Martin Hill is a Conservative councilor and Leader of Lincolnshire County Council.
This interview was conducted on 10 February 2023.
Q: Could you tell us about your role in growth and regional policy in the past few decades?
I have been the leader of Lincolnshire County Council since 2005. For some time now, we have been pursuing a devolution deal with the government, probably for the last six years. We nearly got over the line four or five years ago, but, at the end of the day, we decided it wasn’t for us at that time. So we’ve had a lot of discussions with a whole range of ministers and civil servants. We’re quite experienced and really would like to, get it over the line in the next year or so.
Q: What were the successes and failures of regeneration policy over the past few decades as you’ve experienced them?
The success is that it’s all about infrastructure. For example, looking back over the last 20 years or so, the dualing of the A46 between Newark and Lincoln was a success. The University of Lincoln, which the County Council had quite a big hand, in was a success. We also persuaded the lottery to invest in Lincoln Castle, which has brought people in. Lincolnshire, the west part of Lincolnshire and the south part of Lincolnshire, I’m fairly confident, are in a pretty good place to move forward.
But obviously, on the east coast, the old coastal resorts, there is a lot of deprivation. So, it’s an area of two halves. I think we’re making pretty good progress on the west and the south, in terms of migration from other areas, but also investment. But on the east coast, it is a big problem. Although there’s been quite a bit of money spent, we have lots of government funding, I don’t think it’s been the game changer that people would have hoped for.
Q: Why has it not proved as successful as people might have hoped?
Two things, really. I think one is that there’s been lots of investment, people have invested in all sorts of deprived areas. Looking back, has it changed anything? Because it’s almost as though things have been done to communities, and some projects have come in – but have they actually changed anything? I think there was a Labour MP who said, millions of pounds have been spent, but has it changed anything? No. So there’s an element of sort of self-help and encouraging people to invest in businesses to come.
Second, it’s all about the aspirations. We’re back to investment in skills so that people have got the skills to develop and they’ve got the skills to then remain. Because in Lincolnshire, we still have a grammar school system – so the education system is pretty good with grammars and most of the secondary schools. But what people tend to do is they then leave. They go and get a job in London, and then they probably come back when they’ve got a family or to retire. So it’s retaining those people and having the opportunities and the skills. That’s one of the disappointments.
I suppose for the devolution programme, the reluctance of government departments to let go of the skills agenda was a failure. So that in local areas like Lincolnshire, we can work with local businesses to develop the skills that they need so that then they can then move forward. I think things like the broadband programme has been very good for places like us. It allows people to come and set up businesses or existing businesses to carry on to be on the internet network to make their businesses successful.
In Lincolnshire is, we’ve got the Lincolnshire County Council area, which is a population of about 750,000. We have two small unitaries, North Lincolnshire and North east Lincolnshire, which are based around Scunthorpe and Grimsby respectively. They very much politically want to be part of the Lincolnshire agenda, but obviously they are also part of the Humberside agenda. They politically have decided they want to be part of Lincolnshire, which is what the public would want south of the Humber. So they are a bit different. Obviously, two industrial areas, Grimsby, an ex-fishing port, which again has seen better times, and Scunthorpe, based around steel again, have uncertain futures. They are more industrially based.
In terms of economics, there are four themes going on. One is the industrial base of the Scunthorpes and the Grimsbys, and Lincoln, which had a history of heavy engineering. Then you’ve got rural areas, and you’ve got the coastal area, and you’ve also the margins between the cities, the urban concentrations and the rural areas. So the rural areas and the city are pretty prosperous comparatively. Whereas the towns are doing okay. As I said, a massive problem is the east coast, and our director of public health did a report recently which starkly showed that on the east coast, 80 per cent of the workforce haven’t got skills, and a lot of people are economically inactive who could be.
Devolution to me means aving the local knowledge to actually adapt policies for local variation or local knowledge. This is not possible for a civil servant sitting in London. That’s what the issue is. One of the things we can do, because you can work from anywhere now, we hope to encourage people to come live in a nice part of the world and still be able to, if you’re not manufacturing something, work economically and contribute.
Q: What is the biggest opportunity that you see for the economy of wider Lincolnshire?
