Funding local growth was arguably the key theme at UKREiiF

Funding local growth was arguably the key theme at UKREiiF – everyone wants the single pot. Having been part of some of the early conversations with West Midlands Combined Authority when I was at the West Midlands Growth Company, I understand why - the promise of the single pot is not only certainty and efficiency, but an opportunity to think and operate differently.

So I'd say the single pot is necessary, but I'd also ask whether it's sufficient.

For one, the single pot is not unfettered - there will, perhaps inevitably, be ties back to departmental outcomes. Such an approach helps with certainty and efficiency, but places different constraints on beneficiaries that hold them back from delivering against locally-determined priorities. Sure, there's a single pot - but it still has to serve central mandates.

Essentially, it amounts to devolved governance - rather than genuine regional government. Greater local accountability over central government money is a step in the right direction, of course, but true devolution will only come when places have the means to raise their own revenue (and are more accountable to the local electorate for both how much they raise and how it's deployed than they are to Westminster and Whitehall).

Now, you might argue that mayors have the ability to levy a precept (true) and that very few of them have opted to do so(also true) - so why do they need additional tax-raising powers they evidently don't need? The challenges with the precept are that a) its revenue-raising power is limited - while it provides a means against which mayors can borrow, without a genuinely stable fiscal base, additional borrowing is a dead-end for local and regional government; and b) it is raised through council tax, which falls squarely on the shoulders of residents - meaning mayors will have to expend a lot of political capital for relatively little return. Through council tax alone, there is no direct link to growth and productivity - it is based solely on price bands that were set 35 years ago.

So if not the precept, then what? Predictably, Europe has a plethora of options that merit consideration from the tourismtaxes that many of us will recognise from our summer holidays, to more localised forms of income, corporation and property tax. Taken together, they provide a suite of measures that enable local and regional policymakers to focus on the productivityand growth of their places - knowing that judicious taxes on local economic activity will provide the means for further investment in the local economy.

Of course, it's not perfect and I'd hear you out on any number of arguments. Chief amongst them will surely be to questionwhether additional taxes ought to be high on the agenda for the next government, with the tax burden as high as it has been since the second world war. But with both the Labour and Conservative Parties committed to growth, providing places with the means to pursue it – perhaps by reassessing and reforming the balance of taxation at national and municipal levels –would be a good place to start.

This is how we truly end the "begging bowl" culture - not by focusing on the size and contents of one bowl, but placing greater accountability in mayors (and their electorates) to shape their places.