Policy Actor Interviews

This sections sets out the approach taken to interviewing the policy makers related to Southern Staffordshire. This focused specifically on personnel from within the LAs of Southern Staffordshire and senior members of the GBS and S&S LEPs. The LEP members included representatives of the private sector, from LAs outside of Southern Staffordshire,

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and from organisations representing the critical economic development support infrastructure of the area, such as FE colleges and business representation organisations. Interviews with policy makers were integral for the research, allowing me to build an understanding of how these key personnel interpreted spatial economy, how this varied between partners in the governance process, and the effect of spatial revisions in the transition from the regional model to that of ‘Localism’ on these understandings.

In this section I discuss the approach to undertaking these interviews. It commences with an outline of the selection and justification of the sample. It progresses to discuss the

development of the interview question framework, the interview process itself, and reflect on the interview experience and how this went in practice.

3.6.1 Selecting the interview sample

This study is undertaken in a highly specific area, and as such the potential candidates for interview were limited. The need for participants who were or had been involved in the sub-national economic governance process dictated a focus on four groups from three specific sets of organisations: Officers and Elected Members from the Southern Staffordshire LAs, LEP Board Members and associated personnel, and the related infrastructure of delivery, support and representation organisations. Collectively these four groups represented a set of personnel totalling around 50 individuals.

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The translation of potential candidates into subjects saw a total of 20 individuals interviewed across 16 separate bodies (Table 3.9). The attrition rate was largely due to gaining access to all potential candidates, with a number either declining the invitation to be interviewed or not responding to requests. Additionally with certain organisations, the LEPs in particular, it was considered more efficient to interview only a few representatives, limiting duplication. This freed up time to focus on interviewing a broader set of stakeholders rather than focusing solely on the Southern Staffordshire LAs and the LEPs.

Table 3.9: Policy interview subjects

Position Organisation

Officer. Local Authority Tamworth District Council

Officer. Local Authority

South Staffordshire District Council

Officer. Local Authority Staffordshire County Council

Officer. Local Authority Lichfield District Council

Councillor, Local Authority

East Staffordshire District Council

Councillor, Local Authority Lichfield District Council

Chief Executive, Local Authority Staffordshire County Council Councillor, Local Authority

South Staffordshire District Council

Councillor, Local Authority Bromsgrove District Council

Councillor, Local Authority Solihull Borough Council

Board Member, LEP GBS LEP

Board Member, LEP GBS LEP

Board Member, LEP S&S LEP

Officer, Business Representation & Support Organisation Birmingham Chamber Chair, Business Representation and Support Organisation Tamworth & Lichfield BEP Officer, Business Representation & Support Organisation UK Trade & Investment

Director, FE College South Staffordshire College

Director, FE College Burton College

Director, Business Representation and Support

Organisation EEF

Director, Local Authority Birmingham City Council

Source: Author

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Across the interview sample two key gaps emerged from within Southern Staffordshire. The first was the refusal of Cannock Chase DC to participate in an interview at both officer and elected member level. The second was a similar refusal at officer level from East

Staffordshire BC. This occurred in spite of repeated contact and requests both directly and via the principal contact at the SSP.

A key actor within economic governance was the central state as the primary sponsor of the LEPs and architect of the reconfiguration of English sub-national divisions. Civil servants at the national level were however not pursued as interview subjects. This was for two specific reasons. First, given the granular detail required of Southern Staffordshire, its surrounding economy, and the highly localised governance environment it was felt a nationally situated subject would not make a significant contribution. Secondly, in terms of the objectives, rationale and processes in the formation and development of the new sub–national

architecture and policy, it was similarly felt they would not provide much additional detail beyond the formal documents and the LEP personnel interviewed.

3.6.2 Interview method and questionnaire design

Research interviews with policy actors involved in Southern Staffordshire were undertaken using a face-to-face interview method. Face-to-face (F-t-F) interviews were deemed to be the most appropriate method for this group for two key reasons. Firstly, whilst these interviews may be described as structured, in that a specific set of questions constituted the interview framework, due to the varying nature of the candidates and their role in economic governance

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there was the potential these would need to be translated to some extent during the interview process. This was anticipated largely as a result of the varying lexicons between actors, in particular between officers and elected members in LAs and between public sector and private sector representatives of the LEP. The F-t-F process allowed for direct interaction with the subject to mitigate this issue in a way online methods and even telephone interviews may not (Opdenakker, 2006). Related to this, the F-t-F approach allowed a broader opportunity in the interview process to build a rapport with the subject (Ibid, 2006). This was considered

particularly important given my background within the economic development industry, with the prolonged opportunity in the interview process for pre-interview relationship building as part of a process of eliciting a more detailed and open response. The F-t-F approach however was not always possible, and in a couple of incidences I instead undertook telephone

interviews with subjects.

