Yorkshire's golden opportunity' to set a blueprint to harness the future might of out region
EXCLUSIVE REPORT BY ROB PARSONS AND MARK CASCI
YORKSHIRE HAS a “golden opportunity” to harness its collective power by finding ways for its four new elected metro mayors to work together for the benefit of the region.
Dan Jarvis, handed new powers over transport, skills and housing by Westminster as part of a historic Sheffield City Region devolution deal, issued the call to arms to the other regional leaders set to be elected elsewhere in Yorkshire in the next two years.
Devolution deals creating powerful metro mayors for North Yorkshire and York as well as Hull and the East Riding could be agreed by the end of the year, while the West Yorkshire agreement was signed in March.
It means that by 2022 all four corners of the region will have mayoral authorities responsible for transforming their economies and with powers far beyond those currently held by local town halls.
The idea has been backed by Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick, who told The Yorkshire
Post the region’s powerful metro mayors “should cooperate and collaborate on future projects”.
He suggested this could include areas such as tourism and heritage, trade and investment or tackling climate change.
Mr Jenrick, inset, said: “There will be a number of areas in which those mayors, when they’re in place, can work together for the great benefits of Yorkshire.”
The Government has rejected attempts to create a single ‘One Yorkshire’ mayor for the entire region but Mr Jarvis said: “That doesn’t mean we can’t look for every opportunity to cooperate across Yorkshire and I think the potential benefits of doing that are very significant indeed.”
Earlier this year, the Government agreed to provide £200,000 in funding for the Yorkshire leaders’ board of local authority representatives to discuss joint working in the region, with councils match-funding the amount. Mr Jarvis added: “There is a golden opportunity as we cement devolution deals across Yorkshire to draw together the collective might across the county.
“And if we get devolution right, that can really empower our whole county to bring people together and cooperate on areas of strategic interest, whether that’s the economy, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s transport, whether it’s skills, whether it is tourism.
“Certainly from the point of view of South Yorkshire and working with the other leaders across Yorkshire, I will definitely want to look for every opportunity to cooperate and make the most of the strong ties and relationships we already have in place across Yorkshire.”
According to Paul Swinney, the director of policy and research at the Centre for Cities think-tank, a One Yorkshire deal would have led to a situation where leaders were “constantly making compromises” between people competing for attention.
But he said: “There’s nothing stopping them coming together and I am sure they will. The majority of issues that metro mayors will face will be quite local and there will be some issues that are county-wide in which you will want leaders to come together.”
The presence of elected metro mayors across the North with powers to make decisions on transport, housing, skills and education was a major element of the Northern Powerhouse concept then-Chancellor George Osborne came up with in 2014.
Henri Murison, the director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership lobbying group representing business and civic leaders, predicted all Yorkshire will have devolution deals agreed by the end of the year.
He said although there were significant differences in the economies of areas of the region, he hoped the four elected mayors would be able to work together. And, with all the current metro mayors elected round the country being men, he added: “I’m particularly keen to see they’re not all men.
“I think it’s really important that in Yorkshire we lead the way in more diversity, representing the voices and the political talent we have at this type of office. It is the one weakness of the mayoral model, which I think has made huge strides, but it’s probably put back the cause of diversity in British politics. “The business community of Yorkshire doesn’t look like that, so it would be very disappointing if our metro mayors were not as reflective as our senior business leaders.”
Protests
Mr Jenrick, who is responsible for devolution of powers to the region, admitted he wanted to avoid a repeat of the protests that marked the first Yorkshire Day in 1975 by not “imposing solutions on local communities”.
He insisted that the handover of powers and resources to elected metro mayors to Yorkshire, which in some areas comes with a local government shake-up, was “entirely voluntary”.
Asked for his views on how metro mayors could work together, he said: “I have to be careful because I think the first Yorkshire Day of modern times was celebrated in 1975 by protesters against local government reorganisation.”