Talking about greater Lincolnshire, it’s about changes. Obviously, the carbon agenda will require a change. It’s transitioning those areas. As well as Grimsby, which was a proud fishing port, but now that’s all gone; and Lincoln as well. A lot of the manufacturing started around the agricultural industry and servicing that, and then it moved on to do other things. So I think it’s all about marketing the opportunities for coming to Lincolnshire. Geography is a problem for us because, although, as I said, on the west part and the south part, we’ve got reasonably good communications, the A1 the East Coast mainline.
We’ve got a lot of retired people coming to Lincolnshire, in common with other areas like us.
But again, there’s a whole industry you could make around servicing those people and people looking after people, older people. It is a transition and we’re never going to be like the city of London with lots of money. We are what we are. As the adage goes, when the cranes start going up in Lincolnshire for building stuff, the next recession is coming. What we tend to find is when there are highs and lows, recessions with boom and bust, we never hit the heights of prosperity. But we never I actually hit the depths as well. We remain pretty steady because I think we are and still remain an agricultural-based economy.
Things like agritech, which I think for us is a big thing, to mechanise. Not only for the factories. We also have work in the fields, and we have a big labour problem. We have things like shortage of power supply. In south of Lincolnshire, we’re an hour away from London. But sometimes, there’s this feeling of remoteness, which isn’t probably justified.
Q: Which are the most important relationships in terms of cities and urban centres, and how do they affect business decision-making?
I suppose the urban areas aside from London. Nottingham is quite a strong one and Peterborough of course for south Lincolnshire, the bottom third of Lincolnshire. Where I live, it probably looks to Peterborough for people working there. So it’s Peterborough, Leicester, Nottingham, those are the urban areas. We don’t want to just be in the suburbs of somewhere else. We think that Lincolnshire is big enough. It has a 1.2 million population. In the northern part, you’ve got the old Humberside area, so north and north-east, as I’ve said before, very much around the Humber estuary – they have a lot going on there in terms of changing to carbon neutral and a lot of industry there.
Q: How important is London economically? Is it an opportunity or is it a drag on the economy locally?
I think it’s an opportunity. I know some colleagues elsewhere in the East Midlands moan about London getting everything. Let’s not drag down what’s a massive success story for the country. In terms of Lincolnshire, I suppose the third half of Lincolnshire probably looks south. But the other third is looking north. I don’t see it as a problem. We do need more investment. In the East Midlands, we have done pretty badly in terms of investment coming to the area. Whereas in Lincolnshire I think we are in a bit better place and we’ve done successfully. I think a lot of the issue is you don’t moan, you’ve got to have the product that government will invest in. Then you’ve got to have the funding as well. You’ve got to be prepared as a local area to have the capability of putting millions of pounds in to match fund what somebody else is doing.
Q: Were you covered by the East Midlands Development Agency?
We were in the East Midlands RDA and Regional Assembly, and frankly, we weren’t very happy – because you have the Golden Triangle of Nottingham, Leicester and Derby. Most of the action went on there. We felt very much on the margins in Lincolnshire, which is why, in devolution terms, we don’t want to go back to being part of somebody else’s region. We think Lincolnshire should be standalone, so we make our own case and make our own future. So we are very wary of any regional reinvention.
Q: Did you have a Lincoln LEP, or was it a Lincolnshire LEP, how did it work?
We have a greater Lincolnshire LEP, so that also serves the North and North East.
Q: Was that always the case?
We started it up, and then North and North-east Lincs councils both said, ‘Well, can we come in?’ They rode two horses for a bit. They were also in Yorkshire and Humberside, but they’re mostly with us. So, we chose that geography. I was the leader at the time – when the Conservatives came in we hand-picked the best people. We had a chairman, she was the chief executive of the Co-op locally, and she was a very good operator. To be honest, the LEP has been very successful. If you look at the actual record of investment, per head of population, we’ve done very well because we have a set geography, which everybody signs up to.
But we haven’t had anyone who wanted to go off blow their trumpets. We’ve been very cohesive, we all agree in Lincolnshire, it’s amazing when we get round the table together, everybody agrees on the agenda, even to the extent they’ll say, ‘Well, that’s good for your particular area, so we’ll back you’. So there is that local cohesion and it’s been pretty successful. We haven’t lost money – because most of the money went to the Golden Triangle. We were given some scraps at the end of it. So we’re much happier with the LEP situation; and in terms of that agenda, we’re quite happy to carry on with the LEP because it does work for us.
