Time for Hull and East Yorkshire to get meaningful devolution - Yorkshire Post Letters

I READ in The Yorkshire Post, August 1, that our region has been given a great gift on Yorkshire Day of another mayoral devolution deal, this time for North Yorkshire.

The North Yorkshire and City of York devolution deal will sit alongside those in South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire who have elected mayors that enable these areas to receive a great deal of money devolved from central government.

Unfortunately, none of these deals currently brings the amount of devolution mentioned in last Saturday’s article about the levelling up in a region of northern Spain, written by Ivan Jimenez.

As one of those people who will have a vote for either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, I am trusting they both will take on board the fact that real devolution needs to include the ability of these mayoral regions to be given the power to raise, themselves, income to pay for infrastructure and other projects that benefit their own respective areas and the whole of Yorkshire.

What I hope and trust is that the forthcoming devolution deal for the East Riding of Yorkshire and City of Kingston upon Hull is upgraded from just a county deal to a full mayoral deal, with all the extra devolution powers that go with such an arrangement.

Now there is a new Liberal Democrat administration in Hull I trust they will see the benefit of such a deal, unlike their Labour predecessors, and that both the East Riding of Yorkshire Council and the City of Hull will together be able to negotiate the same level of devolution as the other three mayoral authorities already enjoy in our wonderful county.