Regional mayor red tape will ‘block’ levelling up

MICHAEL GOVE has been warned that proposals for more regional mayors would create new layers of red tape that could “hold up” Boris Johnson’s pledge to level up the country.

In a report, a business group chaired by John Longworth, the former director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, states that regional mayors amount to “an additional layer of bureaucracy, which in turn slows down the decision-making process”.

The report warns against the Secretary for Levelling Up’s plans to expand the current system, saying that existing mayors should be ditched, rather than new mayors, or “governors” being introduced. Mr Gove is planning to put increased devolution at the heart of a long-awaited Levelling Up policy paper, which is due to be published this week.

Speaking at last year’s Conservative conference, he said that one of four key elements of the Government’s levelling-up strategy was “to strengthen local leadership to drive real change”.

Last month, it emerged that a draft of the white paper included an “ambition” for every area of England to have a local leader with equivalent powers to Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, by the end of the decade.

However, a report by the Independent Business Network states: “The system of regional mayors creates an additional layer of bureaucracy, [which] slows down the decision-making process. They [are] a middle layer of authority between the local authorities in the area they cover and the central government, and [are] another actor during negotiations over issues such as funding.

“Additionally, when the policy of directly elected mayors was put to individual cities, in 2012, the vast majority of cities with referenda rejected them.”

The report, entitled “A model for levelling up”, also calls on the Government to use the money saved from scrapping the eastern leg of High Speed 2, to Leeds, to invest in projects such as a metro system in Leeds.