Q: In terms of thinking about the move towards a combined authority or to a devolution deal – is that potentially a next step for you, to follow Surrey or Cornwall, even to have an elected mayor of Greater Lincolnshire?
Yes, we are. We’ve been around this mulberry bush for quite a long time. In the early days, five or six years ago, it became pretty clear, and it hasn’t changed, that the Government – and I think it’s true for both parties – they’re obsessed with having a directly elected individual. I can’t say we’re delighted by that, we don’t understand why everybody’s obsessed. I can see it works for the likes of Manchester, Birmingham and London; but really, in a big rural area, why do you need it? But we pragmatically all agreed, and said ‘Well, we not too keen on having a mayor, but frankly, if that’s the game in town’… I suspect it’s gone so far now that the Government’s agenda, whichever party will be in, will be that they want 40 or 50 mayors where they can pick up the phone to an individual and do that.
There’s no problem. I think the local view is that there’s no point in going for anything less than tier three. Because, frankly, it’s not worth it because you don’t get the rewards. But I would say about devolution, what devolution? Basically, what we’ve got at the moment is that the directly elected individual will get some money and actually, bluntly, very limited powers and responsibilities. But I also buy into the argument that it is a good first step. Frankly, we want a bit more than just some sway over adult education. Originally, what really annoyed me when I looked at the detail – because there were some quite detailed discussions five years ago – was that whatever you do has to be agreed by civil servants. That’s not devolution. It is a first step, but it’s very limited.
I think the problem is that government departments don’t want to let go, they don’t want to trust anybody else. The one thing we really would love is skills and the ability to deliver skills locally – as opposed to a lot of institutions, where it’s bums on seats, and that’s what they get rewarded for. We want to be able to do skills that local employers want. I think everywhere in the country you go, employers will say. ‘Can you do a better job?’ Because we have to re-educate people to what we want. So at the moment, it’s disappointing what’s on offer.
It’s very standard, it’s all going to be the same everywhere, which is disappointing. We’re steering clear of health at the moment. The Manchester experiment did talk about how to devolve some health, and that didn’t work. So everybody is frightened off. The health service is very centralised in the way they go on. It is just disappointing again, not just an economic policy but health policy. We see local solutions where local providers like us and local health providers could work better together, but there’s too much central control I think.
Q: How would the mayoral model work in the greater Lincolnshire footprint?
The latest iteration in government policy is for three upper tiers. So that’s the County Council, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. They’re the ones who will negotiate with government, who will set up the mayoral combined authority with the mayor. Then following that, if they want to bring other partners on, they’ll do that. In Nottinghamshire what they are probably going for is the upper tiers will have votes and there will be some reps from business. Then in a two-tier world, there probably will be some district council reps as well. That’s how it will work.
Q: What are the benefits of unitary versus two tier, how do people think about it locally?
We did an extensive consultation last time round. The government was ready to sign, we nearly got to the door, but then we had votes and the county council and one district council pulled out. We had quite an extensive consultation. About 10,000 responses. The main theme that came back was, “Yes, we like the sound of that”. But then you’ll end up with three tiers – and I think that is the problem. When Simon Clark was around, one of the conditions was you’ve got to go unitary. The reason the Government is in its current position is because it caused arguments and disruption that basically got too complicated. My own personal view is unitary should come sooner rather than later. But I also accept that the Government is saying, ‘Well, let’s just park that issue’. The Government’s priority is, let’s get devolution and I think they are right. When you do get a mayor and you have two tiers, I think the obvious benefits of just having a mayor and a single tier would be better. The public don’t differentiate, it’s just the council.
Q: How do you feel about the power that a unitary county mayor would hold?
It’s interesting because Cornwall and Suffolk and Norfolk are going for this directly elected leader of the council. Basically, that person wouldn’t be on the council. They would be even more powerful than some of these other mayors because not only would they be in charge of the council, they’ll also be taking the mayor role on as well. They will be massively powerful people. I have some doubts about how that would work. There’s inevitably, a tension between those people who are directly elected leaders and those who are not. How that would work in cohesion terms, I don’t know.
