Devolution deal for Yorkshire due in the New Year

Despite deadlock between West, North and East Yorkshire councils over how a power transfer will work, control over spending, transport and skills will be run locally instead of through Whitehall from 2016.

Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Greg Clark, said people in Yorkshire should expect to see a radical shift in power from London within the next couple of months as it would be “crazy” for one of the biggest economies in Europe to be locked out of having their own regional control.

Bitter negotiations between council leaders across the region over the past 18 months are all part of the “hard yards” of striking a deal, he said, but a breakthrough is on its way.

“Yorkshire is such an important part not only of the

Northern Powerhouse but of the devolution agenda, that I won’t rest until I see Yorkshire included,” he said.

He said over the next few months “I hope that we would be able to make significant progress” and “agree a lot of these deals”, including in Yorkshire and other parts of the country.

He said: “Sometimes these do involve some hard yards of local negotiations and I think it’s important that everyone engages constructively with those conversations.