Mayor with few powers as local talks reach impasse

WHEN BARNSLEY MP and former paratrooper Dan Jarvis was elected with 144,154 votes as Sheffield City Region mayor, he pledged to bring together the area’s feuding local leaders to implement its £30m-a-year devolution deal.

Nine months later the dispute between the leaders of Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield councils is proving a hard nut to crack, meaning Mr Jarvis still has few of the powers enjoyed by his counterparts in Manchester and Liverpool.

The Sheffield City Region deal was agreed in 2015 and signed by then-Chancellor George Osborne, with the promise of £900m being handed over from Whitehall over three decades and powers over transport, strategic planning and skills. But as One Yorkshire gathered momentum, Doncaster and Barnsley decided their future lay with a bigger devolution deal and withdrew from the arrangement. Though Sheffield and Rotherham remain committed to the Sheffield City Region deal, the failure to complete all the necessary processes mean it has not come into force and the spending taps are yet to be turned on. Leaders in Doncaster and Barnsley, whose residents backed a region-wide deal in a poll in 2017, say they are willing to implement the local arrangement if it can be a stepping stone to One Yorkshire. But to make progress, talks need to restart between local leaders and with government.