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The London Development Agency welcomes a proposed shake-up in the management of regeneration schemes, but other organisations are less enthusiastic, writes Lauren Revans.

This Easter, the Greater London Assembly appears to favour putting all its eggs in one basket.

A report published last week by the assembly's economic development committee recommends giving the London Development Agency (LDA) "full responsibility for the co-ordination and funding of economic and social regeneration in London".

Established initially to "further economic development and regeneration", "promote business efficiency" and "promote employment", the LDA and the eight other regional development agencies (RDAs) have already had their responsibilities extended from next week to include the social regeneration commitments of the single regeneration budget (SRB), and the additional economic regeneration commitments of English Partnerships.

Fulfilling the recommendations of Rebuilding London's Future would involve extending the role of the LDA further to cover other - principally social - regeneration initiatives. These include projects developed under the Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy and the New Deal for Communities, both led by the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions and the Government Office for London.

Unsurprisingly, the LDA welcomes the idea of becoming a "one-stop-shop", monopolising the capital's regeneration agenda.

"Our role as the mayor's economic development agency is to bring together key players, provide strategic leadership, identify regional priorities and ensure we are all combining forces to greatest effect," says LDA chief executive Michael Ward.

"We particularly support the assembly's recommendation that responsibility for London's social regeneration should be brought within our remit. We work closely with the Government Office for London but believe greater impact could be achieved if the two strands were brought under one roof."

Others, however, are less enthusiastic. A survey conducted in February by Urban Forum, a national organisation dedicated to supporting community and voluntary sector group involvement in regeneration and renewal, found that only two of the nine RDAs said they would honour existing SRB projects - which address issues including social exclusion, community safety, education, skills and housing - as the budget is wound down and funding becomes part of the new "single pot" of money for general RDA regeneration initiatives.

In addition, Gabrielle Cox, head of the North West Development Agency's social inclusion policy, told Urban Forum's national conference in December that RDAs were primarily economic agencies. So progress on reducing deprivation was likely to be measured in terms of unemployment levels and income support statistics.

"The role of the RDAs within the wider social inclusion agenda is to try to improve economic inclusion," Cox said. "I say that unashamedly because if you have a decent job, you are far less likely to be excluded."

With this in mind, and given the RDAs' historical and statutory bias towards economic issues, Urban Forum fears that handing them control of all regeneration decisions would be tantamount to accepting that social regeneration projects should take second place to economic regeneration projects for resources and support.

Urban Forum policy officer Caroline Bond has major concerns about any move to extend the LDA's regeneration powers. She says: "Although there could be advantages in having a single source of funding or pooling budgets - namely that it would allow one body to have an overview of regeneration funding, therefore allowing a good spread - the key issue is whether RDAs are the right bodies to do this given their emphasis on economic as opposed to social regeneration."

She suggests that, if a single body is the way forward, one with a democratic base would be more appropriate so that it could be accountable to the local community. In this case, she says, it would be better for the GLA to take on the role - or the Government Office for London, which is ultimately responsible to elected ministers - rather than the LDA.

The assembly's economic development committee tries to address the accountability issue by calling for any development of the LDA's responsibilities "to be matched by greater public access to LDA meetings and papers and an overall management style that acknowledges and welcomes a rigorous and constructive level of public scrutiny".

But Bond is even more concerned about the accountability implications for the rest of England if changes in London were to set a precedent. "There are no accountable elected bodies outside London yet, so potentially the precedent point is even more alarming outside London where there is no elected assembly to perform a scrutiny role on the RDAs." Bond also questions the practicalities of the LDA taking on what are now neighbourhood-based initiatives. "The New Deal for Communities is targeted in five or six areas in London and the neighbourhood renewal fund is focused on deprived wards within boroughs. How that goes into one big pot I'm not sure."

Transferring all regeneration responsibilities to the LDA would involve restructuring regeneration programmes, and have wide-reaching implications for the new Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) as well as questioning the future of the Government Office for London.

Despite the government promoting LSPs as "the key vehicle for implementing and leading neighbourhood renewal", the assembly report questions the emphasis on LSPs as a means to improve co-ordination and recommends a review of structures.

"Moves to improve local regeneration co-ordination through the development of LSPs risk creating further confusion and duplication in an already crowded arena," the committee says. This view places the committee on a potential collision course with the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions, which launched LSPs as part of the Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy last January.

Not all the committee's recommendations are controversial, though. Everyone agrees on the need for a "regeneration resource library", which could include detailed information about current regeneration activity, funding allocations, research reports, local and regional evaluation reports, examples of good practice, policy developments and details of networks and events. It could also promote London's regeneration achievements.

The LDA has welcomed the report's recommendations and can begin work on some of them with the Government Office for London and others straight away. But what happens to the more radical among the recommendations - including the proposal to extend the LDA's functions - now lies largely in the hands of London mayor Ken Livingstone and whether he decides to lobby government for changes to the Greater London Authority Act 1999 in order to implement them.

One thing, however, is certain: the GLA is as unhappy with the status quo for regeneration as the voluntary and community sectors are about the proposed change.

¹ Rebuilding London's Future from www.london.gov.uk/assembly/reports

Recommendations

- Creation of a "regeneration resource library".

- Extension of the evidence base of the proposed GLA/LDA "economic observatory" to cover integrated economic and social regeneration.

- Creation of an independent central evaluation unit.

- Collection on a regional basis of information used to assess regeneration outputs and longer-term outcomes.

- Transfer of full responsibility to the LDA for the co-ordination and funding of both economic and social regeneration in London.

- Joint Government Office for London and LDA review of the structures for local and sub-regional planning and management of regeneration.

- Research into the amount of public money spent on regeneration in London and the implications for spending on other public services.

- Annual publication of details about where regeneration funding goes in London.

- Joint Government Office for London and LDA review of their application and monitoring requirements.

- Full involvement of local communities and businesses in determination of location of regeneration initiatives.

- Inclusion in LDA's corporate plan of support for pilot regeneration projects in suburban areas - aimed at preventing the need to undertake more costly regeneration at a later stage.