TALK ABOUT A DEVOLUTION
Region’s political landscape explodes
ENORMOUS changes to the political landscape will see a raft of new powers, millions of pounds in investment and the introduction of an elected mayor to the North of Tyne region.
Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland will set up a breakaway authority which will be given significant resources to boost employment, education, housing and trade.
Worth an initial £600m over 30 years, the Treasury estimate the deal will create 10,000 jobs and attract £2.1bn in private investment.
It represents the culmination of months of discussions which began after talks for an authority including Durham, Gateshead, Sunderland and South Tyneside collapsed.
Once the deal has been formally ratified, the North of Tyne Combined Authority (NTCA) will be launched in summer 2018, with mayoral elections to take place the following May.
The new authority will oversee programmes to create jobs in the digital economy, drive up standards in schools, force through housing development and take full control of the £23m-a-year adult education budget to promote skills in the region.
Arguably the biggest change to North East governance in decades, the announcement represents a significant win for the government’s Northern Powerhouse agenda and raises big questions about the future of the rest of the region.
Nick Forbes, the leader of Newcastle City Council, Norma Redfearn, the Mayor of North Tyneside and Peter Jackson, the leader of Northumberland County Council, launched the deal at Newcastle University alongside Northern Powerhouse and local government minister Jake Berry MP, and treasury minister Andrew Jones MP.
Mr Berry said “this deal marks the start of a new golden era for the North East and its people”, while Mr Jones said the agreement was “about breaking away from a centralised state” and would “give people a bigger voice and greater power over their own future”.
Councillor Nick Forbes, the leader of Newcastle City Council, said: “The deal we are announcing has one simple message and one measure of success: this is a deal designed in the North East to bring jobs to the North East. “For all of my adult life, the North East has been marred with this image of having higher than average unemployment and lower than average wages. “This deal is about turning around the sense that our region is in decline.” Norma Redfearn, the elected mayor of North Tyneside, said she had been pushing for a devolution agreement since she was first elected in 2013 and had one message: “At last”. She added: “Having worked for many years in areas of deprivation and watched communities die, watched communities have no hope because the industries of mining and shipbuilding died, this is a chance for us to bring forward new opportunities for our own people.” Brexit looms over this deal as it looms over everything else in British politics, and the three leaders said they want to “shape government policy on Brexit”. The deal includes a commitment for a closer working relationship between the Department for International Trade and NTCA to protect the region’s crucial export market. Councillor Peter Jackson, who led the Conservative takeover of Northumberland County Council in May, said the deal represents a bi-partisan triumph that will allow the North of Tyne to Brexit-proof the economy.
He said: “For many reasons, including Brexit, the future is uncertain.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we must look forward with confidence and this deal will give us the tools to build a bright and successful outcome for everyone in our region.”
Other stand-out features of the agreement include a government pilot scheme to boost the rural economy. Andrew Jones MP described the deal as being at the “vanguard” of a new type of devolution deal which merges the city mayor model with rural communities.
It also includes the ability of the new mayor to issue compulsory purchase orders to speed up house building and assistance for the region’s burgeoning digital start-up sector.
The area will also undergo an “Education Improvement Challenge”, similar to the programme which is credited with driving up school standards in London, and is the first place outside the capital to carry out the process.
Negotiations over a combined authority for all seven North East councils collapsed last year due to internal divisions on the amount of funding being offered by government and Whitehall’s insistence on the adoption of an elected mayor.