The Regional Governance of Transport Policy in Wales: Towards Institutional Decongestion?

The regional governance of transport policy in Wales: towards institutional decongestion?

WISERD WORKING PAPER SERIES

WISERD/WPS/006

Dr Ian Stafford

October 2011

Author

Dr Ian Stafford, Cardiff University

Contact: Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) 46 Park Place Cardiff CF10 3BB

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 (0)2920870325

WISERD Hub Contact: Cardiff University 46 Park Place Cardiff CF10 3BB

Tel: 02920879338

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

The introduction of the Railways Act 2005 and Transport (Wales) Act 2006 fundamentally reshaped the governance of transport policy within Wales. The two pieces of legislation conferred on the Welsh Assembly Government a number of key functions, including the statutory requirement to develop a Wales Transport Strategy and power to establish Joint Transport Authorities (JTAs) to ensure the delivery of national policy priorities at the regional and local levels. The latter measure was underpinned by the rationale that existing arrangements for the development and delivery of transport policy in Wales were overly complex and failed to deliver policy in a coordinated, ‘joined-up’ way. However, the move to JTAs was fiercely opposed by local authorities and the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) and intermediate arrangements were introduced which centred on the formalisation of previously voluntary Regional Transport Consortia in delivering Regional Transport Plans (RTPs). Question marks remain regarding the relative policy and decision- making capacity within the four Regional Transport Consortia and the extent to which these reforms have addressed or simply reinforced more complex and ‘congested governance’. The paper draws on an analysis of documentary data and semi- structured interviews with officials within the Welsh Assembly Government, Regional Transport Consortia and regional and local stakeholders to examine the policy and decision-making processes around the RTPs. It analyses the level of decision- making capacity within the four Regional Transport Consortia and the extent to which the arrangements introduced since 2006 have acted as a policy and institutional ‘decongestant’.

Introduction

The introduction of devolution in 1999 has been characterised as leading to a fundamental ‘recalibration’ or ‘rescaling’ of territorial administration within the United Kingdom. This process of state ‘rescaling’ can be identified as part of a wider European trend which has led to the redistribution of responsibilities between multiple levels of governance, both upwards to supranational organisations, notably the European Union (EU), and downwards to regional and sub-national territories (Rodriguez-Pose and Gill, 2003; Lidström, 2007; Loughlin, 2007). Commentators have sought to capture this complex array of phenomena through the development of concepts, such as Multi-level Governance, which reflect the fragmentation of state power and authority across different levels of governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2001; Bache and Flinders, 2004). Haughton et al (2010: 10) identify a range of potential benefits and downsides that are commonly linked to the ‘rescaling’ of functions downwards to the sub-state or regional level. On the one hand, they argue devolution may deliver benefits through the tailoring of policies to local priorities and needs, promote policy innovation and stimulate greater accountability and openness in the policy-making process. On the other hand they note that devolution may actually engrain or exacerbate inequalities between territories, lead to inefficiencies in policy delivery and undermine existing territorial identities. Although the factors which shape the positive or negative effects of devolution are quite complex, it is clear that the introduction of devolution can be seen as having potentially far-reaching implications for the development and character of policy and the policy-making process.

This vertical rescaling of the state is commonly linked to a horizontal reworking characterised by a shift from hierarchical systems of government towards more complex, networked forms of governance (Rhodes, 1997). This horizontal re-scaling has been characterised by Jessop as the ‘hollowing-out’ of the nation state by the combined processes of denationalisation, destatisation and internationalisation of policy regimes (Jessop, 1990, 2001). In response to these processes of ‘hollowing out’, Goodwin et al (2005, 2006) put forward the linked process of ‘filling in’. Processes of ‘filling in’ are characterised by ‘the sedimentation of new organisations, the reconfiguration of pre-existing organisations, the evolution of new relationships between different organisations, and the development of new working cultures’ (Jones et al , 2005; 357). Crucially the concept of ‘hollowing out’ is characterised as being limited to the national level where as the process of ‘filling in’ provides insights into contrasting and uneven processes of rescaling at the sub-national level. Haughton et al (2010, 11) argue that the linked processes of ‘hollowing out’ and ‘filling in’ can be understood as ‘not a simple redistribution of powers to other scales of government and governance, but

4 a change to the ways in which governments seek to pursue the their aims.’ In particular, they argue that in recent years there has been a growth of so-called ‘soft spaces’ which have developed outside of the formal and/or statutory mechanisms of policy-making or so-called ‘hard spaces’ (Haughton et al , 2010: 52). Haughton and Allmendinger (2007: 306) define ‘soft spaces’ as the ‘fluid areas between such formal processes where implementation through bargaining, flexibility, discretion and interpretation dominate.’ The growth of more complex, networked forms of governance and the emergence of new informal collaborative institutions and partnerships, highlighted in concepts such as ‘filling in’ and ‘soft spaces’, has led to some commentators to characterise the contemporary governance arrangements as the ‘congested state’ (Skelcher, 2000; Sullivan and Skelcher, 2002). The contested and constantly changing nature of these complex multi-level and multi-organisational relationships and networks has raised serious questions regarding the effective implementation and delivery of public services (Burfitt and Powell, 2008).

