The region’s four council leaders have been told to rethink their bid to partially break away from the West of England Combined Authority (Weca). Scrutiny councillors voted 12-0 at an urgent call-in meeting to ask the elected heads of Bristol, Bath & North East Somerset, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset unitary authorities to reconsider their decision amid warnings it could cost the region £600million funding.
Metro mayor Dan Norris said the proposed changes, which would see the leaders effectively seize control of the region’s joint committee and give it an identity distinct from Weca, would be a “huge mistake” and a backwards step that went against recent government announcements. South Gloucestershire Council leader Cllr Toby Savage denied any funding was at risk and said the plans aimed to increase collaboration following a series of high-profile bust-ups over the last 12 months between Mr Norris, who is in charge of Weca, and the council leaders.
The ongoing arguments have created “frustration” among the unitary authority heads that they are not being involved in developing policies. This led to the decision last month for a governance review that will rip up and rewrite the rules of the West of England joint committee, which oversees about £600million of funding, most of which is administered by the local enterprise partnership (LEP) including pots of money that preceded the combined authority’s creation in 2017.
Read more: Probe into Weca top officer payoff amid power struggle between leaders
The committee comprises all four council leaders and Mr Norris, and the changes would remove the metro mayor as its chairman and give the other members more say. While it would not directly affect the Weca committee – which has the same members minus North Somerset and makes decisions for the combined authority – Weca chief executive Patricia Greer warned at April’s joint committee that the proposals would breach an assurance agreement with the Government, jeopardising the £600million.
The council leaders called this a “red herring” and voted in favour of dissolving the current arrangements and drawing up new standing orders. But because of the concerns and the fact that the plans had not gone to Weca overview & scrutiny committee beforehand, an urgent call-in meeting was held at Bristol City Hall on Tuesday (May 3) to decide whether it should be sent back to the joint committee for a rethink, which members agreed to do.
The committee heard that the Government’s recent Levelling Up white paper and a subsequent ministerial letter showed there was no future for joint committees. Dr Greer told the meeting: “The government guidelines are very clear – LEPs will fold into combined authorities and if we want a partnership arrangement with a neighbouring authority, we can do that.
“They also say joint committees are not acceptable for the future of LEPs so the joint committee cannot be the future overseeing them.” Asked how the £600million was at risk, she said she was one of three officials required to sign a public declaration that the LEP money was spent correctly as part of an assurance agreement with Whitehall.
The proposed changes would mean these funding decisions were instead made by the local authorities but that the Government was “highly unlikely” to agree to this new arrangement because of the direction it had given about the future of LEPs, she said. Labour’s Mr Norris said: “There have been too many deals in smoke-filled rooms behind the scenes, choreographed to look like unity when actually it’s all worked out in secret.
“I don’t agree with that, that’s not my approach and that's why there have been tensions over the last 12 months. I don’t accept the analysis that things aren’t working well. We have secured two-thirds of a billion pounds since I came into office.
“That doesn’t happen by accident but by people working very closely together. The combined officers have to work closely with unitary authority officers. It’s a trajectory I intend to continue and I don’t want to be slowed down by this kind of nonsense, frankly.
“The difficulties are at very senior levels, they reside with the chief executives who do not get on with each other. They are difficult. I’ve been a government minister and worked in the most complex situations, and what I’ve seen is pretty appalling – rudeness, lack of courtesy displayed in public and online.”
He said he could not control that but it was not acceptable. Mr Norris said: “What has been proposed is going to risk problems with vast sums of money. It increases red tape and disconnection.
“What’s great about the way we operate is the flexibility that is built in. If we get the system proposed in the paper, we will lose that flexibility, and that’s a huge mistake. I’m not going to sell the West of England or North Somerset down the river to go back to the old days where we have smoke-filled rooms, deals done behind the scenes and divvying-up exercises.
“What I don’t want to happen – and what is happening by poor behaviour by some of the leaders – is to be labelled as a poor combined authority. The joint committee’s days are clearly numbered.” Conservative Cllr Savage, the only council leader at the meeting, denied this was the case because there was more to the committee’s role than just overseeing the LEP.
He said the ministerial letter on March 31 made very clear there could be bespoke solutions for LEPs where joint committees existed. “The chief executive is wrong to say that is not available to us,” Cllr Savage said.
“The governance report recognises there have been issues over the past 12 months. This should be seen as a positive way forward in trying to manage that in such a way that decisions around significant sums of public money are genuinely co-produced with meaningful collaboration so we are all singing from the same hymn sheet.”
He said a governance review was needed because a lot had changed since the last one and to clear up confusion in decision-making, referring to a veto incorrectly used by Mr Norris at a meeting in September. Members overwhelmingly said greater cooperation was needed between leaders and mayors and were concerned the joint committee plans were going against the Government’s wishes.
South Gloucestershire Lib Dem Cllr Tristan Clark said that what nobody wanted was a “gigantic schism” with Weca on one side and a shadow combined authority without a metro mayor on the other. B&NES Lib Dem Cllr Hal MacFie said the four council leaders appeared to be staging a “dated fightback because they feel like they’re losing their power”.
He said: “We have Weca, we have an elected metro mayor. You can’t take all his power away from him and say ‘we will make all the decisions over here’. It doesn’t make any sense.” Committee chairman B&NES Lib Dem Cllr Winston Duguid said trust had broken down.
“Somehow we have to collectively come up with something that starts the process of getting out of a vicious circle and into a virtuous circle and establishing trust because collectively we are not fit for purpose,” he said. As well as sending the decision back for reconsideration, members set up a taskforce to oversee the process.
