The Greater Manchester Combined Authority – made up of a consortium of 10 local authorities is going back to the drawing board and attempting to draw up a Regional Spatial Strategy – i.e. a Mega-Local-Plan. Those long in the tooth (i.e. who remember local government more than 4 years ago) will recall that this used to be the way things were done for infrastructure and investment wit the (not-much-missed-because-it-wasn’t-very-good) South West Regional Development Agency SWRDA with their Spatial Strategy for the whole of Devon. They were replaced by Local Enterprise Partnership – but they, too, seem to be fading away gradually as we hear less of them and their funding.

http://www.agma.gov.uk/what_we_do/manchester-family-centre-of-excellence/index.html

(what an odd URL!)

So, maybe this is the way things are going – fewer and fewer small authorities and more and more amalgamation as Councillor Potter predicted at Newton Poppleford earlier this week.

But where does that leave EDDC? They fought Devon-wide unitisation so, so hard a few years ago – spending at least a quarter of a million pounds of our council tax on persuading us not to go down that route and saying how bad it was for us. Then, as soon as the new government came in, they cancelled unitisation saying it was not a good idea. Now amalgamation seems to be the new theory and it’s all ok now.

There must be some really hard head-scratching going on at present at EDDC as they see the possibiity of losing control! Though there are many who think they lost control some time ago ….

… and wouldn’t the Skypark HQ make a lovely Devon HQ so that Exeter and DCC could sell off their current offices for housing ….. unless it goes to Plymouth, of course! Why not: it’s on the far edge of the area and only as far (relatively speaking) from Exeter in Devon-wide terms as Axminster is from Skypark in EDDC terms!