The introduction of devolution has had a significant impact on the scales at which transport policy has been developed and delivered within the UK and has been characterised as part of the ‘filling in’ process highlighted above (Mackinnon et al , 2008). The complex character of transport has also meant that the appropriate spatial scale for the development and delivery of policy has been open to question (Marsden and May, 2006). Mackinnon et al (2008: 63) argue that the complexities of transport mean that different issues need to be addressed at different spatial scales, for example, tackling issues related to climate change are best suited to supranational agreements where as solutions to specific problems within communities are better addressed by the local or regional level. In both Scotland and Wales the devolved administrations have experimented with ‘nationally orchestrated regionalisation of transport governance’ aimed at delivering an integrated transport policy joining up the national, regional and local levels (Mackinnon et al , 2008). Within the Welsh context this process has centred on the formalisation of the previously voluntary Regional Transport Consortia and the provision of the statutory function for them to develop Regional Transport Plans (RTPs), published in draft in September 2009 (Sewta, 2009; Swwitch, 2009; TraCC, 2009; Taith, 2009). However, the impact of this evolving regional tier on the effective development and delivery of transport policy is open to question. For example, rather than providing a focus for the strategic integration of transport policy, this process of regionalisation could be characterised as simply adding to the ‘over-stuffed’ governance of transport policy within Wales (Pangbourne, 2007). Alternatively the Regional Transport Consortia may have acted as ‘institutional decongestants’, effectively countering the perceived negative effects of fragmentation within the policy area and promoting focused partnership and collaboration (Pemberton & Lloyd, 2008).

This paper analyses the regionalisation of transport policy in Wales in the post-devolved setting within the context of established debates around the dual processes of ‘hollowing out’ and ‘filling in’ and the development of fragmented, networked forms of governance. The analysis centres on two key research questions; i) to what extent have the Regional Transport Consortia had adequate policy and decision-making capacity to fulfil their functions and ii) the extent to which the consortia and RTP process has acted as a policy and institutional ‘decongestant’ or whether it has simply reinforced or exacerbated more complex and congested forms of governance. The paper draws on an analysis of documentary data and semi-structured interviews with officials within the Welsh Assembly Government, Regional Transport Consortia and regional and local stakeholders to examine the policy and decision-making processes around the RTPs. The paper is divided into three parts. Part one sets the context of transport policy in Wales and the rationale for the emergence of the consortia. Part two addresses the national context for the development of the RTPs and the role of the Welsh Assembly Government in the regionalisation of transport governance in Wales. Part three analyses the consortia’s policy and decision-making capacity by examining the processes adopted in the development of the RTPs. The paper concludes by considering the key lessons highlighted by the regionalisation of transport governance in Wales.

1. Transport policy in Wales

The scope of the functions devolved to the National Assembly for Wales within the Government of Wales Act 1998 reflected the pre-devolution role of the Welsh Office within transport policy. Bradbury and Stafford (2008: 69) note that the perception of the Welsh Office prior to devolution was that it was ‘an agent of the Department of Transport’ and its primary role was to ‘welshify’ UK transport policy. Therefore the powers inherited by the National Assembly in 1999 were limited to a national role in roads and a role in road/rail transport through its links with local authorities (Cole, 2007). A transport official within the Welsh Assembly Government explained that:

‘there was widespread recognition that the Assembly Government had very fragmented transport powers and they weren’t at all coherent… I think from day one there was almost a desire to have a coherent set of powers and a coherent framework from within which transport can go forward (WAG Transport Official, 2009a).’

The process of building a case for the National Assembly to have greater transport powers was underway even before its introduction, with the WTAG recommending the devolution of a range of further powers (WTAG, 1999). After the introduction of devolution the call for the transfer of transport functions was reiterated by the National Assembly for Wales’ Environment, Planning and Transport Committee’s Policy Review of Public Transport and several enquiries carried out by the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Select Committee (EPT Committee, 2001; WAC, 2000, 2002, 2003). The UK Government initially opposed any further devolution of powers and it was only after a sustained process of lobbying and bargaining between the Welsh Assembly Government and Department for Transport that further powers were transferred via the Railways Act 2005 and the Transport (Wales) Act 2006 (For a detailed account see Cole, 2005, 2007; Bradbury and Stafford, 2008, 2010).