These policy interviews used what I have described as a structured set of four questions. This structured set was designed however to elicit more of a narrative response from subjects. To this extent, the interviews collated rather than hard facts about the local economy and the governance relations, both of which were easily gained from local and sub-national policy documents, information on the experiences of the economy and its governance. To this extent, the four questions covered very specific separate but interlinking areas of the economy, policy, interventions and partnerships, but were phrased in a way to encourage a descriptive answer as opposed to a simple reference to documentary evidence (Table 3.10).

103 Table 3.10: Policy Actors Interview Questions

Theme Question

Economy Describe to me the economy of your area and its geography Policy What are your key policies and priorities for economic

development?

Intervention What are the current economic development activities and interventions you are involved in?

Partnership Describe to me your partnerships and other collaborative relations in economic development?

Source: Author

These questions were designed specifically to unpick both the articulations of spatial

economy embedded within key governance personnel covering Southern Staffordshire and to interpret the consistency of this identity in terms of key policy objectives, interventions, and partnerships. It considered potential variance which may occur as places were repositioned as part of a process of state spatial restructuring (Brenner, 2009; Harrison, 2010a; 2010b; Jessop, 2007) or refined through the prioritisation and patronage of specific policy objectives (Jessop, 1997; Jones, 1997) (Fig. 3.1).

Figure 3.1: Policy actor question design and conceptual links

Economy Policy Intervention Partnership

Embedded spatial

104 3.6.3 The interview process

Progressing this question framework to the interview, similar to the firm interview process, involved three stages of pre-interview, interview, and post-interview. The pre-interview stage involved firstly contact with the appropriate subject and agreement for their participation; this often included a conversation around the objectives of the study. Candidate selection in this case was mostly predetermined due to the limited personnel involved in strategic economic governance within most organisations. In the case of LAs, both Southern Staffordshire and those as co-members of GBS or S&S LEPs, the number of senior personnel involved in strategic decision making around economic development was very limited; in all cases the Economic Development Manager, or equivalent position, was targeted. The only diversion from this limited selection was in the case of the LEPs, where potentially all Board Members could be a potential candidate; in order to get the broader strategic overview of policies and priorities the Chair or Vice-Chair was targeted. In all cases the involvement of the SSP aided in initial dialogue, although this was not sufficient to encourage all stakeholders to participate.

Conversations with identified targets then progressed to agreeing a convenient time and place for the interview. In most cases this was the subject’s office, although in two cases telephone interviews were undertaken due to their limited availability. Closer to the date, the pre-interview preparation involved functional checks around equipment, especially the

dictaphone. Pre-interview protocols prior to the start of the interview involved a systematic reprisal of the purpose of the interview alongside outlining how the information would be used, how it would protect their anonymity, and informing them of the right to withdraw from the process at any time, including post-interview. At this stage I also checked consent around recording and general participation.

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The interview process replicated that employed for firms (3.5.4), recording whilst also taking notes around points for further elaboration. Closing the interviews similarly followed this process.

3.6.4 The interview experience

Conducting these interviews was consistent with the planned approach. Only two specific issues emerged that required response on a subject-by-subject basis rather than a revision of the process.

The first of these was a tendency for testimonies to occur broadly and incorporate multiple elements of the collective themes of the questions at any one time. This inevitably meant as the interview progressed there was increasing likelihood latter themes would have been covered in previous questions. This presented more of a problem for the analysis than during the interview, and required no specific revision to the interview process beyond the

acceptance and acknowledgement subjects may have covered latter questions previously.

The second issue was the need to revise some of the questions dependent on the subject. This was specifically a consideration in interviewing private sector representatives of the LEPs, where understandings around spatial economy and collaborative working were perhaps less established than amongst the public sector subjects, for whom these concepts were well embedded. As these representatives only accounted for three of the twenty subjects interviewed, no major action was taken, but this did require some response during the

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interview to convey the importance of the concept. Response amongst this group was very telling on how spatial economy is interpreted by non-state representatives and their

dependence on orthodox understandings around the core-periphery model and concentration-based models.