On Thursday (4th May 2017), people from six Combined Authorities across England elected the first Metro Mayors, established as part of the UK government’s move to devolving more powers to English City Regions.
Exactly what each metro mayor is able to do is determined by the individual deals that each city region has agreed with the government, but, between them, they will hold more than £4.8 billion in investment funds and have powers over issues such as housing, transport and skills.
Here’s a summary of who each newly elected Mayor is, what their powers will be and what they have pledged to deliver when it comes to infrastructure and development…
West of England Combined Authority
Name: Tim Bowles
Political party: Conservative
Areas covered: Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath and North East Somerset council areas
Key powers:
- 30-year investment fund: £900 million
- Housing & planning: Strategic planning, compulsory purchase powers, mayoral development corporations
- Transport: Local roads network, bus franchising, smart ticketing, consolidated transport budget
- Education & skills: Apprenticeship Grant for employers, adult skills budget, post-16 further education system
Election pledges:
- Backing major transport infrastructure, including Avon Ring Road/M4 J18a and A36/46 link road
- Protecting green fields by promoting urban regeneration sites to build more affordable homes
- Transforming the local rail network by re-opening stations and increasing local services
Liverpool City Region
Name: Steve Rotherham
Political party: Labour
Areas covered: Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens, Wirral and Halton council areas
Key powers:
- 30-year investment fund: £900 million
- Housing & planning: Strategic planning, compulsory purchase powers, mayoral development corporations
- Transport: Local roads network, bus franchising, smart ticketing, consolidated transport budget
- Education & skills: Apprenticeship Grant for employers, adult skills budget, post-16 further education system
- Health & social care: Planning for health and social care integration
Election pledges:
- Improve rail connectivity within and to the city region, including direct rail services from Liverpool to North Wales to improve connectivity with Wirral, Runcorn and Liverpool Airport
- Expand the number of Merseyrail stations and support plans for new stations in key locations, including Liverpool Knowledge Quarter and the former St James station
- Reduce the fast-tag tunnel fare to £1
- Convene a high-level housing summit within the first 100 days of office
- Launch a Metro Mayor’s Housing Challenge Competition to identify and pilot new ways to meet housing needs
- Work with local authorities and veterans’ groups to draw up and sign the first armed forces City Regional Covenant outside London
- Develop a city region-wide solar energy strategy
- Establish an investment fund to promote new renewable and community energy businesses and initiatives
- Deliver more electric charging points across the city region
- Develop a city region-wide strategy aimed at becoming a zero carbon city by 2040
Tees Valley
Name: Ben Houchen
Political party: Conservative
Areas covered: Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Stockton-On-Tees and Redcar and Cleveland council areas
Key powers:
- 30-year investment fund: £450 million
- Housing & planning: Mayoral development corporations
- Transport: Consolidated transport budget
- Education & skills: Adult skills budget
Election pledges:
- ‘Buy back’ Durham Tees Valley Airport
- Deliver 22,000 homes in the area over the next 10 years
- Bring more foreign investment to the area, including for infrastructure spending
Greater Manchester
Name: Andy Burnham
Political party: Labour
Areas covered: Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan council areas
Key powers:
- 30-year investment fund: £900 million
- Housing & planning: £30 million a year housing investment fund, strategic planning, compulsory purchase powers
- Transport: Local roads network, bus franchising, smart ticketing, consolidated transport budget
- Education & skills: Apprenticeship Grant for employers, adult skills budget, post-16 further education system
- Health & social care: Control of £6 billion integrated health and social care budget
Election pledges:
- Campaign to bring forward plans for the Northern Powerhouse Rail, connecting Manchester with Liverpool, Leeds and beyond
- Call for HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail to be built as a single integrated scheme
- Work to establish a Greater Manchester-wide rent to own scheme, focusing on people under 30 to support them to get a foot on the housing ladder
- Radically rewrite the Greater Manchester spatial framework
- Host a Mayor’s Green Summit to declare a new ambition for Greater Manchester on the green economy and carbon-neutrality
- Support City of Trees to establish City Forest Park and back the plan to plant 3 million trees
West Midlands
Name: Andy Street
Political party: Conservative
Areas covered: Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Walsall council areas
Key powers:
- 30-year investment fund: £1.1 billion
- Housing & planning: Compulsory purchase powers
- Transport: Local roads network, bus franchising, smart ticketing, consolidated transport budget
- Education & skills: Adult skills budget
Election pledges:
- Explore a lane rental scheme to charge companies for delays in delivering road works
- Start the construction of the Midlands Metro extension to Brierley Hill
- Accelerate the rollout of contactless and smart payments on West Midlands buses
- Increase cycling from 1% of all journeys to 5% of all journeys by 2023
- Rule out any universal congestion charge on drivers in the West Midlands
- Explore a scheme to incentivise more lorries and heavy vehicles to use the M6 toll at peak times and open up the M6 toll for free where it will help
- Spend £200 million on preparation and decontamination of brownfield sites
- Introduce measures to speed up housebuilding, such as a tax on vacant land being held for development
- Support a pilot of the Government’s new Right to Buy programme in the West Midlands
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough
Name: James Palmer
Political party: Conservative
Areas covered: Cambridge, East Cambridgeshire, Fenland, Huntingdonshire, Peterborough and South Cambridgeshire council areas
Key powers:
- 30-year investment fund: £600 million
- Housing & planning: £170 million affordable housing grant, strategic planning, mayoral development corporations
- Transport: Local roads network, bus franchising, smart ticketing, consolidated transport budget
- Education & skills: Apprenticeship Grant for employers, adult skills budget, post-16 further education system
- Health & social care: Planning for health and social care integration
Election pledges:
- Invest in making the planning system more open and accessible, improve the co-ordination of public investment in infrastructure, support timely connections to utilities and tackle unnecessary delays by giving councils / developers the tools to build more quickly
- Work with other partner organisations to make a plan to deal with housing pressures in the region
- Improve the A47, as well as increasing the quality of rail journeys to Cambridge
- Commit £100 million to develop the Oxford to Bedford (west) section of East-West rail, with Expressway road links and £10 million for the Bedford to Cambridge (central) section of East West rail
