Time for a Glasgow City Region Devolution Deal: December Director’s Blog
Looking back on the past 12 months – 2024 has been a similar story to the year before.
Around this time last year, we had committed to focusing on three key areas: Delivery, Skills and Devolution.
Throughout 2024 we continued to deliver and again have seen even more successes – on our City Deal, on the commitments from the Regional Economic Strategy and on the various programmes on which we are now leading. You can read about some of this below.
On Skills – the Region has led and progressed various pieces of work to better understand the current and future local skills landscape to ensure that our residents and young people have the training and skills needed for the jobs of the future and in the sectors where we are pushing for growth. This includes work to better understand where there are local skills gaps and taking action to address this where it is within our powers. For now, we have done all that is currently possible. And we will continue to push for greater powers from the Scottish Government in this area, so that we can do more.
On the third area – Devolution – unfortunately we are still no further forward in securing a Devolution Deal for the Region from Government.
Meanwhile we continue to see comparable English City Regions – Greater Manchester and the West Midlands – successfully securing and moving forward with their Trailblazer Deals which provide further extensive long-term pots of funding and greater powers to equip them to make key decisions locally on the economy. In fact, the recent Autumn Budget confirmed the first settlements for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands from 2025-2026.
The UK Government also recently announced four further Devolution Deals in England, giving local leaders the power and dedicated funding to make decisions on areas such as transport, adult education and housing.
Over 60% of England is now covered by a Devolution Deal
Trailblazer status is a clear signal from government of trust in local leadership and ability to follow through on ambition.
I do not think anyone could disagree that Glasgow City Region has strongly demonstrated our ability to work together and to deliver – or that we are worthy of that same trust.
We have everything in place – a strong partnership, a great team with the Region’s PMO and a plan with our Regional Economic Strategy. We have an in-depth knowledge of our economy and understand our collective and local challenges, thanks to our in-house Intelligence Hub, which continues to support and evidence our key economic decisions and policies.
As the biggest Region in Scotland, and a key component in the success of the Scottish and UK economies, we simply should not and cannot be left behind.
In 2025, it is vital that the UK and Scottish Governments escalate and agree a comparable Devolution Deal and further powers for Glasgow City Region.
Looking at what we achieved in 2024…
City Deal
We celebrated 10 years of our City Deal which has already delivered major infrastructure improvements, improved connectivity and transformed public realm, and which has boosted our local innovation economy and been a catalyst for thousands of new homes and commercial development.
In fact, in 2024 we announced over £880 million worth of follow-on investment generated from our City Deal since 2014.
The Deal has created and sustained thousands of jobs and supported local businesses, with over £149 million worth of contracts won by local companies so far. This year we also celebrated a number of key project milestones including the opening of the Govan-Partick bridge, progress on Glasgow’s Avenues programme and Ocean Terminal was given the royal seal of approval by Princess Anne.
We submitted our Gateway Two report, the conclusion of 800 hours of work by the GCR PMO and the Intelligence Hub – and look forward to a positive response from Government and the release of the £300 million second tranche of funding.
We concluded the re-programming exercise which involved an extensive review and modification of the City Deal programme in light of recent economic challenges and circumstances. Our proposals have now been approved by Government which is a fantastic endorsement and proof of our ability to be flexible and to adapt and rescope where required.
In February, Cabinet will consider a more detailed scope for a new £65 million City Deal project, introduced as part of the re-programming exercise to support new or enhanced commercial space across the Region.
Investment Zone
Working with Government, we finessed the scope of our Investment Zone opportunity, with the recent Budget confirming the £160 million funding package over ten years. Our call for eligible project bids earlier in the year was vastly oversubscribed. We expect to announce the industry sector of focus early next year, with the projects to be included and supporting Skills programme later in 2025.
Regional Economic Strategy
We made great progress with our Regional Economic Strategy commitments.
