I previously raised concerns about the proposed Mayoral Development Zone (MDZ) for Newcastle and Gateshead. My concern is not with ambition or growth, but with a model of regeneration increasingly imposed from above; promising speed and certainty yet offering little clarity on long-term purpose or democratic accountability.
Jack Straw’s recent analysis in Estates Gazette situates these local concerns within a wider national pattern. What is unfolding in Newcastle and Gateshead is not an isolated initiative, but part of a broader restructuring of how regeneration is conceived, governed, and delivered across England – one that risks leaving local government caught between responsibility and power.
The rise of “zonification”
Straw describes the government’s emerging approach as “zonification”: the proliferation of special-purpose vehicles such as Mayoral Development Corporations, AI Growth Zones, Industrial Strategy Zones, Enterprise Zones, and new Public Finance Institutions. These bodies are often presented as pragmatic solutions – focused, agile, and capable of unlocking private investment where traditional local government has struggled.
In practice, however, zonification represents a form of quiet recentralisation. Although these zones operate locally, they are designed, designated, and frequently authorised by Whitehall, often functioning as institutional islands detached from both local democratic control and coherent regional economic strategy.
The proposed MDZ for Newcastle–Gateshead sits squarely within this trend. It is attractive to the central government precisely because it allows development to proceed without the friction of local consent, even while being framed as part of a wider “devolution revolution.”
Strategic authorities: empowered – yet bypassed
The paradox Straw identifies will be familiar in the North East. Strategic authorities are being handed expanding responsibilities: control over the Adult Education Budget, shared ownership of Local Skills Improvement Plans, transport investment through City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements, and the preparation of spatial development strategies.
On paper, this suggests combined authorities are becoming the primary scale for economic strategy. In practice, however, government confidence appears to falter when it comes to the most consequential regeneration decisions. Rather than fully trusting strategic authorities to lead, Whitehall continues to rely on bespoke delivery vehicles that fragment responsibility and blur accountability.
At the same time, what is presented as a regional economic strategy often exists only nominally.
Strategy or submission?
It is sometimes suggested that regional economic strategy is articulated through the Local Growth Plan. But this misunderstands its purpose. The Local Growth Plan is not a strategy developed by a region for itself. It is a proposal made in response to a centrally defined request, framed around national priorities, eligibility criteria, and funding envelopes set by Whitehall.
It reflects what regions must say in order to secure investment, not necessarily what they would prioritise if genuinely free to determine their own economic futures. The Local Growth Plan begins elsewhere – with central government objectives – and asks regions to align accordingly.
The result is an inversion of self-determination. What is described as devolution increasingly resembles conditional autonomy, where regions are empowered only insofar as they conform to national policy narratives.
Why this matters for MDZs and regeneration
In the absence of a genuinely self-determined regional economic strategy, MDZs and similar vehicles take on a far greater – and more problematic – role. Rather than delivering strategy, they begin to define it by default.
What gets zoned gets built. What gets built shapes the economy. Once land use, infrastructure, and governance are fixed, alternative futures narrow. Democratic debate shifts from “what kind of economy do we want?” to “how do we make this work?”
This is not a failure of local government ambition. It is the predictable outcome of a system in which strategy is shaped by funding rounds, policy fashions, and delivery mechanisms rather than by a settled regional vision.
Designing the system – not drifting into it
There is nothing inherently wrong with MDZs, development corporations, or public finance institutions. Used well, they can bring focus, speed, and investment. But taken together – in the absence of a clear strategic hierarchy – they point towards a model of regeneration that is centralised, fragmented, and detached.
At a moment when strategic authorities are still being established, and when the government has launched a review into the statutory services of local authorities, there is a strong case for greater clarity.
That clarity rests on three principles:
1. Regeneration responsibility must be defined by scale. Local authorities should retain leadership over neighbourhood and community-based regeneration. Strategic authorities should lead developments that exceed local capacity but fall below national significance – the missing “middle tier” for regionally significant infrastructure and development.
2. Zones must be instruments of strategy, not substitutes for it. MDZs should be embedded within democratically agreed regional economic frameworks, not used to bypass them.
3. Government must be honest about the role of local government. Councils cannot simultaneously absorb growing public service pressures and be expected to lead complex regeneration without clarity, capacity, and consent.
Regeneration with the system – or despite it
If this moment is not seized, regeneration will continue to happen not because of the system we design, but despite it: delivered through a growing maze of zones, corporations, and funding mechanisms – centralised yet fragmented, accelerated yet detached.
For the North East, the challenge is not whether growth happens, but who defines it, at what scale, and in whose interests. Genuine devolution requires more than new institutions; it requires the freedom to determine strategy – not simply the capacity to deliver someone else’s.
Until that distinction is addressed, MDZs and Local Growth Plans remain symptoms of a deeper problem, not solutions to it.
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