‘Blocks of granite’ council attitudes attacked

Outgoing leader blasts progress on devolution

THE OUTGOING leader of the Sheffield City Region has lambasted council leaders as “blocks of granite” over the lack of progress in securing a devolution deal in Yorkshire.

Sir Nigel Knowles, who finishes his tenure with the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) in South Yorkshire this week, has accused leaders of “the worst of parochialism and short-sightedness” over a failure to implement a deal to bring increased spending and decision making to the region.

In a strongly-worded letter to all of South Yorkshire’s council leaders, which has been seen by The Yorkshire Post, Sir Nigel claimed the initial deal struck for the region had represented a “collective commitment to embrace devolution and to change the political culture of our region”.

However, nearly four years on, the proposals have collapsed amid infighting among council leaders after Doncaster and Barnsley backed the One Yorkshire plan to create the largest devolution deal in the country.

Sir Nigel wrote: “As we start 2019, our devolution position reveals not the strength of our region but our ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. As one of the architects of the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement, Senator George Mitchell once said: ‘In terms of finding things to disagree about, you are geniuses, great innovators... in finding ways to resolve your differences you are like blocks of granite’.”

Sir Nigel, who will take on a new role as a trade advisor for the LEP, also criticised business leaders for undermining the Sheffield City Region deal, saying “much of it has been assisted by fruitless megaphone diplomacy by sections of the business membership organisation community who have sought to undermine and weaken those seeking common ground.”

Sir Nigel did, however, sound a positive note for the future, praising the work done by the Shef-

field City Region’s Mayor, Dan Jarvis.

“The mayor is the means by which different views and interests can be reconciled for us to lift our sights and see the bigger picture,” he said. “Having got to know Dan Jarvis as the mayor over the past six months I know that he has the right skills, experience and commitment to deliver on these expectations.

“However, the mayor is not the architect of the current impasse. Nor can he solve it unilaterally. He is dependent on a spirit of cooperation, understanding and commitment from council leaders and a real bipartisan approach from the business community.

“Put simply we need our council leaders to be less like blocks of granite in their approach. And we need this because we do not have an economy that is robust enough to thrive against a backdrop of both national economic and trading uncertainties.”

South Yorkshire’s council leaders told The Yorkshire Post they wanted to see a resolution to the impasse as soon as possible.

THE long term plan for the NHS has undoubted strengths. Its commitment to shifting the focus of NHS services much more into the community is exactly the right priority. Integration and prevention are essential focuses, and totally correct.

So it is highly unfortunate that failures outside the plan itself mean that it cannot – on its own – safeguard the future of the health and social care system. The Government still lacks any sort of strategy for health and wellbeing, and has not even published its Green Paper with proposals to end the ongoing social care crisis.

Last year’s funding announcement promises another five years of belowtrend growth for the NHS, on top of the eight it has just endured, and excluded key areas of expenditure. The growing shortages in the health and care workforce are a major threat, and could make the plan undeliverable. Training skilled staff cannot be done quickly, and it is not clear whether the Government’s immigration proposals and our exit from the European Union will support recruitment from abroad.

NHS England has done what was asked of it in terms of developing a coherent plan.

The Government now needs to do its part, and get serious about addressing the substantial strategic problems that still pose major threats to the health and care system.

From Peter Hyde, Driffield. I SEE that problem smokers and drinkers are costing the NHS an awful lot of money through having health problems. I was both a smoker and a drinker, and was usually broke.

As a country police officer, I had to attend the post-mortem examination of one of my parishioners.

The cause of death was lung cancer but the pathologist, who was the local doctor on my patch, lifted out the blackened lungs and asked: “How many do you smoke?”

I gave a figure and he then said: “Your lungs will soon be like these, you know.”

I told him that I was stopping there and then.

He laughed at me. But I did stop and have never touched them since. At the same time, I cut my drinking. After a few weeks, I felt better and am now 86 years of age.

I own my own home and have money in the bank, a situation I would not be in but for that afternoon. Perhaps showing smokers a pair of pickled lungs would have the same effect as they had on me.