This includes funding confirmation and a new collaboration agreement with the eight councils on the expansion of the local Electric Vehicle Charging charging network which should see over 3,000 additional charge points installed across the Region over the coming years.
We also launched a plan to tackle low pay kicking off of an ambitious campaign for Glasgow City Region to become a Living Wage Place – the first city region in Scotland to do so.
We undertook various pieces of work to better understand how we can better support our Foundational Economy as this is key to raising productivity, one of our key economic challenges. And as part of this we will explore funding for an ambitious new project next year.
We continued to work with our Anchor Network, started to shape a Regional Good Employment Charter based on feedback from employers and launched a new website to allow community groups to make specific asks of live contractors. We also developed and launched a new toolkit to support project teams to identify and address health and equity impacts of their capital programme proposals as early as possible in the business case development process.
Work by external consultants commissioned this year to look at the Region’s commercial land and property was considered by the Region’s Chief Executives and has identified significant challenges for the Region. Along with further studies underway on Vacant and Derelict Land, we will pick this up and scope what needs to be done in the new year.
A draft Regional Home Retrofit strategy and action plan has also been developed in collaboration with the eight councils, Scottish Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland. This confirms our collective ambition to deliver retrofit activity and the key challenges we face.
The constraints and uncertainties in delivering retrofit at scale in relation to national policies, legislation and funding are explored and a call to action made for agencies, including the Scottish Government, to create the landscape necessary to support large scale retrofit and unblock challenges faced.
Regional Investment Plan
We are now into our third year of a Regional approach to UK Government Shared Prosperity Fund investment and have now had confirmation of the additional one year funding of £24.9 million. The shared approach has been useful and has enabled us to better maximise the available budget. We also piloted three Regional projects that will be evaluated at the end of March 2025 and this approach reviewed for future consideration.
5G – Smart and Connected Social Places
Great progress continues with our DSIT funded 5G programme which is due to conclude in March next year.
Highlights include the pilot roll-out of 125 Alexa devices to older people across the Glasgow HSCP to keep them safe, well and socially connected in their homes or local communities. And 50 social housing units in North Lanarkshire are part of a pilot to test how sensor technology can help us to achieve net zero.
Last month we kicked off Scotland’s largest study of mobile phone connectivity in Inverclyde and this will roll-out across the Region next year, giving residents a better understanding of their mobile phone coverage.
Finally, with the programme underspend, we demonstrated agility in developing and launching a new Innovation Fund, with 11 pilot projects now underway.
Innovation and Innovation Accelerator 2024
The Intelligence Hub is working with Scottish Enterprise and Innovate UK to provide a progress update on the GCR Innovation Action Plan. Significant work has taken place around developing the Region’s innovation identity and mapping its ecosystem. Draft frameworks are being developed for inclusive innovation and meeting the skills needs of the Region’s innovation clusters. This will be tabled at the new GEL Innovation Group in early 2025. Consideration is also being given to the resources required to deliver the Action Plan in the medium to long- term.
Our Innovation Accelerator projects continue to progress well, and discussions are underway with the UK Government around a one-year Programme extension.
Clyde Metro
Glasgow City Council continues to work with SPT promote and accelerate business case development of Clyde Metro proposals towards key gateway decisions. A progress report on the case for investment was presented to November Cabinet.
Glasgow City Region Place / Clyde Mission
The GCR team was boosted this year with Ross Nimmo joining as Head of Place, strengthening the Region’s capabilities around strategic land use planning and delivery. Good progress has already been made with the integration of Clydeplan and Green Network activities, a new Regional Spatial Planning Sub-committee to oversee the Regional Spatial Strategy and further funding secured for the award- winning Clyde Climate Forest initiative.
The team has been engaging with Clyde Mission stakeholders and will be creating a Strategic Masterplan to reinvigorate the future direction of that programme. This will be complimented by the Clyde Mission Heat Decarbonisation Fund which will be launched next year, helping generate cheaper and cleaner renewable heat along the river corridor.
