Historic time for English devolution and West Yorkshire is ready to capitalise - Tracy Brabin

In return, the Government will give us those tools – the freedoms and flexibilities that we need to transform our regional economies and create well-paid jobs throughout our communities.

This marks a big step-change in the relationship between regional and central government.

The Prime Minister understands that to deliver on his missions – kickstarting growth, unleashing green energy, tackling crime and anti-social behaviour, giving opportunities to young people, and rebuilding public services – he needs Mayors.

Because the top-down, over-centralised, Whitehall knows-best model has failed.

Across the country, people are fed up with unreliable buses and overpriced trains. With poor access to the high quality skills training they need to secure better-paid work. With insecure and unaffordable housing. And, perhaps most sadly of all, with the loss of pride they can often feel in their communities, with high-street shops boarded-up, beloved cultural landmarks on their knees, and green spaces neglected or polluted.

These policy failures were the inevitable result not just of underinvestment, but of the active disempowerment of our regions.

West Yorkshire is a huge and complex geography. Our region, in all its beautiful complexity, cannot be properly understood and governed from behind a desk in Whitehall. Decisions taken over 200 miles away by successive governments have given us a deregulated and declining bus network, and a national skills framework that does little to meet the needs of our local labour market.

Devolution can and will turn the tide. In West Yorkshire, we’ve already taken the decision to bring buses back under public control, and we’re building a region of learning where every person and every business can get the skills they need to succeed.

But with the funding and the freedom to unleash our £7bn, ten-year Local Growth Plan, we could go so much further and faster.

We could put rocket-boosters under our fastest-growing sectors, like financial services, advanced manufacturing and health technologies, while supporting all of our small and medium-sized businesses to access finance, skills and markets.

We could empower everyone to upskill and retrain throughout their lives.

We could create a better-connected and integrated transport network, with more reliable and frequent bus services under local control, greater rail capacity to reduce congestion and journey times, and a new tram system fully integrated with bus and rail to connect the entire region.

And we could build thriving places, with warm and affordable homes for all, safer communities free from crime and antisocial behaviour, neighbourhoods resilient to flooding and the impacts of climate change, and greater access to culture, heritage and sport for everyone.

But our ambitious plans for growth demand nothing less than a fundamental rewiring of England’s political system. For too long, local areas have wasted time and cash on funding bids in competition with their neighbours, going cap-in-hand to Whitehall just to fund the basics. No longer.

Under the Government’s plans published this week, Mayors and regional leaders will sit on a Council of Nations and Regions, ensuring that the Government’s industrial strategy works for all of our communities.

Regions with devolution, like West Yorkshire, will move more quickly and boldly toward multi-year single-pot funding settlements, ensuring that the elected leaders who know their areas best can take the funding decisions they know will deliver jobs and growth.

Tracy Brabin is the Mayor of West Yorkshire.