ABSTRACT
The concern over creating certainty in the regions and compatibility between institutions of government rests on the motivations and remit of each of the regional players themselves. The Regional Development Agencies, created in 1999, possess a clear agenda, namely to foster economic rejuvenation. The other policy initiatives, however, are vested with either local planning authorities or regional assemblies or groupings. Furthermore, proposals in the fields of housing, transport and the environment appear to be potentially at odds with the interests of economic development. The government has sought to address this concern by suggesting that the new regional planning framework will be sustainable, but seems to be a convenient way of indicating there are conflicting interests that regions are going to have to reconcile themselves (Cowell and Murdoch, 1999;
Murdoch and Tewdwr-Jones, 1999). The key question is, to what extent will the new mechanisms permit a sustainable and co-ordinated approach to regional policy-making? With the lack of formal regional government, at least for the present time, where will the degrees of power lie in the potential struggles that could emerge between the multifarious agencies of governance at the regional level on the one hand and between central government as initiators of the regional renaissance and local government as the implementation level?
