Science Cities and Devolution Report from Exeter College Oxford's Cohen Quad
Future Cities Forum is releasing part one of the report from its 'Science Cities' held last week at Cohen Quad, Exeter College, Oxford.
Contributors included David Butler, Director of Planning and Regeneration, Oxford City Council, Kim Sawyer, Programme Director for Devolution at Oxfordshire County Council, Sophie Lloyd, Head of Economic Development, Milton Keynes City Council, James Golding Graham, Head of Analysis and Innovation, England's Economic Heartland, Michael Clifford, Strategic Advisor to Public and Private Sector, and Director at EY, Guy Wakefield, Partner - Planning, Ridge and Partners.
Professor Kerry Walker began the event with a presentation about Exeter College's EXOq development which is currently in the planning on a college-owned site close to Oxford Parkway. Kerry is Associate Professor of Neuroscience | Dept of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, Medical Sciences Fellow | Exeter College and Deputy Director of Biomedical Sciences at Oxford University's world-renowned Medical Sciences Division which is one of four academic divisions at the University of Oxford and is the largest, encompassing a wide range of biomedical and clinical disciplines. It is an internationally recognized centre of excellence, tackling major challenges in human health, including cancer, mental health, infectious diseases, genetic disorders, and patient care.. The division operates both in Oxford and through international collaborations, integrating research from molecular biology to population-level studies.
Professor Walker explained:
'So EXOq is our plan at Exeter College for a large-scale research and innovation district, and it's going to be centred around one of the U.K.'s largest high-performance computing hubs. So the idea is that this will be a world leader in quantum computing. There's maybe three of such centres in the United States of America at the moment, and we'll be the European hub if this (goes forward).
'The U.S. is already relying on our expertise to run these centres, so we thought, why not make Oxford one of these, the European Centre for Quantum? So this will be built on what I think you could argue is the best remaining large piece of land in between our two lovely floodplains that hug our city. It is a 90-acre plot called Frieze Farm, and you can see from this satellite image in red, it's essentially a big field with one tree in the middle? And it's been like that for quite a while. So what would we like to make of this big field with a tree?
'Well, first, to say it's kind of ideally situated for access. It's right across the road from Parkway Station. There are lots of buses coming down the A44, you've got the towpath on the other side, your left-hand side, as well as this National Cycle Network. And it's right in the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor, which should keep the federal government happy, we hope. And we're indeed talking to them about this as we go along.
'So this is the floor plan. What you have here are offices and dry lab space here, so about 200,000 square meters. And you've got a conference centre here with some more higher buildings with some more lab space. You've got your high-performance computing all in this sort of purply-pink triangle in between the railway and the road, so this noise is not going to be a problem. They won't make more noise than those infrastructures. And we also have included 140,000 square meters of new parkland.
'You remember the field with the tree? There's the tree. We're going to keep the tree. And we're going to add a bunch more trees and parkland that anyone can use. So this is open to local residents to use and enjoy, as well as a couple of ponds that serve as reservoirs and will help in the occurrence of any floods that we've experienced in recent years.
'You see the buildings and this big parkland area here and the compute centre is kind of tucked in this corner. We've made it with green principles, so as I say, this is going to open up new walking paths. So you can get across that area of land, which you can't at the moment. Flood storage capacity and as well, the compute centre itself generates a lot of heat, and we're not looking at this as a bad thing. This is heating that we can use to give to the city. So we're already talking with partners to use this heat, to actually heat a lot of the new builds in Oxford.
'Just to show you that this is a rendering of the conference facility, which again is open for anyone to rent and use. A bit bigger than anything currently available in the city centre. £1.4bn gross value added is estimated and. 7,000 jobs and we're including a further education college as an alternative to university for the young people of Kidlington and Oxford, focusing on computer hardware and data management and things like that.'
To begin the first panel discussion on 'Devolution and science cities' David Butler was asked how Oxford City Council was continuing its development plans despite the hiatus in moving forward with the unitary authority designation. The UK government has delayed the start of the new authorities for Oxfordshire due to legal issues.