The Transport (Wales) Act 2006 conferred on the National Assembly for Wales a range of functions in order to fulfil the ‘general transport duty’ set out within the legislation (HMG, 2006). Firstly, the Act required the Assembly to prepare a Wales Transport Strategy (WTS) that would provide an overview of its policies in pursuing integrated transport and would effectively replace the previous strategy published in 2001, the Transport Framework for Wales (NAW, 2001). Secondly, the Act provided the Assembly with powers to ensure that local and regional transport planning were consistent with the Assembly’s transport strategy and enabled the Assembly to establish Joint Transport Authorities (JTAs) if existing voluntary joint-working arrangements via the Regional Transport Consortia failed to do so. This provision replaced the existing Local Transport Plan (LTP) system with statutory Regional Transport Plans (RTPs) which were required to be consistent with the WTS. A transport official within the Welsh Assembly Government explained that an inherent weakness of the transport planning system prior to the legislation was that:

‘with the first set of LTPs essentially local authorities just had to complete them and send them into us, there was no mechanism by which we could influence what local authorities were doing other than through the funding, so we couldn’t influence their policies or strategies at all’ (WAG Transport Official, 2009a)

The provisions on local and regional transport planning, and the powers to set up JTAs in particular, were strongly opposed by the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) who argued that they had effectively instituted a top-down model of ‘dictate and deliver’ (WLGA, 2004: 2). Finally, the Act also required the Assembly to establish a Passenger Transport Users Committee and provided a range of powers for the delivery and subsidy of public passenger transport services and the intra-Wales air service. In addition the Railways Act

2005 introduced a range of measures related to rail, including making the Assembly co- signatory of the Wales and Borders rail franchise (HMG, 2005). The powers transferred in both Acts were designed to provide the Welsh Assembly Government with the tools to pursue an integrated transport policy and respond to the perceived limitations of the fragmented character of the existing governance arrangements.

In parallel to the introduction and subsequent strengthening of devolution, the voluntary arrangements that preceded the formalised Regional Transport Consortia began to emerge across Wales. The development of the voluntary regional arrangements between groups of local authorities can be characterised as a direct response to the 1996 local reorganisation of local government in Wales or the ‘John Redwood fiasco’ as a public transport stakeholder described it (Public Transport stakeholder, 2009). The reorganisation replaced eight County Councils with twenty two unitary authorities (See Figure 1). Although the creation of smaller local government potentially offers benefits in terms of better responding to local needs and enhancing citizen participation and accountability, there are also weaknesses in terms of developing a strategic approach and providing adequate economic of scales (Martin et al , 2011). A Welsh Assembly Government transport official pointed out that the key problem was that ‘the unitary authority structure didn't really facilitate most transport issues in Wales’ due to the relatively small size of the authorities (WAG Transport Official, 2009a). These issues were particularly evident in the A55 and M4 corridors in North and South Wales respectively, where transport flows run East to West across multiple authority areas. In addition, the reorganisation led to serious questions being raised regarding the capacity of smaller unitary authorities in terms of the expertise and resources required to deliver transport policy, particularly in terms of the development and management of major Transport Grant schemes. However, it is important to stress that the circumstances around the creation and subsequent development of the four consortia varied considerably as they emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Figure 1: Pre- and Post-1996 Local Government Boundaries in Wales

The South East Wales Transport Alliance (Sewta) is commonly identified as the most advanced of the four Regional Transport consortia in Wales (See Figure 2). Sewta was formed in April 2003 following the merger of two existing voluntary partnerships, South Wales Integrated Fast Transit (Swift) and the Transport Integration in the Gwent Economic Region (Tiger), which had emerged immediately following local government reorganisation. Indeed, the collaborative arrangements which emerged through Swift and Tiger and later Sewta performed a pathfinder function for other local authorities across Wales. A South West Wales Integrated Transport Consortium (Swwitch) official, for example, explained that the primary driver for the development of Swwitch in 1998 was the attempt to access funding in the same ways that Swift and Tiger had already been doing and therefore was initially at least ‘purely pecuniary’ (Swwitch official, 2009). The two remaining consortia, Trafnidiaeth Canolbarth Cymru (TraCC) in Mid-Wales and Taith in North Wales, were formally constituted in 2003 and 2004 respectively and are commonly characterised as being behind Sewta and Swwitch in terms of their development. Both regional partnerships originated as transport sub-groups or delivery teams of broader regional economic partnership organisations, the Mid-Wales Partnership and North Wales Economic Forum. Therefore although there was a fairly long history of informal, fairly loose forms of collaboration between local authorities, the more formal partnership arrangements around transport in Mid and North Wales were

9 somewhat behind the South East and South West – a key factor when the consortia came to develop their RTPs.

