Reform of England’s local government system is long overdue. There are currently 349 local and combined authorities with overlapping responsibilities and competing interests. This bureaucratic and complex system makes long-term strategic decision making difficult and holds back the places that need to be levelled up.

In his latest report Centre for Cities’ Policy Officer Simon Jeffrey proposed redrawing the English political map, replacing the 348 existing authorities with 69 unitary or combined ones with greater powers and resources and whose political boundaries match the economic geography in which people live and work.

For this episode of City Minutes, he joins Andrew Carter to discuss his proposals in more detail.

The Government launched the Eat Out To Help Out scheme to support the hospitality sector and encourage people to return to restaurants and cafes. More than 64 million meals were sold as part of the scheme, but it had mixed successes in city and town centres up and down the country.

Using footfall and spend data from the Centre for Cities High Streets Recovery Tracker, Researchers Valentine Quinio and Lahari Ramuni join Chief Executive Andrew Carter to evaluate the scheme and to make recommendations for what should replace it.

The killing of George Floyd in the US, the Black Lives Matter protests and Covid-19 have shone a spotlight on many of the systemic injustices that Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people still face.

For lots of young people, leaving their hometowns to head to university or build a career is an important rite of passage. Many people still head to London in search of those streets paved with gold but, in recent years, other cities such as Manchester and Glasgow have also drawn in increasing numbers of people. 

However, as a new paper from the Social Mobility Commission - Moving Out to Move On -  shows, those who choose to move to prosperous cities such as London are usually more from privileged backgrounds and have university degrees. Meanwhile, people from less privileged backgrounds are less likely to move altogether - and those that do tend to move to less economically successful areas and, as a result, have fewer opportunities open to them, even after they move.   

To discuss this issue in more detail, Andrew Carter is joined by Dr Dafni Papoutsaki, Research Fellow at the Institute for Employment Studies and co-author of the Social Mobility Commission's new report.