South Yorkshire mayor gets legal go-ahead

The sign-off on the mayor moves South Yorkshire’s devolution plan one step closer to completion with the very first mayor in place by 2017.

Earlier this year the former Chancellor George Osborne pledged control over £30m every year for the next 30 years to a partnership of local councils - Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield City Region combined authority.

Giving the elected mayor the go-ahead was the very first job of newly appointed Northern Powerhouse Minister Andrew Percy, who is MP for Brigg and Goole, and he said it was an honour to hand over more powers to Yorkshire.

He said: “It’s very nice in this role as a proud Yorkshireman... for one of my first acts as a new minister is to be devolving power away from Westminster and some funding up to Yorkshire where it will be better dealt with.

“This order is a milestone in the implementation of the devolution deal between the Government and local leaders.

“As a neighbouring MP to the South Yorkshire region, particularly Doncaster which I am very fond of, it’s great to know these great Yorkshire cities and towns are working together for the great and the good for South Yorkshire.”

He said elected mayors are necessary to make the devolution deals work as when powers and budgets are transferred it is important for people to have one person who is clearly accountable.

However Labour has often been very critical of the imposition of the elected mayor model in exchange for powers, and the party has regularly highlighted that a referendum on elected mayors was rejected by people in Sheffield as recently as 2012.

Grahame Morris MP, Labour’s newly appointed shadow minister for the Department for Local Government, said: “What I’ve discovered from 16 years in local Government is if you try to be prescriptive, particularly apply models that work in metropolitan areas and in London, into the regions, they don’t necessarily work. We have to have local flexibility.

“The truth of the matter is that it has been a gun that has been held to the heads of local government leaders; “if you want this deal, you must accept an elected mayor”. And I think that’s fundamentally wrong.”

He also said council cuts of £630m pounds across all local authorities over the past few years would “financially impoverish” the whole structure.

“If the mayor isn’t empowered financially...this is going to cause huge problems,” he said.

Angela Smith, MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge disagreed with Mr Percy when he said devolution is a “two-way” relationship. She said the mayor model had to be accepted by local authorities or they would not receive any new powers or funding.

The order was put to the vote and then passed, kick-starting the first South Yorkshire mayoral election in May 2017, which will be a three year term with another election in May 2020. Four year terms will be in place after that.

Mr Percy said he was looking forward to more areas in the North securing devolution deals in the future.