Both Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council are also actively involved in the process of of pursuing a Mayoral Strategic Authority for the Thames Valley region. Mayoral Strategic Authorities (MSAs) are statutory strategic‑level local government bodies in England, created under the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, with mayors who hold powers over transport, infrastructure, skills, economic development, and new “Mayoral Powers of Competence.”
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David said:
'I think we learned a lot through that process in terms of how the different organisations work and also their similarities. And that will put us in good stead so we're back to not knowing what the decision will be. So we don't assume that it will just be as it was, just from the delay. But I do genuinely think that the work we've done was really helpful for us having delivered what comes next. There were some really obvious areas of synergy and ability to make things quicker and easier for people. So they were really, really positive.
'What we're focusing now on is obviously in terms of mayoral and strategic authorities. And actually we've reached a point, so we've also, for example, with the highways and transport group, where we were, well, an awful lot of this work that's done at the county level will need to go up into a higher tier. So we were almost in this, well, do we need to create a holding position for a mayoral authority? So it coming first, whilst it's frustrating for some of the work we've done, it actually makes a lot of sense for other work. It will take, you know, elements of the work at the level which is probably where it's best suited and allow us to deliver on the ground whilst they haven't said that's what it's supposed to do.
David was asked about the challenges to communication and collaboration with other neighbouring councils over housing targets and the green belt and whether the unitary authority system would help with this. He commented:
'It certainly will, but it'll be in a different context as well. So you'll have a mayoral authority moving direction on growth, there'll be spatial development strategies that will cover a town, so there'll be a region that will be all about that kind of prospectus of growth in the area. And then unitaries will be about delivering those things. So it changes the narrative entirely and it hopefully becomes less boundary concerned and less parochial. Because, again, going back to that slide you saw and we'll be servicing people who might have heat networks coming into Oxford, but, you know, if it's determined today it's not the city council that's involved in determining if that's a fairly arbitrary boundary really, isn't it? So we need to think a little bit more on those wider boundaries. There's also a consultation currently live about mayoral planning powers and that ability for a mayor to call in a planning application to take it out of a unitary position and possibly develop a kind of application as well. So I think the structures are forming that allow us to maybe navigate those issues we've had locally, which are by no means unique to Oxfordshire, about how (to deal with) slightly more rural land deals with an expansion of the city.
David was asked about the lack of planners currently available to deal with development and the image that the UK or Oxford has abroad to attract investment. He stated:
'I suppose that is where mayors, the growth corridor, that kind of UK PLC take on stuff is really, really important. That's what's going to get, you know, the direct investment. That's what's going to entice people over. But at a local level, well, there's a national issue, there's not enough planners in the system, there's not enough planning schools, there's not enough people going through planning. That is the same for a lot of technical skills. I have the same issue with environmental health officers. We grow our own. We have apprentices. We've got four apprentices now who work in Brookes University. I went to Oxford Brookes. You know, it's a really important ecosystem for us. And we retain planners quite well within the city. But there's dearth of them. Private practices will take some. Universities will take some. There's just not enough to go around, and that is a national skills shortage. Some bursaries are out there, some other bits and bobs. But it's a difficult profession, and it's one that's increasingly critical.'
Kim Sawyer joined the discussion to talk about her previous role as Interim CEO of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, her achievements with installing infrastructure while she was there and her ambitions now for Oxfordshire:
'So, there's a huge amount of similarity between Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire in terms of the challenges that we were facing, the affordability, the difficulty of transport, getting around. and the issue of businesses that want to grow, how can they scale up and stay here? Because we don't provide the necessary environment for them to do that, and that's something that we need to work on. Hence why we are now getting a Development Corporation in Cambridgeshire and one to follow in Oxfordshire, because governments recognise we need to power up quickly in order to provide the necessary environment for business to grow.
