A multi-billion pound deal to create a new North East mayor is “not ideal” but is an opportunity the region cannot afford to pass up, city leaders in Newcastle say.
The historic £4.2bn devolution deal is edging ever closer to becoming a reality, with councils across Tyne and Wear, Northumberland, and County Durham deciding this week to move to the next stage of a journey towards a mayoral election next May. On Thursday evening, Newcastle and North Tyneside became the latest areas to give another thumbs-up to the agreement – after the results of a public consultation published last month showed 61% public support.
The deal will bring new funding and decision-making powers to the North East, with hopes of generating 24,000 new jobs, and establish a mayoral combined authority stretching across the seven council areas of Northumberland, Newcastle, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Gateshead, Sunderland, and Durham. While concerns were expressed by Newcastle City Council’s cabinet on Thursday that the deal will not replace the Government funding the region has lost through austerity or bolster the budgets of cash-strapped local authorities, there were hopes that its power could be strengthened further over its 30-year lifespan.
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City Labour leader Nick Kemp said: “Is it everything we would wish for? No, it is most certainly not. Is it a starting point? Yes it is.”
The Byker councillor said that, in negotiations since he became council leader last year, he had pushed for “significantly more focus for Newcastle” within the deal – particularly around the creation of what is being termed a ‘green superport’ aimed at delivering jobs in sustainable industries. Coun Kemp admitted that the response rate to the eight-week public consultation exercise was not as high as would have been hoped for, with just 3,235 replies from a region with a combined population of around two million.
He added that it would now be up to politicians to demonstrate the value of the new combined authority, with control over public transport matters highlighted as potentially the biggest tangible benefit. Coun Jane Byrne, the council’s cabinet member for transport, agreed: “It is not an ideal deal. It isn’t what I would be seeing in my perfect world, but it is something that offers real benefits.”
Liberal Democrat Greg Stone asked about scrutiny of the new mayor, saying that leaders only had to “look down the road 40 miles or so” to see the need for robust oversight of mayoral authorities – referring to the current furore around the Teesworks site. Coun Kemp replied that he wants to see “as many checks and balances as possible” in the new authority.
Labour’s Alex Hay added: “We are right to grasp this opportunity. But, as other have said, we need to do better and we need to do more.”
The councils are agreeing this week to send a report on the public consultation results to Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove, paving the way for him to make an order in Parliament that would formalise the new mayoral arrangements. Durham and South Tyneside both approved the plan on Wednesday, following Gateshead and Northumberland earlier in the week, with Sunderland to follow on Friday morning.
Then, next Tuesday, the existing North of Tyne Combined Authority and North East Combined Authority will have to agree to being abolished once the new North East Mayoral Combined Authority comes into being. After this round of approvals, the local authorities will be asked once more in the autumn to give their final consent for the devolution deal ahead of it going through Parliament.
If the deal goes through, as is widely expected, it would mark the culmination of years of wrangling over the devolution question in the North East – going back to the ‘no’ vote in the regional assembly referendum of 2004 and a previous devolution deal proposal that collapsed at the eleventh hour in 2016, leading to a split between councils north and south of the Tyne.
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