Figure 2: The Four Regional Transport Consortia

2. Providing the National Context: The Welsh Transport Strategy, National Transport Plan and RTP Guidance

A key part of the measures introduced by the Transport (Wales) Act 2006, as noted in the previous section, was the requirement of the Welsh Assembly Government to set-out its priorities for integrated transport at the national level within a Wales Transport Strategy and for the Regional Transport Consortia to reflect these priorities within their RTPs. Therefore before examining the policy and decision-making process which emerged around the RTPs, it is necessary to consider the key elements of the wider policy context within which the RTP process was framed. i. The Wales Transport Strategy

The draft WTS reflected the Welsh Assembly Government’s commitment to an integrated transport policy, outlined within the draft strategy’s overarching vision:

‘To provide a framework that connects national, regional and local policy to maximise the contribution that transport can make to achieving a sustainable future for Wales, where actions for social, economic, and environmental improvement work together to create positive change’ (WAG, 2006: 4).

The strategy identified a range of core policy challenges which the WTS, delivered through the National Transport Plan (NTP) and RTPs, would seek to address in a joined-up way. These challenges included improving access to services across Wales, improving the health of Wales by promoting more healthy forms of transport and reducing air pollution, addressing the areas of the transport network characterised by high levels of congestion and working towards the Assembly Government’s ambitious commitments on climate change. The draft strategy set out a range of social, economic and environmental outcomes shaped around three core strategic themes: first, the need to ‘achieve a more effective and efficient transport system’; secondly, the need to ‘achieve greater use of more sustainable and healthy forms of travel’; and finally, the need ‘to minimise the need to travel’ (WAG, 2006: vi- vii). A Welsh Assembly Government transport official stated that the key objective in drafting the original strategy was ‘to try and (emphasise that) transport is not an end in itself, it is there to facilitate other things, it is there to support economic development, it is there to enhance social cohesion and be very aware of the environmental implications’ (WAG Official, 2009a). Given this stress on an integrated, joined-up response to the various policy challenges identified by 2006 draft strategy, the Regional Transport Consortia were identified as playing a key role in ensuring that integrated transport solutions and co-ordinated decision-making was delivered across Wales, whilst recognising that ‘what is right for one location will not always be right in another location’ (WAG, 2006: 115).

A key problem facing the Regional Transport Consortia in the development of their RTPs was that the final version of the WTS was severely delayed and was not published until April 2008, two years after the Transport (Wales) Act 2006 came into effect. The original timetable for the RTPs gave a June 2008 submission date for final plans but due to delays in the publication of the strategy and then the NTP, this date was pushed back to June 2009 and finally December 2009. Crucially, all of the Regional Transport Consortia had begun work on their RTPs either before the introduction of the 2006 legislation or shortly after and therefore this delay had a damaging knock-on effect on the decision-making process. A Swwitch official pointed out that the consortia had to ‘slow down the rate at which we were doing our consultation and developing the Regional Transport Plan’ and that as a result some stakeholders who had been involved in the initial consultation sessions in May 2006, started to ‘lose faith in the process’ (Swwitch official, 2009). Similarly a Taith official described the

11 process as being in ‘limbo land’ for long periods and that the delay suggested that perhaps a modular or interim approach should have been adopted ‘rather than waiting for the final thing to come out of the door’ (Taith official, 2010).

Several factors can be identified as key causes of the delay in the publication of the final version of the WTS. Firstly, there were questions marks regarding the operational capacity of the Welsh Assembly Government to develop the strategy, particularly given the limited role that it had played within transport planning prior to the introduction of the legislation. A Swwitch official, for example, pointed out that a relatively small team of transport planners had to deal with ‘a massive number of consultation responses and some quite critical consultation responses, so it was a huge task’ (Swwitch official, 2009). Secondly, the political context was substantially altered by the 2007 Assembly elections and the extended negotiations which followed around the One Wales coalition agreement between the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru (Labour Party and Plaid Cymru, 2007). A transport official within the Welsh Assembly Government argued that the prolonged timetable for the publication of the WTS should be better understood as a pragmatic response to changing political circumstances than a ‘delay’:

‘We did a consultation which is a three-month process, analysed the results and then we had to take the view whether it was the right thing to do to put out a strategy that could be out of date within a matter of months knowing that the Assembly elections were coming up in May 2007. So it seemed sensible not to do that and have to then re-write the strategy when there was a new government after the election. As you know the election result was that no one had a clear majority and it was quite a protracted time before a new government emerged, it was not until July until the current coalition was established. Then we had a new Minister, a new strategic framework if you like with the One Wales partnership agreement to work to, so it just took some time after that to work through the impact of that and reflect it in the strategy.’ (WAG Transport Official, 2009a)

Regardless of the extent to which the delay in the publication of the WTS was avoidable, Bradbury and Stafford (2009) argue that this extended process ‘appeared to engender a loss of momentum rather than a vigorous utilisation of the new powers devolved in 2005-06.’