'But yes, it was in Cambridgeshire, I'd say there was a fairly difficult journey. We were one of six mayoral authorities that was created in 2016, and there was a vast amount of difference between the authorities. So, we had Cambridge on the first day that I walked into the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, we were six people, including the mayor and his political assistant. So there were four officers, and those providing political leadership. Contrast that to Manchester, which had been going for ten years informally before we even got to that stage, and they brought the Transport Authority with them, which had thousands of employees. So, very much more geared up, and what that meant for us in Cambridgeshire is that trying to get that thought piece and that thought leadership together was very, very challenging.
'We were the only combined authority that had districts around the table. Everybody else had been unitarized. And what that meant was that it was very difficult getting people to think very large scale when they had a very parochial mentality....it's just the way that moving from that very internal focused approach to one where you were suddenly thinking internationally was really difficult for people to understand. And that collaborative nature of trying to get people to work together and share a vision was very difficult.
'We had a mayor who was extremely ambitious. I was talking earlier about how he wanted to introduce a whole new transport network for Cambridgeshire, which ran on autonomous vehicles. And when we spoke to people about this, they just looked at us like we were completely crazy. Apart from people in Cambridge University, who were very supportive of that. So there was a lot of challenges in there, which I think are the governance challenges we've learned a lot from. We can take those into our Oxfordshire mayoral authority, but I think the political challenges will possibly still remain the same.
'You know, getting politicians to agree and look, putting place before politics is where you need to get them to. Having a vision for what we want to be, that's also something we need to get them to agree on. And then, of course, corralling all of the local stakeholders around that single vision is another thing that we need to work on. But I think we've got a head start in Oxfordshire because we're taking the learning from Cambridgeshire and the way that the difficulties they went through. We've also got several people working in the team, not least of which is Martin Reeves, who's leading the whole devolution agenda, who came from the West Midlands Combined Authority and was chief exec there as well. So we are bringing all that learning into one place to try and get us a good head start on this.'
Kim was asked how Oxfordshire was going to attract international investors?
'I think I'm very optimistic. The whole of the UK is a very attractive proposition, but we're not really dealing with people unless they've got a strategic authority set up. So unless you've got a mayor, we don't want to engage. But then one of the investors approached me afterward and said, well, we'd very much like to speak to Oxfordshire though. So here's my card, please get in contact. So it's a very good proposition. You know, I've hosted several investors meetings here in and around Oxfordshire. What they want to see is that leadership in politics, that joined up approach. So that gives them the confidence to invest. But there's a lot of interest just because of Oxfordshire as a brand. You know, it carries enormously across the globe. So we've really got a head start on that. So I'm very optimistic, actually.'
Attracting investment for defence industries has been one of Milton Keynes City Council's success stories. Sophie Lloyd was asked was it due to the type of council leadership or the design of the city that enables impressive development:
'So the first thing I would say to just encourage colleagues in Oxford and Oxfordshire, I think that getting things done has been absolutely critical within Milton Keynes. So we're a unitary authority, kind of a mid-size, not huge, we're about 300,000 people at the moment. But if there's a few things you know about Milton Keynes, one of them will definitely be we've been the fastest growing city in the UK consistently for almost the entirety of the past 40 years now. We've got that reputation of growth, of delivery, of doing things. And that is, I think being a unitary council is a huge help when it comes to that because people can see the intent, they can see that you're serious and they know, as an investor, they're dealing with the right people and you've not got to sort of go and talk to me about this but then you've got to talk to the county about that. It makes a massive difference.
'The DNA of Milton Keynes is quite obviously different to almost every other city in the UK. We have a lot of space, that's something we are absolutely blessed with. But the city also runs differently. The grid system allows us to play with it, allows us to try all new things. Yeah, absolutely, we were having a discussion around autonomous vehicles. Why is it that Milton Keynes at the moment is the only place that they're being trialled in the UK on the public road, so not on private roads? It's because we've got the ability to do that, to play with things, to take a bit more risk than potentially other local government bodies might be minded to accept. It's also, for anyone who knows Milton Keynes, it's quite a unique sort of place, you do get a sense that anything is really possible there. It's a city that is still growing, and you know that if you move there, particularly as a business, your business has probably grown up alongside that city.