There’s two things I’d say. One is, I accept the conurbations are different, but in rural areas where there’s a large county council or a large council, why not just use what’s already there to work with them and to do it in conjunction with them? Second, there’s my ex-MP, Nick Boles, he said, “what the government ought to do is not do this piecemeal agenda, just devolve skills or just devolve the lot. So you don’t end up with civil servants still in London”. I think there is a benefit and this idea that we’re going to go piecemeal, and if you jump through some hoops that we want, you know, just devolve the lot. Because we all know we’re over-centralised in this country, and it sort of doesn’t make any sense. So the mayor, I mean, the mayor, it’s quite clear, the mayor should be just about taking on responsibilities that currently sit with Whitehall. That’s what the main thrust will be. But when you start mixing the two, the mayors aren’t supposed to be running services. The mayors are supposed to be linking with government, you know, looking at the broader picture, bringing people together, you know, for economic agenda and, you know, getting funding together and all that.
Q: Is it easy for different authorities to come together on planning? Would it be better if the mayor had more clout in the devolution deal over those wider planning infrastructure decisions?
We used to have County Structural Patterns, and they were abolished some time ago. Now, where the planning happens, and therefore where the development happens sits with the district councils who are small – who are less able to withstand the pressure from developers. This is one of the frustrations we have in the way the current policy works. Especialy when developers begin with “it’s not sustainable anymore”. Then all those promises they gave us in terms of infrastructure, sorry, they can’t do it anymore. We find it very frustrating because, if you’re not careful, the District Council will agree to things. What doesn’t happen is the necessary infrastructure to go with it. Then you end up with a situation where you get a load more development, and not the proper infrastructure to support it, which is a recipe for poor, poor decisions in the future.
Q: How receptive do you find Whitehall officials to the sorts of concerns that you were raising just there?
It is a funny old beast, Whitehall. I’ve been around a long time. You sit there and the minister or MP will come in, or the minister will come along and tell you, “we’re going to do this. We’re going to do that. I’m going to do the other”. Then you say, “Oh that’s good”. Then you relay this back to your officials. But then they then talk to the civil servants who say, “No, that’s not happening”. So with all the best will in the world, sometimes this challenge of centralisation, ministers vary so outcomes vary.
We had just had a meeting with Robert Jenrick, who is really up to speed on migration. But some ministers don’t really know what’s going on. Then you feel that civil servants, they’re doing their best, but they obviously need to be making decisions, because that’s one of the big arguments about devolution. Because no minister can know what the hell’s going on in their big department, can they? And they rely on civil servants to actually do it. So I think relations are good. We do try to deliver what the government wants, to try to explain to them some of the issues. A constant problem is policies that suit urban areas, don’t suit rural areas. But we do our best. I think we have a pretty good record at talking to regional officials and where necessary, MPs about, and ministers. I would moan about the very unfair funding regime we have to live with, but we just get on with it.
Q: Is your instinct that the centralising tendency comes more from civil servants rather than ministers?
I think that’s where the problem lies. There are two things. One is the departmental rivalry. Then secondly, I think it’s more civil servants who, it’s easier for them to just run things than having got to run around chasing people. Of course, politically, it is a risk, because who gets the blame? If something goes wrong, we’re in the situation, because it’s been centralised so long, that they don’t go to the local person, they go to the minister, and ask them “What are you doing about this”? It does take some courage and the ability for people to accept that things will go wrong, which they do anyway. I think it’s more a resistance, civil servants don’t really want to let go, probably for very good reasons, but it’s very frustrating.
Q: Is there a congruent Whitehall attitude, or does it vary a lot between departments?
I think it varies a lot between departments, and we have our sort of champion is the local government, which in terms of the hierarchy of civil servants is probably the least regarded for whatever reason by the treasury. The treasury, gets everywhere, as it has to balance the books. There is no sort of cohesive single view, you are always dealing with individual ministers and individual departments, from their view. We are better locally at working with partners than civil servants, who seem to not do that. There is a bit of civil rivalry between government departments, which doesn’t help. That’s another argument for devolution. Let us sort it out.
Q: Which government department have you found the most likely to oppose giving up power to regions and localities?
