Devolution is a critical lever for delivering growth and prosperity for local communities, through bringing local transport back into public control, making people’s daily commute easier, tailoring local skills training to local employer’s needs, so people can get a good job, and driving regeneration of local areas, so people feel proud of the place they live in.
For too long decisions have been made centrally in Whitehall, away from the places and communities those decisions impact. Mayors and other local leaders are best placed to identify and invest in the projects and infrastructure that reflect the needs of local people and drive growth, but they need long-term funding certainty to harness their region’s potential.
Today, I am therefore pleased to confirm the long-term funding offer to the six areas on the devolution priority programme. Once mayors are in post, the six mayoral strategic authorities will receive close to £200 million collectively per year for 30 years through their investment funds. These funds will be split equally between capital and revenue, and they will be un-ringfenced, so local areas can choose how they want to invest this money in local priorities. This investment will promote growth in the six areas, and as the baseline of our funding commitment, it will be additional to devolved funding streams from other Government Departments, such as adult skills funding and transport funding.
Each area’s individual yearly investment fund allocation, based on their populations, are as follows:
Cheshire and Warrington combined authority: £21.7 million per year
Cumbria combined authority: £11.1 million per year
Greater Essex combined county authority: £41.5 million per year
Hampshire and the Solent combined county authority: £44.6 million per year
Norfolk and Suffolk combined county authority: £37.4 million per year
Sussex and Brighton combined county authority: £38 million per year
Beyond the allocations based on population, each new mayoral strategic authority will be supported to build core capacity to ensure they can deliver for local people. All six areas will receive £3 million each as a minimum flat payment over the next three financial years, in addition to an initial payment of £1 million each when the statutory instruments are laid in Parliament, to help with the costs of establishing the new authorities.
The Government recognise that mayoral strategic authorities are most successful when they are built on a strong history of partnership and joint delivery. Moving forward, we will therefore seek to facilitate the establishment of foundation strategic authorities in areas without a foundation of collaboration, to build local capacity ahead of areas accessing mayoral powers. These foundation strategic authorities will be empowered to deliver for their residents in the interim. The Government plan to engage with local leaders about creating a new wave of foundation strategic authorities to ensure more residents can see the benefits of local control.