Urban Divisions Post-Brexit: Empowering Local Leaders in Britain's 'Left Behind' Places

There are many places in Britain that continue to experience the economic and social decline of the post-industrial turn of the late 1970s. Over many decades, these places have been neglected in national debates that have been fed by the idea that London, supported by the other 'big cities', will drive national growth to everyone's benefit. Yet, as many of the people who live in some of Britain's poorest towns will be all too familiar with, the rhetoric is far from the reality, with a recent article by Sarah O'Connor in the Financial Times referring to 'the towns the economy forgot'. Deliberation over their future has recently risen to prominence. This was sparked by the EU Referendum in 2016 that saw Britain vote to leave the EU, supported overwhelmingly by voters in Britain's most deprived places. This was much to the surprise and often condemnation of the urban elite and central government politicians. Whilst no one quite knows what Brexit means for the future of Britain, what has become clear for some is the need to better understand the so-called 'forgotten' places and address the rising inequality between cities and 'the rest'. The Centre for Towns, a Think Tank dedicated to providing research and analysis on British towns, has positioned itself as a leading advocate of this call for which this fellowship will aim to provide a key input and bring a local leadership and governance perspective to the debate.

The Fellow's doctoral research investigated sub-national leadership and governance in Britain from the perspective of a mid-sized city, in the context of city-regionalism, devolution and austerity. Drawing on the themes of power, negotiation and acceptability, the research suggests that city-regional devolution has created new institutional and spatial complexities and has failed to rework central-local relations away from a highly centralised approach. Equally, the research shows how local leaders play a role in their ability to navigate broader controls for constructing an operating environment that they can work with. This is suggested as being particularly the case for places on the periphery that have neither the political might nor collective weight of the 'big cities' under the current urban system.

The activities of the fellowship will be mainly oriented towards the dissemination of the Fellow's doctoral research, to add knowledge to theories on leadership and governance and inform policy and practice in relation to the future evolution of devolution post-Brexit and opportunities for local empowerment. It will also expose what arguably Britain's most vulnerable places will need from central government to be able to weather the storm that is likely to lie ahead. This will be achieved via written pieces for both academic and non-academic audiences in the form of journal papers, policy briefings, and media engagement pieces, and presentations at conferences and public-policy events. In addition, a stakeholder engagement event will be held to share the Fellow's research findings and address the key opportunities and challenges facing local leaders in the context of devolution, austerity and Brexit. This will also promote the value of knowledge exchange. A period will also be spent back out in the field to speak to frontline practitioners about the key issues facing towns in a post-Brexit landscape.