In addition to delaying the publication of the final WTS, the changes in the wider political context created by the One Wales coalition re-shaped the focus of transport policy towards

12 issues of nation-building and concerns around rural transport. Notably Ieaun Wyn Jones, the Deputy First Minister and the leader of the Plaid Cymru group in the National Assembly took over responsibility for the Economy and Transport brief. The changes had a clear impact. A Swwitch official (2009) stated that ‘all of a sudden the emphasis changed, this wasn't about the main economic corridors of Wales…it was about North and South Wales must be connected no matter what.’ Although the substantially slimmed down final version of the WTS published in 2008 gave greater priority to nation-building and rural connectivity issues within its overarching strategic priorities the overall approach and key outcomes identified by the strategy reflected much of the pre-One Wales policy agenda (WAG, 2008a). ii. The National Transport Plan

The key role of the National Transport Plan (NTP), published for consultation in July 2009 and in final draft in March 2010, was to take forward the delivery of the high-level strategic priorities and outcomes identified within the WTS (WAG, 2010). A transport official within the Welsh Assembly Government pointed out that the NTP ‘was really just an attempt to bring together for the first time everything that we (the Welsh Assembly Government) were doing in the transport area within the framework of the transport strategy’ (WAG Transport Official, 2009a). The NTP pulled together the existing trunk road and rail forward programmes which had undergone a process of reprioritisation in 2008. Although the NTP did include several high profile changes to the Welsh Assembly Government’s delivery programme, most notably the decisions to abandon the M4 relief road and access to Cardiff International Airport schemes, the extent to which the NTP provided ‘added value’ was questioned. A WLGA official argued that the NTP failed to prioritise objectives and instead the Assembly Government’s approach appeared to have been to simply ‘wrap an envelope around all of these things that are going on and call it a national plan’ (WLGA Official, 2009). However, once again the significance of the NTP for the Regional Transport Consortia was perhaps less its content and more its timing and the character of its development.

Given that the Regional Transport Consortia had started preparatory work on their draft RTPs in early-to-mid 2006, the eventual publication of the draft NTP in July 2009, just a few months before the submission of draft RTPs, clearly had a significant impact on the process. This problem was exacerbated by the limited role played by the Consortia in the development of the consultation document. A TraCC official, for example, described the consortia’s engagement as ‘pretty sketchy’ and that it was only towards the end of the drafting process that the consortia were able to comment on a reasonably full draft (TraCC official, 2009). A Taith official pointed out that from the regional perspective the NTP

‘seemed to take forever to come out’ and that the early drafts ‘seemed overly complicated and didn't seem to marry with what we were doing in the RTP and the local authority world’ (Taith official, 2010). Indeed the identification of key strategic corridors within the NTP was perceived by interviewees as a relatively late development in the drafting process and therefore it was largely absent from the RTPs submitted in September 2009. iii. Guidance on Regional Transport Plans and the Welsh Transport Planning and Appraisal Guidance (WelTAG)

The final strand of the national policy context within which the RTP process took place centred on the guidance provided by the Welsh Assembly Government for the consortia in developing their plans. This guidance was made up of two key elements, firstly the Guidance on Regional Transport Plans published by the Assembly Government in April 2007 and secondly the Welsh Transport Planning and Appraisal Guidance (WelTAG), published in June 2008 (WAG, 2007; WAG, 2008b). These documents provided a fairly detailed overview of the decision-making processes that the consortia were expected to undertake in the development of their RTPs. The 2007 guidance, for example, stated that the consortia were required to develop three alternative plans based on transport priorities and objectives – a ‘do minimum’, a ‘preferred plan’ and a ‘best counter-proposal’ (WAG, 2007: 22). Much like the WTS and NTP, the two strands of the Welsh Assembly Government’s guidance were not published until after the consortia had started developing their RTPs.

The influence of the RTP guidance and WelTAG appeared to fluctuate during the development of the RTPs. A Swwitch official, for example, pointed out that although the guidance was very influential at the start of the process it became ‘outdated very quickly’ and changes in personnel within the Welsh Assembly Government meant that ‘the people who had written it were no longer there…and it got less and less important (Swwitch official, 2009). In addition the status of the RTP guidance and WelTAG as ‘living documents’ meant, as one interviewee pointed out, that although the consortia ‘wanted to comply…it was difficult to know what you were complying with sometimes’ (WLGA official, 2009). There were also concerns that the different processes outlined within the RTP guidance, WelTAG mechanism and the required Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) actually conflicted (Swwitch official, 2009). In addition, the key stages outlined within the guidance were perceived by some actors as requiring the consortia to develop objectives and priorities which were far too broad in scope (Sewta official, 2009b).