'I think there's an interesting question for me around kind of UK government support, and is the system set up properly to do what I would call city building? So to not just think about those kind of large urban extensions and sort of residential growth. What if we are trying to take something that at the moment is the UK's most successful new town, and turn it into a great UK city? What does that mean? What does it mean in terms of transport infrastructure? What does it mean in terms of culture, economic development, all of those things? So I think there's just an interesting reflection there, on like, I think we're so used to growth as business as usual when you're trying to do something quite transformative and quite bold and quite different in the UK system.
'The system almost doesn't quite know what to do with us at the moment. So we're back on the New Towns Programme, the National New Towns Programme, but we've got three new towns within that, just to give a sense of like the scale of growth of Milton Keynes at the moment. I think that's probably been done because that is the government programme that's focusing on growth within cities. But is it the right answer? Because it's very focused on those individual blocks of growth. So there's lots of fundamentals that make Milton Keynes a great place to grow.
'I think one thing that we do need to think about is our reputation because internationally, we are absolutely known as this place of innovation. We're absolutely known as this place of growth. We talked about planners earlier. There's a very good chance if you are a planner sat in this room, you've studied Milton Keynes as a case study, as part of your studies. People visit us from all over the world as a result of that. It's not quite the same with the UK audience. There's an interesting perception challenge there that we've got between international and national visitors'
James Golding Graham reflected on the challenges in providing better transport infrastructure, not only for Milton Keyes trying to connect to Universal Studios but also across the OxCam Growth Corridor:
'Gosh, that's a big question, I'd say. Universal Studios, is everyone aware of what's going on there, the scale of that development? I mean, it's about £8bn worth of money, coming to a brickworks in Bedfordshire. Owning the journeys in terms of how people are going to access that site is a big question. There's a lot of negotiation between Universal themselves, understanding where their redline boundary lies, where they are willing to take responsibility for improving access and where the UK government needs to invest in reinforcing our road and rail connectivity in and out of that site.
'There's quite a lot of money needs to be spent there but it's the compound impact of developments around the site is really significant. Sophie's mentioned they've got, is it 40,000 homes coming into the east of MK. Tempsford, another new town coming, minimum of 40,000 homes there and there's probably another 10 to 15,000 homes around there that are to be built. The M1 Junction 13 is at or over capacity now. That's a bit of challenge, isn't it? So, from a sub-national transport body perspective, which is what we were, we've looked at this quite a lot and we think buses are probably absolutely central to the answer there. If any of you are aware of how the bus operators' market is in this country, it's really hard. It's quite difficult to run buses here. It's expensive, drives are expensive, fuel's expensive, the vehicles are expensive and providing services ahead of demand is always a big challenge when we engage with our bus operators there.
'I think through some of the work the government's been doing around allowing local authorities to take on the operation of bus companies, that's a big opportunity but I don't know, do you guys fancy running bus companies? I'll drive you!. It's a bit risky. Local authorities have big challenges around their ability to deliver existing services. Do they want to take on the operational risk of running a bus company? Unless you're a very, very big combined authority or a very big MCA, then probably not. Now, that middle bit of the geography, Sophie's MK, is very well organised. Don't want to say anything bad about any of my other local authority clients but it's a challenging geography to operate in. That Marston Vale line, that BLMK geography is tricky because it's politically not aligned. It's not quite big enough, perhaps, for a single mayoral combined authority. So if Adam Zerny, who's the current leader of Central Bedfordshire, certainly doesn't think so. So there are some challenges around how we address some of these connectivity issues'
James was asked about timescales for connected infrastructure:
'Well, I mean, the OxCam growth corridor. So I think listening to colleagues from Oxford and MK, you know, there are islands here that are doing very well and are doing great work. It's joining all those things up. And the labour markets, particularly, are really interesting to understand because I don't think the corridor will work unless we enable the middle bit of the corridor to access the kind of incredible innovation that happens at either end. How do we do that? Well, I think devolution is one answer. I think providing some sort of delivery mechanism before devolution happens, if devolution is dragging its heels. So the spatial development strategies (SDS) are super interesting, right?
