‘Political reasons’ behind 5G decision says city chief

awarded to the West Midlands, with a focus on testing how it could improve health, construction and highways services, including driverless cars.

But Patrick Melia, chief executive at Sunderland City Council, has revealed how close Tyne and Wear came to securing the right to host the pilot, as well as his own opinion on why it fell short.

“Birmingham won the national bid last year and we were second in that bidding process, I would argue, for political reasons, with Birmingham having a Conservative mayor and the Commonwealth Games coming up,” he said.

“They haven’t made much progress and they haven’t done as well as they should have done at this point in time.

“But there’s a lot of things we can learn from.

“Our challenge is creating a business case for the North East that means people who use those networks [want to come here] and then operators will put the infrastructure in.”

Mr Melia was speaking at last month’s meeting of the North East Combined Authority’s (NECA) Economic Development Digital Advisory Board.

Ex-John Lewis boss Andy Street was elected the first Mayor of the Midlands for the Conservative Party in 2017.

A statement by NECA released in September last year, after the contract was awarded to the West Midlands, said the decision would not dampen its ambition to secure 5G infrastructure for the region.

The pilot, which includes hubs in Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton, has been promised £25 million from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and £25 million match funding from regional partners, as well as the possibility of an extra £25 million ‘at a later stage’.