For all intents and purposes, has the West Midlands region been abolished too? And if so, will anyone miss it?
Of course, the term “West Midlands” will still exist, as government officials are keen to point out. But it’s unclear what the phrase refers to.
Since 1994, when the current administrative regions of England were created by a Conservative government, the people of Birmingham, Coventry, Solihull, the Black Country, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Staffordshire have all been part of the “West Midlands region”.
The concept is arguably an artificial one, invented by officials in London less than 20 years ago. Perhaps it didn’t matter, until John Prescott was placed in charge of regional policy in 1997.
He had a dream to create elected regional assemblies across England, similar to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments set up by the Labour government.
Unelected assemblies were set up, ready to be converted into democratic bodies in the future. They were given a civil service to boss around in the form of regional development agencies, such as Advantage West Midlands.
The plan came unstuck when a referendum was held in the North-east on whether to hold elections for the local assembly. Voters overwhelmingly rejected the idea, and the policy was scrapped.
This left a series of problems Labour could never satisfactorily answer. The assemblies still existed, but they were now destined to be unelected quangos forever.
Advantage West Midlands became narrowly focused on supporting the regional economy, and was seen in Whitehall as a regional office of the Department of Trade and Industry. But it was viewed with suspicion in some quarters, including by many Conservative MPs, who still saw it as an embryonic regional government.
Perhaps its no surprise that Mr Pickles couldn’t wait to abolish the agency.
Regional bodies suffered a particular handicap in the West Midlands thanks to confusion surrounding the region’s name.
The West Midlands region was created in 1994 but a West Midlands county had been set up in 1974, bringing together Birmingham, the Black Country, Solihull and Coventry. The county was part of the region, in the same way that Teesside is part of the North-east.
But the fact they had the same name caused bewilderment. Government ministers who spoke about “the West Midlands” seemed unsure which area they were actually talking about.
No longer will this be a problem. Mr Pickles made the Government’s intentions plain in his statement to the Commons, saying: “We do not believe the arbitrary government regions to be a tier of administration that is efficient, effective or popular.”
Hence, the Government is creating Local Enterprise Partnerships to replace the regional agencies.
Local democracy is also to be extended with the creation of directly-elected police commissioners. But these will oversee smaller forces than the huge regional constabularies Labour once proposed.
The West Midlands region has never held a special place in many hearts, according to Malcolm Dick, director of the Centre for West Midlands History at the University of Birmingham.
He said: “People sometimes ask, what does someone in rural Herefordshire have in common with someone in Edgbaston?
“And then places like The Potteries have their own identities.”
Even in the central conurbation, there is resistance to the idea of regional integration because of fears that Birmingham will dominate.
“As somebody who lives in the Black Country myself, there is a lot of the resistance to the idea of Birmingham’s West Midlands hegemony,” he said.
But the West Midlands has an economic significance, whether people like it or not.
“I suspect people in rural Herefordshire might object to this but there is a sort of pull towards Birmingham. Birmingham as the main economic hub, although not the only one.
“Economically, the different parts of the West Midlands are very closely connected and they do need each other.”
Karen Lumley, Tory MP for Redditch in Worcestershire, sees the Government’s reforms as a chance to escape Birmingham’s shadow.
“We have been dictated to by the bigger conurbations like Birmingham and Coventry.
“Places like Redditch have lost out.”
One common complaint is that Birmingham receives substantially more funding for schools and other services than neighbouring authorities.
Ms Lumley accepts that there will be many issues which stretch across local authority borders, but argues that councils can still work together to deal with them.
This is certainly the Government’s view. But fans of the West Midlands region need not despair.
There is one institution that will continue to use the region as “a tier of administration” whether Mr Pickles likes it or not, and that’s the European Union.
EU grants are awarded on a regional basis - the West Midlands received funding of 800 euros for 2007-13 - and it seems this arrangement will continue.
