The first thing to say is that the deal has been constructed as a 20-year deal, so we are in the first fraction of the period of its establishment. It is probably fair to say that the first couple of years were devoted to establishing governance structures and having rules in place. Given that we are talking about a significant amount of public spend, that was the focus for the first couple of years. I was not there at the time—I was an elected member, but I was not a member of the city region deal cabinet—so although I was aware of the deal, I was not very close to it.
None of this was expected or intended to happen overnight, and that is still the case. We can draw down only £30 million of investment a year. There was never a question of £1 billion being spent in five or six years. The deal involves investment over an extended period. I cannot speak about the period prior to May 2017 but, since then, the joint working between the local authorities has been excellent and has improved as we have developed the city region into a place where much wider regional working goes on.
Kevin Rush mentioned the regional economic partnership, which is probably at a more advanced stage of development than other regional economic partnerships in Scotland. The fact that the Glasgow city region deal came first is allowing us to set the pace for other regional ways of working, particularly on regional economies. Regionalisation is a very significant part of the enterprise and skills review and the move towards thinking about the Scottish economy in a regional context. We are finding that that is increasingly useful—for example, it is increasingly helpful when we talk to inward investors.
On transparency, there were issues with all the deals, initially. Even some of the later deals are experiencing similar issues. Because of the nature of the way in which they were established, the selection of projects was not open to public discussion or public consultation. The projects that were included were selected on the basis of rules that were set by the UK Government in particular. It was not a case of local authorities asking neighbourhoods and communities what they wanted. There was no transparency in that regard.
However, there has always been transparency on governance and the following of processes. It is undoubtedly a complex arrangement. When I took over as chair, it took me a good few months to get my head round some of the criteria that we have to deal with. Luckily, Kevin Rush and other officers are there to do some of that technical stuff for me. That there has always been transparency on governance is illustrated by the fact that decisions have been made by the city region cabinet that have gone back to member local authorities and gone through their democratic processes. It is important to point that out. That has not happened in a huge number of cases, but there have been incidences of that.
As far as engagement is concerned, the important thing for us is that there is public engagement before the projects impact directly on communities and that the transparency around that is as exemplary as we can make it. That sits with individual authorities; it is up to them to engage with their local communities. In Glasgow, the engagement around the building of a new community in Sighthill has been exemplary and of very high quality. There has been a genuinely deep level of community engagement and it is the type of flagship project that the city deal is designed to enable.
Similar work is going on around the avenues programme. Its full title is the enabling infrastructure—integrated public realm programme, but we call it the avenues programme for short. There has been deep and detailed engagement with communities on the Garnethill and Sauchiehall Street district regeneration framework in the city, which the Sauchiehall Street avenue is part of. A lot can be learned from that engagement and rolled out.
Communities are most interested in how the work will affect them day to day. Public engagement is particularly important when infrastructure-related construction work is going on, with all the short-term interruptions and disbenefits that come from that, so that people know that something is coming at the end of that work.
As Kevin Rush said, there are various fora in which we can share learning with other local authorities and now other regions—not just city regions, but economic regions in Scotland. The Ayrshire growth deal is an example. These are no longer just city deals; they are economic regional deals.
There will be different learning and different approaches in every region; that is the whole point of the regional approach. There is no other region in Scotland like the Glasgow region. We are the only metropolitan region in Scotland and the only true metropolitan region north of Manchester, so no one else will have exactly the same factors or issues to deal with. No other local authority has the same levels of contaminated post-industrial land, for example, which is quite a focus of the Glasgow deal.
However, we can definitely share the principles around things such as that deep dive public engagement and we are learning and getting better at that all the time.