Leicester stays out of East Midlands deal
A £1.14 billion pound deal was agreed for the East Midlands last week – but the city and county will not see a penny of it, writes Hannah Richardson.
Leaders from Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire and the Levelling Up Secretary of State, Greg Clark, signed a deal last week which will grant them greater funding for transport, housing, as well as skills training.
The new combined authority, known as D2N2, will receive £38 million over 30 years under the Government’s Levelling Up Agenda. It will also have greater decision making powers to deliver on local priorities such as education, transport infrastructure and development.
The move will require one elected mayor to be appointed for the four authorities.
Leicester county council has both been invited to work out its own deal for Leicester, Leicestershire and possibly Rutland, or join the D2N2 deal.
But the county has said it would not take the step towards a new union without the city council and Leicester has opposed both opportunities because they would require the councils to unite as an economic area with a directly elected mayor over the current leadership. Leicester city mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, has previously described the idea of a new mayor’s office as ‘daft’.
Conservative leader of Harborough District, Phil King, accused the city mayor of ‘blocking’ the chance for funding. He took to Twitter after the D2N2 deal was announced to say: “Leicestershire districts are seething at this as we are being made to pay for city mayor and Labour Party blocking [it].”
Sir Peter said: “Leicester has had an elected mayor for 11 years and I can understand why Nottingham and Derby feel they are missing out. Although the figures that are being claimed will come from this part of the government’s Levelling Up deal do sound big, in fact they are in proportion to what Leicester has been achieving already.”
Leicestershire County Council had hoped to use the money from its own bid to create a Better Care Fund for children and young people – a scheme to pool up to £200 million from clinical commissioning groups, local authorities and the NHS to create more joined up care.
Planned improvements to road infrastructure, broadband provision and bus funding can also no longer go ahead.
A spokesperson for the county council said: “The city of Leicester is geographically at the centre of the county and the strategic interdependencies of transport and the inter-relations of many public services would need to be recognised in a combined authority. It would not be sensible to separate them if one council was in a combined authority and not the other.”
While the deal has been signed, Parliament still needs to approve of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill and necessary secondary legislation, as well as a public consultation. The D2N2 combined authority is expected to hold mayoral elections in 2024.
Levelling Up Secretary Greg Clark said of the deal: “The East Midlands is renowned for its economic dynamism and it has the potential to lead Britain’s economy of the future. For a long time I have believed that the East Midlands should have the powers and devolved budgets that other areas in Britain have been benefitting from and I am thrilled to be able to bring that about in Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.”