Overall the development of the national policy context highlighted several key issues that would significantly impact on the development of the RTPs. Firstly, the timescales of the WTS, NTP and guidance documents were clearly not synchronised with the RTP process due to the various delays caused by the national level policy process. A Welsh Assembly Government transport official (2009b) stated that these problems meant that the ‘ground rules were missing’ from the process and this had probably hindered the development of RTPs. Secondly, the development of the key national documents highlighted concerns around the quality of the relationship between the Welsh Assembly Government and the Regional Transport Consortia. In particular, there was a perceived lack of openness and engagement at key stages in the development of the WTS and NTP. However, regional officials almost uniformly described the relationship as improving, partly due to changes in personnel and organisation within the Welsh Assembly Government. Finally, there were concerns amongst interviewees that the Welsh Assembly Government had not provided clear leadership around transport priorities, reflected in the ‘lack of a clear vision of where we are going’ within the WTS and NTP (WLGA official, 2009). Therefore in assessing the effectiveness of the consortia in developing RTPs and responding to the fragmentation of pre-existing governance arrangements, it is important to consider the challenging policy dynamics within which this process took place.

3. Developing the Regional Transport Plans

The Regional Transport Consortia, as noted above, emerged from very different backgrounds and developed along contrasting trajectories and at varied rates. The contrasting legacies of collaboration inherited by the consortia meant that by the time they were required to develop the statutory RTPs, they were at very different stages in their development. The consortia in the pre-RTP context provided informal spaces for the local authorities to work on a cross-boundary basis and to think creatively about addressing transport problems outside of the formalised Local Transport Plan and Transport Grant boundaries. The requirement to produce statutory RTPs outlined within the Transport (Wales) Act 2006 was a key factor in formalising these partnership arrangements, for example, through the adoption of legally binding constitutions. However, the extent to which this process has delivered a more coherent, integrated response to transport policy problems or has simply added a further layer of complexity or bureaucracy remains open to question. This section focuses on three key aspects of the RTP decision-making process to assess the capacity of the regional transport governance arrangements to act as an ‘institutional decongestant’ within Wales.

15 i. Developing effective decision-making arrangements

The decision-making structures and procedures introduced for the development and approval of the RTPs varied considerably across the four Regional Transport Consortia. In all of the consortia, the primary forum for formal decision-making around the RTPs were the Joint Committees or Boards made-up of the local authority members. Each constituent local authority was represented by two to three members, usually including the cabinet or portfolio holder for transport, and each authority had one vote. However, the Sewta and Swwitch Committees also included key partners and stakeholders from across transport modes as non-voting members. A Sewta official explained that these partners were not ‘passive observers’ but were expected to provide regular verbal and written reports and were also called to account and challenged (Sewta official, 2009b). In addition, the chair and vice-chair of the Sewta Board, Councillors Jeff James and Andrew Morgan, stressed that additional board development sessions were key in terms of building the capacity of members to actively engage in the RTP decision-making process (James & Morgan, 2009). Although these Joint Committees provided focus for the formal aspects of decision-making, much of the negotiation and ‘nitty-gritty’ work around the RTP priorities and objectives took place within the working groups and support structures which lay beneath them (TraCC official, 2009). Perhaps the most robust organisational structures were developed within Sewta and Swwitch, which encompassed official-led directorates which fed information directly to the Joint Committees and various working groups, including a RTP policy and programme group, which provided a key interface with local authorities and practitioners. In the absence of engagement mechanisms built into the formal structures of TraCC and Taith, both consortia held a variety of events, including themed stakeholder workshops to engage with specific areas such as community transport and freight, as well as more general consultations at the key stages of the RTP process (TraCC, 2009; Taith, 2009).

An important contrast between the decision-making arrangements developed by the consortia in drafting and agreeing the RTPs were the formalised procedures adopted by the Joint Committees to approve the plans. A WLGA official pointed out that both majority voting and consensus based systems raised potential problems for the consortia. The official argued that adopting a majority voting system ran the potential risk that a decision that significantly affected a local authority could be taken in the absence of any representative from that authority depending on the rules around quorum but ‘if you take a vote by consensus then will you take hard decisions or will you spread the jam so everybody gets a bit?’ (WLGA official, 2009). This dilemma was highlighted by the contrasting approaches adopted within the Swwitch and Sewta consortia. A Swwitch official explained that:

‘within Swwitch we work on a pure consensus basis...So you work effectively to the lowest common denominator, what is the most that you can get agreed by the four authorities because that is the most you can produce… If three authorities want something, one authority can say ‘no it is not happening, sorry we‘re not having it’ (Swwitch official, 2009).