'They are an interesting mechanism for us to look at in terms of setting some kind of ideal standards, some ambition, but we do need to be able to deliver, to do things, perhaps. And while we don't have full devolution in the corridor, it's tricky to see how that governance is going to enable those things to happen. Will the market just fix it? Probably not. I think particularly around Universal Studios, though, there's a very, very big spotlight on that from government. DCMS, MHCLG, DfT all need to make that work. So EEH at the moment, my organisation, are doing a lot of kind of multi-authority transport planning, if you like, because no one else is.
'So we're looking at the flows in and out of those things and seeing when we need to see those services in place, giving the theme park the confidence that they can point to some of these connections, giving the people who live there, the workers, the construction companies that are operating in that locality, some confidence that this stuff will happen. So at the moment, we're going through this process of trying to understand what needs to happen when, critically, who's going to pay for it, and whether there are opportunities to move out of the kind of going to government with a hat out and saying, you know, are there other ways that we can get this done and paid for? The broader stuff such as EWR is going to have some impact on that. I think it should be transformational in terms of the message it sends to investors, the message it sends to the communities along that railway, but in and of itself, we need to go over and above just saying EWR will fix everything, so we need massive investment into our bus networks. We need to understand what those critical labour markets are and start thinking about how to address them.'
Michael Clifford then spoke about the challenges of public and private collaboration and investment:
'I think the reflections on the investment agenda kind of more broadly for the region and are really interesting. So clearly you've got a, I nearly said arc, but a corridor, a corridor. Between Oxford and Cambridge, I think the value of GVA is around 140 billion, so enormously productive area. Is it around 30%, I think, of knowledge-intensive businesses UK-wide are operating that corridor, and to the labour market point, employment's growing at 40% faster than the rest of the country. So it's clearly massively economically productive and really warrants that investment agenda.
'I think more broadly, looking globally, really there's four clear hotspots, AI, clean energy, advanced manufacturing and life sciences, and across, again, that corridor we see real concentrations of strengths in all four of those, but equally we're seeing that the UK is struggling to compete, and so that's, I think, really sort of justifies some of these larger-scale regional kind of operations, whether it's the Development Corporation, whether it's, yeah, the EWR, whether it's the mayoral authorities, et cetera, bringing that kind of, that proper sort of regional presence that's needed to allow the UK to compete.
'You've mentioned kind of UK-range, but when you go to some of the European conferences, be it Expo Real and MIPIM and some of the others, you sort of realize there the kind of scale of promotion and kind of attractiveness criteria that you're needing to land to really kind of get at Universal Studios and get some of these kind of, yeah, flagship investments. So, yeah, I think it's really pivotal that, yeah, that some of these kind of important kind of governance mechanisms, yeah, kind of really allow that kind of brand to be provided for the area.'
Michael was asked to comment on how the delays to the setting up of unitary authorities has reflected badly on the leadership of the UK government?
'I think it's, they're in a difficult spot now, and I sense that my instinct, and I can say this because I'm probably not on public sector chairs here, but, yeah, my instinct is that they were pushing sort of too fast and perhaps a bit of a, if I can make a political point, but perhaps a bit of a sort of save Starmer, you know, Steve Reeve was trying to move very fast in one of the agendas that they were really determined to push through, and so I think the review, the review approach is right, and to kind of take stock of the LGR agenda, clearly kind of Surrey's moving forward, 14 under review. I think I'm optimistic for Oxfordshire,
'I think in their approach of sort of saving face, and I think Jim McMahon will take a more sort of settled and strategic approach to the review rather than sort of pushing through some of those decisions. I think Oxfordshire is one of those areas that's got, yeah, kind of more certainty, it's got the functional economic area, it's got the, yeah, got the kind of population sizing, right, and therefore I sense that across the 14, I think they'll look to save face moving forward with three or four of those that have the best kind of groundswell of momentum sort of behind them, and yeah, and I'll quote an economist on the forecast, but I'd hope that, yeah, that Oxfordshire's one of those that will have sort of, yeah, some certainty and won't be a review that's then kind of permanently paused.'
