A week, they say, is a long time in politics. But when you are a politician in power, five years seems like a very short window in which to get things done – particularly when faced with the myriad of challenges that Keir Starmer and his government inherited back in July of last year.
Already seven months into the administration, and it would be fair to say that in terms of their central mission – economic growth – the prime minister and chancellor have struggled to move the dial.
The doom loop of low productivity, anaemic levels of investment, and high prices has led to a sluggish UK economy swerving recession by a hair’s breadth on multiple occasions in recent years.
There was mixed news from the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee yesterday. An interest rate cut will be welcomed by mortgage payers. But the downgrading of Britain’s growth forecast from 1.5% to 0.75% will have been met with both disappointment and concern by Rachel Reeves.
What can she do to turn things around and meet her ambitions for a dynamic, enterprising, growing UK PLC?
There may be no silver bullet, but the mantra that Starmer, Reeves, and indeed deputy PM Angela Rayner have repeated for many months now, of cutting red tape and bureaucracy and radically reforming archaic planning regulations, is a good place to start.
The snail’s pace of decision-making processes in this country is obscene. It is why our infrastructure is creaking, HS2 was abandoned, and a third runway at Heathrow is as likely as Everton winning the Champions League this season.
The efficient consideration of planning applications and tackling NIMBY’s is necessary, but it is only part of the problem.
The glacial speed with which government acts at all levels is killing our economy. Just take three issues from my hometown of Liverpool.
Last weekend, major pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca pulled out of a multi-million-pound deal in the city because the promised investment from central government took too long to be approved.
On the Liverpool waterfront, the old festival gardens site, which has been marketed as a development and investment scheme for more than two decades, has finally reached the point where developers are bidding to deliver the project.
Following a year of an initial beauty contest that has whittled down the number of possible development partners to three, we are now into the dreaded procurement process. That will not only cost each of the three private companies left standing hundreds of thousands of pounds to simply bid – but it will take at least a further twelve months to make the ultimate decision on who will be selected as the developer. Madness!
Finally, a major city centre regeneration scheme, announced early last year, is now stuck in planning, and I’m told we will be lucky if spades are in the ground this side of Christmas (I’m hoping they mean Christmas 2025).
Now, it would be easy to blame overly cautious officials and civil servants for this poor state of affairs, and in some instances that may be fair. However, the ‘rules is the rules’, and when it comes to planning, there are only so many hours in the day, and local government has had to cull planning officials on the alter of austerity, leaving many woefully short of resource.
So, the sooner those much-trumpeted reforms to planning (and procurement) are made, the quicker local authorities are able to recruit the professionals they need, and the faster central government recognises that in the world of business time is money, and slow is not an option, the better chance Labour has of hitting its growth targets.
