When I heard that devolution was being criticised by CBI director-general John Cridland, I must admit I was puzzled ­– it seemed another missile from the City of London to the provinces was on its way.

After all, Plymouth’s Labour council, which I lead, has just done a deal with British Land to secure a £40m investment by them on our old bus station site. British Land was most complimentary about the speed of the turnaround by the council. It also has a quarter of a billion pound investment in Drake Circus Mall, which it bought from the company that had developed it under our Labour council.

A few metres away lies Sutton Harbour, home to a multimillion pound marina, developed during a groundbreaking partnership with the city council to install lock gates across a tidal harbour, and so create a permanent gold anchor marina. Plymouth now has 1,500 gold anchorages, the five star hotel of marina berths, the most of any British city. The Sutton Harbour company is listed on the FTSE.

Last January, I signed a city deal to create a new marine production campus, a business park by deep water. This would support, among others, the work of Princess Yachts, which employs some 2,400 people in Plymouth, and the average wage of £34,000, way above the Plymouth average. The city deal, the most complex of the round two deals, localises £40m of development risk that had belonged to the Ministry of Defence on a redundant site at South Yard.

The deal will deliver 1,200 jobs in Plymouth and 10,000 across the south-west peninsula. The council is opening up the Yard with speculative office and workshop development, in advance of private sector funds, to show leadership. We are also investing council funds in developing factory space to the east of the city, at Langage, and in the north, at Plymouth science park, which is the largest in southern England, a partnership which I kicked off in the 1990s with Plymouth University.

In the last three years, despite George Osborne’s feeble recovery, Plymouth’s Labour council has achieved an increase in GVA, above the national average.

Our council has supported the creation of over 1,800 jobs in 2014 alone, secured £38.5m of direct funding, have brought land forward to see 1,000 homes built.

In the last five years, Plymouth has given planning permission to over £2bn of investment, 40 per cent of which has so far been delivered.

We work supremely well with the local chamber of commerce and have private sector chairs of our growth board and of our employment and skills board. The chair of the growth board recently praised the city council for prioritising growth and maintaining a considerable economic development team while dealing with the withdrawal of a third of our government revenue support. We have seconded staff to work with our local enterprise partnership on the growth deal.

Surely the CBI knows full well that in Plymouth, as in all our great provincial cities, it is Labour councils that are leading our economic fightback, in spite of a government that seeks to undermine councils at every turn.

Local economies are best managed by local authorities, who are sensitive to local markets, local labour supply and local skills development. We might argue about which lines go where on a map, but there is no doubt that they are delivering for their localities, and the country.

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Tudor Evans is leader of Plymouth city council. He tweets @CouncillorTudor

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Photo: James Taylor