Guy Wakefield was asked with all the confusion around the development in local authority governance, how are vital developments in Oxford getting through the planning system. He said:
'Well, I think the science developments are getting through, certainly that's been my experience, particularly with Oxford as well, Oxford City Council, they've always been very pragmatic and willing to come to the table and willing to push things through. I think that the problem we've always had is with other statutory consultees such as the Environment Agency, who again struggle with resourcing, and that's where we found the bottlenecks in the decision-making process. But I think as far as far as Oxford City's concerned, we've always found them to be very good in working with us. That should be so in future applications, so we're about to get that one in. That's always been very positive. I think as far as the changes that are proposed,
'I think personally I've always found that there is a gap between national policy and district policy, we've lost the structure plans, obviously, numerous years ago, we lost regional policy as well, and I just don't think there's been anything in place, obviously, to join the national and the district policy-making decisions. So I think in that respect, I do think it would be very helpful, it might obviously take a bit of time for everybody to find their feet, but I do think it would be a very positive change.
'For Oxford in particular, you only have to look at the fact that it's now at its boundaries, and it is relying on neighbouring districts to help implement its growth strategies and so on and so forth. So I think to have somebody overseeing all of that would be a very positive thing. I think the concern we'd have is, are the changes really to do that piece of work, or are they to try and save costs? Because I think any loss of planners, which David's already said, struggles anyway, at certainly council level, would be very damaging to the decision-making process for planning applications. So I think, yes, we're optimistic that things will get done, or will get done quicker going forward in the future under these changes, as long as it's not to actually save our money that's being spent within the councils.'
James Golding Graham asked about whether AI will help either the local authorities or the applicants in terms of the speeding up the process to get them? David Butler responded:
'At the moment, I'd say it's massively slowing down. So the amount of applications we'll have with, you know, infinite reports and a lot of it's AI-generated. Same with sort of consultation responses, local planning consultation responses. But you've got to go through them. We're not set up, but indeed, let's try not to use AI in some regards. So that is just officer time. So, you know, it's very easy for some people to put in a 30-page objection. And there might be, you know, some little moments of fair play. You know, actually, they might drive up something. But there was one recently where, I think in an appeal that they'd, you know, AI had hallucinated some case, you know, kind of, normal. There's both instances of, like, that they sort of cited, but, you know, it just didn't exist. So, right now, problematic. There are a lot of opportunities, though. So if you go back to, like, well, to get a local planning consultation, let's say we've got 10,000 responses. There literally are people reading each one, tallying all the various bits. That's about three dollars per hour, sometimes. So there are opportunities to short, you know, kind of shortcut that. Beyond that, it's very, very difficult. You're having to live in AI's arm, AI's arm, which is problematic.'
Fred Pilbrow, Founder of Pilbrow and Partners, asked from the audience:
'I was struck, Kim, when you said we want to put place before politics. And I guess it made me want to ask a kind of really naive question, which is, is one ambition of these unitary authorities to kind of take these big difficult decisions away from a kind of local, let's use the phrase NIMBYism, to waive local accountability to a kind of larger element that brings those decisions above planning politics. Is that around as an ambition? Is it working? Is it necessary? Because I think you've got a sense in Cambridge that there was a lot of concern about development around the city and a lot of local opposition to it. Is this a sort of elegant solution to that?
Kim responded:
'I would say I'm not sure that the strategic authorities are really going to do that. So I agree with you. I think that we are missing an element of regional strategic planning and the authorities, the strategic authorities are bringing that back. So we're getting spatial development strategies which will sit above. The idea is we will still have local plans but they must be in alignment with that spatial development strategy. So suddenly you'll get people thinking on a much larger basis, local plans underneath, aligning with that. But apart from that, I'm not sure that the strategic authorities are fixable for essentially the very difficult situation that we've got to with planning in this country where every successive government has come in and said, I'm going to fix the planning system. It's not working for developers. It's not working for employers.
