New powers for local councils

Evening Chronicle (Newcastle, England), Oct 26, 2006

Byline: By Bill Jacobs

Council bosses are to be offered sweeping new powers over billions of pounds of Government cash and a huge range of public services in Tyne & Wear.

Communities & Local Government Secretary Ruth Kelly announced today that a new city region will be created in a groundbreaking White Paper at Westminster.

She was then heading to Tyneside with the Prime Minister to meet local council chiefs to outline the new resources and decision making powers they are to receive.

Council leaders in Newcastle, Gateshead, North and South Tyneside and Sunderland will be asked to form an executive board to control and co-ordinate not only existing local authority powers but spending on public health, benefits, policing, economic development, transport and highways.

In a major change on public transport, the board is expected to become the policy-making body for Nexus, which runs the Metro, with the existing Tyne & Wear Passenger Transport Authority scrapped.

Council leaders will be asked to produce a blueprint for the new framework to be incorporated in legislation next year.

Ministers say there will be no increase in council tax, with the new board taking responsibility for saying how existing money is spent.

Mrs Kelly said the new proposals were not a sign of the failure of the existing arrangements but of the success of North East councils in regenerating and reviving the regions.

She said this had now reached the "tipping point" where powers currently held in Westminster and Whitehall should be handed over to elected representatives in Tyne & Wear in much the same way the Government has done to the Greater London Authority and the capital's Mayor, Ken Livingstone.

In her statement on the White Paper, she said it was wrong to deny councils in the North East the power to control the region's future.

Council leaders will be asked to turn existing informal arrangements into a statutory executive board responsible for co-ordinating local authority spending plans that cross existing boundaries. There is already a Tyne & Wear leaders' group chaired by Gateshead Council leader Mick Henry.

The new board is likely to be given powers to direct Government spending in Tyne & Wear.

Newcastle City Council's Lib Dem leader John Shipley said: "We're fully behind the principle of a city region based in Tyne & Wear and are looking for significantly enhanced powers from the Government."

Ministers hope that the move will counter concerns about the effect of devolution in Scotland, Wales and London.