Due to these pressures the official pointed out that in order to secure a consensus, contentious issues tended to be ‘ironed-out’ through informal communication and support meetings, otherwise nothing would happen. These constraints were reduced, if not entirely removed, within the Sewta and Taith consortia as they had more member authorities and operated a majority voting system. A Sewta official noted that even within this context there was need for compromise because a 6:4 or 7:3 result was not tenable but if one or two councils were clearly in the minority then the usual practice was for councils not to pursue the issue (Sewta official, 2009). Overall there appeared to be very few instances where any of the committees resorted to voting mechanisms and that most decisions were reached by consensus. ii. Promoting collaboration and moving beyond parochialism

A key challenge for the consortia in delivering added value to the transport planning process was the ability of the constituent local authorities to identify regional priorities which moved beyond simple self-interest and local parochialism. A transport official within the Welsh Assembly Government stated that the process of putting local self-interest to one side and identifying regional priorities require ‘quite a lot of maturity’ and the consortia had ‘varying levels of success’ in achieving this goal (WAG transport official, 2009a). A WLGA official explained that the process of developing regional priorities required members to work outside of their ‘comfort zones’ and that some members were more comfortable with taking a lead on these strategic issues than others (WLGA official, 2009). A Public Transport stakeholder, for example, argued that their experience in the Sewta Board suggested that local authority members were still prone to becoming preoccupied with their own ‘hobbyhorses’ and adopting a ‘sort of NIMBY’ approach to decision-making (Public Transport Stakeholder, 2009).

Perhaps unsurprisingly the consortia members and officials provided a more positive perspective on the ability of local authority members to collaborate in identifying regional priorities. A Sewta official argued that the maturity of members across the ten constituent

17 local authorities was ‘absolutely vital’ in making regional decisions and that the Sewta Board was ‘very good and very healthy’. An example of this maturity highlighted by the official was the decision taken by the ten constituent local authorities to prioritise schemes within six local authority areas which could attract European Union Convergence funding and deliver ‘more bang for the buck’ for the region as a whole (Sewta official, 2009). The rationale for collaboration was articulated by the deputy chair of the Sewta Board, Councillor Andrew Morgan:

‘maybe one authority will get a substantial sum one year or maybe two years whereas maybe another authority may get very little but because they all buy into it and all feel engaged in it, they know that they are in the programme and their projects may be two or three years down the line when the full plan is delivered’ (James & Morgan, 2009).

Although this approach clearly underpins collaboration in terms of the planning of investment, it is questionable as to whether it reflects genuine prioritisation as it is fundamentally based on every authority getting their piece of the pie over the medium to long term. In addition the role of the consortia chairs and coordinators appears to have been pivotal in brokering these agreements. The chair of TraCC, Councillor Ray Quant, stated that a key objective in his role as chair was to build ‘trust and a working relationship’ and a spirit of ‘openness’ within the committee. Quant argued that this approach had enabled the three constituent local authorities to ‘produce a balanced programme without people falling out over it but just by sensibly talking about allowing everybody to achieve some of their aspirations for the good of the region’ (Quant, 2009). Sullivan and Skelcher (2002: 50) identify the development of trust and leadership as being key to facilitating collaboration within decision-making structures and this appears to have been reflected to a degree in the RTP process. iii. Enhancing decision-making capacity and providing a robust evidence base

Part of the rationale which underpinned the development of the Regional Transport Consortia, as highlighted above, was that regional groupings of local authorities could address the capacity issues created by the 1996 local government reorganisation. The RTP process suggested that the consortia varied in their ability to provide enhanced capacity in terms of skills, expertise and resources and to develop a robust evidence base to underpin their plans. The consortia appeared to offer the potential to offer ‘economies of scale’ in terms of drawing together their own reasonably limited corporate resources and those of

18 constituent local authorities. Clearly this combined capacity provided the opportunity to develop transport plans which moved beyond anything a single local authority would have been able to achieve acting alone (Martin et al , 2011). However, the extent to which the consortia delivered this added value appeared to be highly dependent upon their respective structural characteristics. Unsurprisingly the size of the consortia had direct implications for the potential economies of scale and cost savings provided by the process of combining resources and avoiding duplication across member authorities. Simply put, Sewta was able to draw upon the resources and skills of ten local authorities in the most densely populated area of Wales, where as TraCC, which had to carry out many of the same functions, could only draw on the capacity of two and a half member authorities within very rural, sparsely populated areas.

These structural inequalities were exacerbated by the institutional legacies inherited by the individual consortia. For example, a TraCC official (2009) pointed out that a key challenge for the consortia was that historically member authorities had not applied for Transport Grant funding and therefore ‘staff and resources internally (within councils) tended to be put into other areas.’ The official explained that the core TraCC team was therefore unable to produce the RTP in-house as the skills and expertise were limited and ‘inevitably we went out to consultants and paid them a lot of money to do it’ (TraCC official, 2009). Although all of the consortia engaged consultants at some point in the process, the actual drafting of the RTP was carried out in-house by Sewta and Swwitch, where as TraCC and Taith utilised consultants to develop their plans. Furthermore a potential unintended consequence of the consortia model was that some local authorities appeared to actually reduce their own capacity in transport planning (Martin et al , 2011). A Swwitch official (2009) pointed out that a couple of constituent local authorities had not replaced transport planners since the publication of the RTP and that this may be due to a perception that ‘they feel we don’t need our own expert’ because the consortia is in place. Therefore rather than providing ‘economies of scale’ and enhanced expertise, the unintended consequence of the regional architecture may actually have been to reduce capacity.