'And then what happens is they introduce a system which for my lawyer, my background, it's wonderful because you'll never be out of work because it just creates more and more challenge in the system that's resulted to the point now where it's very slowed down. I know there was very much that view in Cambridgeshire that especially the city council was so careful about planning the city that actually what that did was lead to a large backlog of decisions coming forward. And so that's why that was forcing the house prices up because there wasn't enough, what's the opposite of NIMBYism? There wasn't enough of that. Yes, it was. It was YIMBY, yeah. Which we saw in America, there was a big YIMBY movement. They took all the mayors to America when they first got appointed and there was a big YIMBY movement from the sort of 16 to 30 year olds saying we want somewhere to live.
'So yes, I don't think they are doing that through strategic authorities alone. But interestingly, we have seen the recent planning reforms which are taking a certain level of household applications away from planning committees and putting them in offices. So they are starting to do the speed up process but they're doing it in some various different sort of smaller ways. I would say the NDPF, various other measures that they're introducing to try and speed up planning as a whole. Not the big bang we've had in the past but lots of little ways in which the system itself is trying to fix it.'
Sophie commented:
I was just going to sort of add to that. I wonder if it's better to say it's like places before parochialism rather than places before politics because essentially what we're talking about here is a new layer of government. It will be a body that is fundamentally accountable to the electorate. So they are going to be driven by people. They are going to be driven by politics. We have to acknowledge that. But parochialism is the bit that just doesn't work, isn't it? It's the bit where they're arguing over kind of expanded boundaries and this road versus this road.
'That part doesn't really serve anybody very well at all. That is a very sort of, only a politician would be interested in that kind of thing. As a sort of taxpayer, you probably wouldn't be. So I think we do have to recognize that because it's important that when we're talking about mayoral strategic authorities, that's the reason that there are still arguments over geography because it is about like, you're not just thinking about an economic construct, you're also thinking about creating a layer of public service above that. So does that make sense to you?
'If you live in Luton, does it make sense to you that there's a Bedfordshire, Luton, Milton Keynes mayor over the top of you? Will that make sense? Kind of like a fun question there. And it's quite a lot harder, I feel like, with Oxford, Oxfordshire, where you've got a kind of county with a centralized city in it. It's a little bit easier. Greater Manchester, they've been working together for years, as people have already said. West Midlands, they've worked together for years as well. When you're working in an area like I am, where, I mean, Milton Keynes didn't exist 60 years ago, it's a bit more tricky. There's a lot more things to work through, but I definitely think it's parochialism that needs to be knocked out of politics because that will definitely, we're almost introducing more politics, aren't we?'
Alister Kratt, LDA Design, asked from the audience
'For me, slightly more strategic question, maybe. SDS intended to be vision-led more than local plan level. In terms of the leadership qualities that those mayoral authorities or certain SDS structures are going to require, what does good leadership behaviour look like in the SDS world, and are there enough good leaders out there to actually do the job properly?'
Kim responded:
Well, I'm not going to answer that second part. Of course there are good leaders, but yes, that SDS visioning, we are just about to start that work. We've been talking for a long time with government about the regulations and the development and the governance around the spatial development strategies, but we are just about to begin that visioning work, and of course, that has to be the widest collaboration possible.
'So there will be a lot of consultation in the new year around what the spatial development strategy is going to look like, but throughout the time I've been talking about devolution in Oxfordshire, I've never had a business say, I don't want to be engaged in this. They're really interested in understanding what it is we're trying to achieve and how we are going to achieve it. It is just about bringing people together and then trying to find a way to all achieve that same objective, because ultimately, we all want the same thing for Oxfordshire, we want to develop it in the best way possible. So yes, very much so. Do we have enough good leaders? Yeah, hopefully we do, I think.
'For the planning, there is a real dearth of planning officers, I think, at the moment, isn't there? Yes, sure. We are worried that we're not going to have, because everybody in SDS will be going on at the same time, we're all competing in a very small pool for people, so if you're in the planning business at the moment, you're going to be very much in the broad.'
Future Cities Forum would like to thank all the contributors to panel one at our discussion event.
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