I think health is one because that we have a relationship, but also then the other worst one is dealing with the skills agenda. That department is totally resistant to changing anything, we find them very difficult.
Q: Was it better with the Learning Skills Councils?
Yeah, but they’re still difficult.
Q: In a devolution deal, taking a ten-year view, what are the two or three things where if you had more control, you could really make a difference?
I think skills is the big one, because then you can start shaping with providers. We need to be working with universities and other providers. I think that’s the big one. As well as more local decision-making on things like transport. I think bus franchising is one of the carrots that’s being dangled. Do I want bus franchising in a big rural county like Lincolnshire? With low bus, low users? I think not really. But the skills and the infrastructure just to be able to bring it all together and bring all the players together would be a good start.
The Levelling Up funds are a classic case of they’re all basically bits and bobs here and everywhere. If somebody said to us, “here you are Lincolnshire, here’s 100 million, off you go”. Then we could sit around the table and say, with health, police, skills, transport and say, “Look, right, we’ve got 100 million here, what shall we do?”. I’m sure we could come up with something which was transformational and actually made a difference, as opposed to current penny packets of money, for the leisure centre or doing up some house in some market town. Is that transformational? I don’t think so.
Q: How do you think about resources versus devolution?
When the LEPs were set up, it was all about business will come in and invest. Well, that’s never happened. I think that there is a resource issue; if you can bring people together and have a common purpose, and are prepared to invest in that common purpose, that would be good. The South East is the one economic very big plus we’ve got in this country and in my part of the world, they moan about how terrible the traffic is. Well, you’ve just got to smile because compared to down south it’s not the same. We have lost out.
You can understand where London generates a massive amount of the money that this country runs on that they should actually get that as well. I could moan about how much money some of the London boroughs get compared to us, but that’s just how it is. There is investment, but at the moment we will always seem to lose out to somewhere else. Because again, I think governments and civil servants look at urban areas as the solution. Let’s invest in urban areas. I think in county areas, we would say there’s also a strong case for investment in new tech. There’s always the danger that you just keep on investing in old stuff, which will eventually disappear. What we should be talking about is the future and what’s coming along which will be new and different. A lot of it will be about technology and information. The future still for this country is all about information technology and also expertise to survive, if you like, which rural areas are ideally set up to do.
Q: When you look back over your career over the past few decades, what stands out to you is the main lesson that we should take away?
I think what works, which is why I think the devolution agenda which has been talked about, I mean, my background, and when I came into government, and of course, I’m from a farming background, when you’re farming small scale you sit around the kitchen table at breakfast time and you decide what you’re doing, then you all agree what you’re doing and off you go and you do it. What really frustrated me when I came into government was how long it takes decisions to be made and how difficult it is. The answer, to me, is about devolution, and giving more local power to local people. Not just at our level, but downstream. They’re on the ground and they can see for themselves what requires doing, as long as they’ve got a framework of what is required of them to achieve. At the moment, you see, the civil servants will say, “we want you to do this, and by the way this is how you’re going to do it, and it’s not right”. I just saw the recent thing, we’re now going to have auditors crawling all over us, making us tick boxes which some minister had decided we should tick. That is actually anti-devolutionist. I think to me, it’s about local decision-making. At the same time, I think that private companies also combine that with some ability for local managers and people to make their own decisions to deliver what the organisation requires. For me, that’s when I get so frustrated with government that, by definition it’s always going to be inefficient.
Years ago, when Eric Pickles came along and when he was opposition, he said, let’s stop all this nonsense. We’ll give an area one cheque for several 100 million, and it’s up to you what you do with that. I think there’s a bit, there is a political risk to that. It is about actually giving us the ability, but also giving us the resources. Not new resources, resources which are already there. Not anything new, and let us get on with it. But we’re a long way from that, you know, compared to other countries where the regional leaders have a lot more sway and a lot more influence – they can get things done.
Q: A long way away from it. But a small step forward?
We’re so constrained at the moment, we’re so controlled, that it’s very difficult so you work with and do what you can. But you still get the cap-in-hand mentality, which Andy Burnham talked about recently. We need to get away from that mentality, but I’m afraid the country is a long way from that. A lot of the public will say, they want central decision-making because they think it’ll be better, but I’m not sure it is all the time.
ENDS