A top North East council boss has warned it is “really tricky” to put a target date on a long-awaited £3bn devolution deal, as the region’s leaders enter talks with new ministers.
Rishi Sunak’s Government is now the third Conservative administration this year to be tasked with getting the major agreement signed off, with the deal having been close to being sealed before the collapse of both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss’ reigns. The huge proposal would result in significant shakeup of the North East’s governance, reuniting councils on either side of the Tyne years after an acrimonious split.
It would see the election of a new regional mayor covering Newcastle, Gateshead, Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Sunderland, and possibly Durham, with the region given control over substantial funding and decisions on crucial matters including transport. The deal, which has been the subject of negotiations between local authorities and Whitehall for many months, has been thrown into some doubt over recent weeks – both by the chaos at Westminster and local political wrangling over a late attempt from County Durham to join the other six councils in the pact.
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While the Government has confirmed that the Sunak administration, which has brought back Michael Gove as Levelling Up secretary, is continuing with the devolution talks, one council boss warned that a timescale for an outcome remains uncertain. Pam Smith, Newcastle City Council’s chief executive, told an overview and scrutiny committee: “I think it is fair to say that negotiations are ongoing. As you can appreciate, and this is not an answer to the question, but for me to predict a timescale right now is really tricky.
“We have a new secretary of state and we are working with them and their team. We are really hopeful that negotiations will continue productively and we will come to some kind of conclusion relatively quickly.”
In his column in The Journal on Monday, Labour’s North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll penned a letter to the new Prime Minister in which he urged him not to let the devolution deal become “another Westminster casualty of chaos”.
A spokesperson from the Department for Levelling Up said: “We want to see more areas with directly elected leaders who will be accountable to local people and act as a champion for their areas. Negotiations with the North East are progressing and further details will be announced in due course.”
The North East was tantalisingly close to a region-wide devolution deal covering the seven council areas in 2016, before disagreement among the Labour-run local authorities caused that to collapse. Newcastle, North Tyneside, and Northumberland subsequently broke away to form their own North of Tyne Combined Authority (NTCA), for which Mr Driscoll was elected mayor in 2019.
The new draft devolution deal, which has been subject to months of negotiations between Whitehall and local council officials, would be worth more than £3bn in Government funding over 30 years. It includes a £35m per year investment fund, a £900m transport funding package up to 2027, a yearly £44m budget for adult education and skills, and crucial decision-making powers including the ability to bring bus services back into public control.
Durham had been seeking its own single-county devolution deal, but its Tory-Lib Dem coalition leadership announced this month that instead wanting to join the agreement being negotiated by its northern neighbours. The leaders of the other councils are known to have been split on whether to allow Durham in or not, while Labour MPs and opposition councillors in Durham have been vocal in their opposition to the idea of an ‘LA7’ deal.
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