The celebration was initiated by the Yorkshire Ridings Society in protest at the changes introduced by the Edward Heath government, which saw the creation of most of the local authorities which exist today. After signing devolution deals in West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, Mr Jenrick’s department is now in talks with North Yorkshire and York and Hull and the East Riding over the creation of mayoral combined authorities.
But he told The Yorkshire Post:
“Unlike 45 years ago, in 1975, we’re not interested in imposing solutions on local communities. The devolution that we’re offering to Yorkshire is entirely voluntary.
“And those parts of the county that want to take it forward will be able to and we will do everything we can, we’ll move mountains to get that devolution settlement agreed quickly.
“But if there are areas that would prefer to stick to the current arrangements, then we’re not going to impose anything upon them. Making sure these arrangements work for local identity is extremely important to us.
“There are few counties with a strong sense of identity as Yorkshire
and its constituent parts. So we want to work with the grain of history and local identity, not against it.”
In North Yorkshire, local leaders are at odds over how best to reorganise local government after being told this was a condition of getting devolved powers and funding from Whitehall.
North Yorkshire County Council is pulling together plans for a single unitary authority serving its 600,000 population, with district councils like Harrogate and Scarborough axed and York Council, representing 200,000 people, remaining untouched.
Meanwhile district leaders are considering an alternative plan involving two unitary authorities on an east-west split, each serving around 400,000 people.
Mr Jenrick, whose department has asked for proposals to be put forward by September, said he would “judge whether there is a good degree of support to consult on one or more of those different proposals”.
He said: “There is then a public consultation and the Secretary of State has to listen very carefully to the responses that come back from members of the public, the local business community and important stakeholders, like the NHS, the emergency services, universities and, of course, the local councils.
“And then the test the Secretary of State has to apply is, is there broad support for one of those proposals and if I judge that to be the case, then we take forward that proposal and work with local people to make it a reality.
“The process which is carried out has obviously been done in many parts of the country over the years. We want to make that as smooth as possible and ensure that local people’s voices are heard as much as we can.”
Roles
Meanwhile, the Leeds town hall chief executive who helped run the national test-and-trace scheme from Yorkshire has stressed Ministers should move senior Whitehall roles out of London and to the North.
Tom Riordan, who has just returned to his role at Leeds City Council after two months in a senior role on the test-and-trace programme, said the pandemic had shown that “you actually
don’t need to be based in a single place to do a job”.
It comes after Boris Johnson suggested in a letter earlier this month that the House of Lords and Commons could move temporarily to York while the Palace of Westminster is restored.
And it has been reported that the historic city is being considered as a potential second seat of government, with civil servants being relocated from central London.
Mr Riordan said: “The idea that Government could move part of the civil service and not just the back office but some of the senior jobs out of London and run them from around the country, in particular the North, is something that I would advocate very strongly.”
The council chief executive was appointed in May to oversee the roll-out of the Government’s test-and-trace programme. The role is now being carried out by Oldham Council’s chief executive, Carolyn Wilkins.
Mr Riordan said his time in the job showed that people with experience of delivering projects on the ground should be “right at the heart of decision making”.
He said: “As an experiment it is something that I’m encouraging the Government to do more, to make sure people like me and others from the public and the private sector are involved when policies are being thought about.
“Because often you’ve got some very big brains in Whitehall but you don’t always have the people who’ve actually had to go off and deliver things, whether that’s in business, the charity sector or the public sector.”
Mr Riordan said the country’s political system remained too centralised and that the work done by local town halls in tackling the pandemic was “an example to Whitehall that you can’t run the country from a desk in SW1”.
He said: “We’ve got to get more power and control over our own destiny in the North, in Yorkshire, in places like Leeds.
“My experience is that the closer you get decisions made to the people who it affects, the better the decisions because you feel the accountability very keenly. People tell you when you get it wrong and when you get it right and it leads to better decisionmaking.”