In terms of the evidence base developed by each of the consortia, a Welsh Assembly Government transport official pointed out that the requirements of the RTP guidance, such as the WelTAG process, Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Habitat Regulations Assessment (HRA), effectively tested the quality of the regions’ evidence base. The official opined that these stages made it ‘much more difficult to get particular schemes that may have some sentimental attachment through…it wouldn't stop it but it would make it very difficult’ (WAG transport official, 2009b). Overall actors from across the consortia and

19 stakeholder groups agreed that the RTP process had required the regions’ to adopt a more evidence-based, transparent approach than the previous LTP process. However, a common story was that the depth of this evidence base was limited by the resources available to the consortia. For example, a Swwitch official stated that although the region had done enough research for the RTP to be credible, ‘if we had more money, we would have done more research’ particularly given that some of the early research conducted in 2006/7 was becoming increasingly out of date by the time the plan was submitted (Swwitch official, 2009). A sustainable transport stakeholder echoed this point, arguing that the Welsh Assembly Government expected the consortia to produce robust, detailed plans but had failed ‘to get its hands dirty’ and adequately resource them to do so (Sustainable Transport stakeholder, 2009).

These capacity-related issues were highlighted in a report by the Ministerial Advisory Group, published in July 2009, which argued that the consortia arrangements were fundamentally flawed because they had not been ‘embraced fully’ by local authorities. The report argued that this had led to an inadequate transfer of resources and expertise, an absence of formal powers and an inability to make ‘necessary tough choices about allocating resources on a regional basis’ (MAG, 2009: 56). However, the Welsh Assembly Government rejected the report’s recommendations that it should either establish Joint Transport Authorities to replace the voluntary consortia or centralise all local and regional transport planning at the national level (WAG, 2009b). Instead the Welsh Assembly Government carried out its own review of transport planning and delivery arrangements in late 2009 and recommended the creation of a national tier of partnership groups which would build upon, but not replace, the regional arrangements (WAO, 2011). Indeed, the regional model adopted by the consortia remains one of the few cases in Wales where local authorities have genuinely attempted to work collaboratively at the regional level and therefore remains ‘best practice’ within the Welsh Assembly Government (WLGA official, 2009; WAG transport official, 2009b).

Conclusions

This paper has critically examined the development of RTPs within the context of the emerging regional governance arrangements following the introduction of the Transport (Wales) Act 2006. These findings have been utilised to highlight the key strengths and weaknesses of the RTP decision-making process within the wider transport policy setting within Wales. This analysis can be used to address the first of the key questions posed at the beginning of this paper (i) to what extent have the Regional Transport Consortia had adequate policy and decision-making capacity to fulfil their functions? Clearly the consortia

20 were required to deliver RTPs within the context of fairly adverse conditions. Notably the drift at the national level caused by the delayed publication of the WTS and NTP left a strategic vacuum for a prolonged period of the process. In addition, the extent to which the Regional Transport Consortia were able to set up effective decision-making arrangements, move beyond local level parochialism and deliver enhanced levels of policy capacity and resources appeared to have varied from region to region. The Regional Transport Consortia can be seen to have made substantial progress in developing RTPs which have been accepted by their member authorities but the extent to which these plans reflected genuine regional priorities remains open to question.

The findings also offer insights into the paper’s second core question (ii) to what extent have the Consortia and the RTP process acted as a policy and institutional ‘decongestant’ or have they simply reinforced or exacerbated more complex and congested forms of governance? The Regional Transport Consortia can be seen to have begun to address the fragmentation created by local government reorganisation within Wales and provide a more strategic approach to transport planning and policy-making. This process can be understood within the wider concept of ‘filling in’. Goodwin et al (2005, 425) argue that ‘filling in’ as a concept ‘does not necessarily imply a proliferation of organisations and strategies of governance at the sub-national scale’ but that sub-national governments ‘may well decide to reduce the number of organisations which operate in their territories.’ Within this context the formalisation of the Regional Transport Consortia and development of RTPs could be characterised as a process of ‘institutional decongestion’ which replaced the previous system which was perceived as being not ‘fit for purpose.’ However, an alternative analysis of the reforms could argue that the regionalisation of transport planning and delivery in Wales has simply added a further tier of semi-formalised decision-making in between the local and devolved levels of government and therefore added to the congestion of governance arrangements. As the primary function of the Consortia shifts from transport planning to delivery, the key challenge remains for them to prove that they are greater than the sum of their parts and an effective alternative to local government reorganisation and centralisation.

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