RDAs: it's what you do, not the way that you do it

Before the election, I prepared an election briefing for the CEP on regional and urban policy. It touched on some of the difficulties in evaluating RDAs and concluded:"In short, there is no compelling evidence as to whether the RDAs are a good or bad thing. Labour is committed to them; the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are (probably) committed to abolishing them. It should be clear that these positions cannot truly reflect evidence-based positions on RDAs’ effectiveness." Revisiting the evaluation evidence over the last few days really hasn't done anything to change my opinion on this.