City Growth Commission
Terms of Reference
The Commission will be an independent authoritative inquiry into how best to enable England’s
major cities to drive growth and respond to the fiscal and economic challenges of the future. It will
be chaired by Jim O’Neill, retiring Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and will be
hosted and run by RSA 2020 Public Services. The Commission has been set up with the support of
the Core Cities Group, the LGA, and the GLA and will also have a range of private sector partners.
The Commission will complement recent positive developments in relation to devolution to our
cities, including: the Heseltine report; City Deals; Community Budgets; the Single Growth Fund; the
establishment of combined authorities; the London Finance Commission; and the Manchester and
North East Independent Economic Reviews. These point to an emerging consensus in favour of
rebalancing the economy and building up the capacity and capability of cities to be engines of
growth for the nation. Building on this, the Commission will develop a practical plan for ensuring
that our cities are able to compete successfully in a world in which growth will increasingly be driven
by mid tier cities.
The Commission will both develop an overarching plan for supporting city led growth and propose
specific and practical mechanisms that can help make this a reality. In doing so it will engage with
Whitehall, business and the political parties in order to generate broad support for its proposals and
to lay the policy foundations for the next stage of devolution to our cities, post 2015.
Scope
The key questions that the Commission will address are:

What are the key benefits - for the economy, investment, innovation, productivity and public
finances – of shifting to a multi-polar growth model, in which our major cities are key players
in the nations’ economy?

What does the international evidence show about the role of cities in driving growth and
catalysing innovation and what are the key success factors that we can learn from?

What is the relationship between public service reform and economic growth at city level?
How can more effective demand management through public service reconfiguration and
integration help to drive social and economic productivity and enable our cities to become
financially sustainable?

How can growth in other English cities complement London’s economic success, and what
should be the interrelationship between devolution, growth and reform strategies in London
and in our other major cities?

What needs to change between Whitehall and our cities to make multi-polar growth a
reality? What does the Centre need to do to enable this and what economic and revenue
levers do cities require?

What are the practical, organisational, cultural and systemic barriers that stand in the way of
a fundamental shift in economic power to our cities and how can these be overcome?
The Commission will take labour market reform as the primary lens through which it will focus on
how to affect a shift in the nation’s economy. It will examine the interrelationship between
employment support, childcare, skills policy, welfare strategy and economic development and make
recommendations about how best to align decision-making and responsibility with local economies
and labour markets.
Methodology
The Commission will be supported by a dedicated Secretariat based at the RSA. Its inquiry will take
the following forms:

An open call for evidence – the Commission will commence with an open call for evidence.
This will be in relation to the core questions identified above. In particular submissions will
be sought from businesses, the investor community and business groups, as well as from
local government, think tanks and civil society organisations. The Commission will hold
several hearings so that it can hear directly from key organisations.

Commissioned research – There will be several commissioned research projects to examine
the evidence and to model and test solutions in relation to some of the central questions
that the Commission will explore.

High level seminars and round tables – These will explore the core questions and test
solutions to these in a series of discreet roundtables targeted at key groups including senior
civil servants, manifesto teams, business leaders, city leaders, think tanks, academics and
economists. Each round table will include presentations on core issues and barriers that the
Commission is exploring together with potential solutions to these which will be tested and
developed through facilitated discussion.
The open calls for evidence, commissioned research and high level roundtables will all be formal
inputs into the Commission’s final report. This final report will both set out a phased plan for a
system shift towards promoting city led growth and make specific recommendations for the
mechanisms that will enable this.
TIMESCALE
The Commission will be launched in October 2013. Its research and engagement will take place
during the autumn and winter of 2013 and the spring of 2014. The Commission’s final report will be
published in summer of 2014.
BL 03.9.13