Should WECA’s accounts be made more transparent?

AT one of its recent WECA committee meetings, metro mayor Dan Norris stated that the authority did not have the reserves to allocate monies to temporarily support bus routes under threat until “demand responsive transport”, on-call minibuses, bed in. Mr Norris stated that the reserves were about £2 million, less than reserves of WECA’s unitary authorities.

On examining WECA’s statement of accounts for 2021-2022, I presume that Mr Norris is referring to the General Fund Balance, a contingency fund to meet unexpected short-term requirements, which stood at £2.37 million on March 31, 2022.

However, within WECA’s reserve funds is an Integrated Transport Authority reserve which stood at £616,000 on March 31, 2022, and an Integrated Transport Authority bus reserve which stood at £1.347 million on March 31, 2022. The Integrated Transport Authority reserve for buses was drawn from a transport underspend in 2021-22 to be specifically earmarked to invest in further support to regional bus services to protect routes. There are two questions from this: A) has this money been fully spent?, and B) are there any underspends now accruing from which new reserves can be specifically targeted?

It appears part of the malaise of WECA that senior unitary authority politicians on the WECA committee have not been sufficiently briefed on the details of WECA’s accounts to delve into these questions.

WECA’s enduring problems stem from the fact that it has no democratic provenance. The electorate of the city region were excluded from the process by which it was set up by David Cameron’s government. The electorate were neither offered the opportunity to consent nor were involved in how WECA’s form and purpose were set.

The Cameron government wanted more Treasury control over the devolving of monies to the regions while a small elite of local authority leaders wanted new government funding streams for their areas.

The city region electorate are also not able vote out the metro mayor office or the combined authority if either (or both) prove a disaster. Only the four member WECA committees can vote to dissolve itself and the metro mayor’s office.

WECA’s constitution is fatally undermined by the conflict extant between the metro mayor office and the WECA committee – the “combined authority” bit.

The constitution only works if the metro mayor agrees to restrain his or her official powers within parameters which ensures the unity of the “combined authority”.

Tim Bowles managed this by taking a consensual, low-profile approach. Dan Norris’s opposite approach – an aggressive seeking of expanded “political” powers at the expense of the combined authority’s unity – stands to blow WECA apart.

Chris Lamb Bristol