Government push to create elected mayors for rural areas

THE Government plans to create a series of new elected mayors within the next ten years, ministers have revealed.

It will tell councils across the country that they must create regional mayors if they want a share of the funding that is being allocated to existing mayors, such as Andy Street in the West Midlands and Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester. While ‘metro mayors’ have so far been created in big cities and urban conurbations, the Government will tell rural areas and towns that it wants them to follow suit.

But in a move likely to be extremely controversial, the Government’s Devolution and Local Recovery White Paper, to be published in September, will state that regions must agree to abolish district councils in order to be eligible for a mayor. A White Paper sets out Government proposals and begins a period of consultation.

At the moment, the West Midlands has a mayor serving Birmingham, Solihull, Walsall, Dudley, Sandwell, Coventry and Wolverhampton. But there is no metro mayor in the wider West Midlands region, including Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire.

At the same time, much of the region has a two tier system of local government, with communities served by county councils and smaller district councils. For example, Bromsgrove is covered by Worcestershire County Council and Bromsgrove

District Council. The Government is planning to tell areas such as Worcestershire that they must abolish their district councils, creating a unitary authority instead, in order to create a regional mayor. In return, they will have access to extra funding.

For example, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a £4.2 billion transport fund in March this year – but the money is only available to regions with mayors.

A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) spokesman said current arrangements, in which areas with mayors received more funding than those without, could not continue. The answer, he said, was to create more mayors.

He said: “We have set out a clear commitment to level up all areas of the country by empowering our regions through devolving money, resources and control away from Westminster. We are considering a range of options and will set out our detailed plans in the White Paper that will be published this autumn.”