Following the Review of Sub National Economic Development and Regeneration, other regional strategies, such as the regional cultural strategy, will be combined with the regional spatial strategy and regional economic strategy. They will form a new single and integrated regional strategy to bring together spatial, environmental and economic objectives for each of the English regions, excluding London.

The Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 brings the Regional Strategy and new regional governance arrangements into force.

The Regional Strategies will promote greater alignment and integrated working across organisations in strategic planning to help deliver desired level of growth and prosperity. A number of regions are undertaking reviews to the existing Regional Spatial Strategies in transition to the Regional Strategies, including the West Midlands Phase 3 Revisions, East of England, East Midlands and the North West.

The Policy Statement on Regional Strategies sets out the main expectations on their form, content, implementation and monitoring. In particular, it requires the Regional Strategy to contain policies which “broadly cover: Priorities for widening access to culture, media and sport” (para 3.6, p.9). Cultural and sporting partners should be taking this opportunity to ensure culture and sport priorities are embedded in the wider strategic development vision.

An increasingly important planning and delivery priority will be greater support for culture and sport in the sub-regions through Multi Area Agreements (MAAs). The Third Wave of MAAs has been announced in 2010, and there are now 15 MAAs in place. These collaborative arrangements will strengthen existing collaboration and encourage the creation of new partnerships. It will present new opportunities and challenges for promoting community well-being and development through culture and sport.

A culture-proofing checklist helps to develop regional and sub-regional policies which will plan and deliver cultural development. Originally developed for the draft South East Plan by Oxford Brookes University for Culture South East, the checklist is also applicable in other plan-making situations.

Links to Further Guidance and Advice

Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009

CLG and BIS, Policy Statement on Regional Strategies, February 2010

DBERR (now BIS), 2005 Guidance to RDAs on Regional Strategies, 2005

CLG, Multi Area Agreements web pages

Homes and Communities Agency (HCA)

Oxford Brookes, Culture proof Checklist, 2006

See also the Strategic and Local Development Plan Policies section of the toolkit.

See the West Midlands cultural mapping case study to see how regional partners have worked to build the cultural evidence-base to inform revisions to the Regional Strategy.