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Old Posted May 8, 2012, 7:57 PM
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Other British Cities Need London Style Local Powers

City mayors need Boris-style powers


8 May 2012

By Peter Hetherington



Read More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/20...y&type=article

Metro Manchester Authority: http://www.agma.gov.uk/

Quote:
London is the only city in England that gives its mayoral administration the power and prestige it needs to perform its role successfully. The other cities must follow suit.

- Thankfully, a few cities and surrounding conurbations – notably Greater Manchester, with its new "combined authority" – have shown remarkable initiative to develop new forms of governance across council boundaries and between parties to drive forward local economies without any prompting by central government. They remain the exception. Ministers were placing great faith in nine referendums in major cities to gain approval for directly elected mayors, with the promise of full-blown elections in November. But only Bristol, a "hung" council with six leaders in 10 years, said yes.

- The problem, acknowledged by Liberal Democrat peer Lord [John] Shipley, former Newcastle city council leader and cities adviser to the government, is that voters were unconvinced by the case for an elected mayor – because no one had explained what problem needed solving. In fact, the wider problem – articulated best by Darren Johnson, a Green party member of the London assembly – is that the government's focus was too narrow. Rather than mayors for single councils, why not conurbation-wide mayors with powers similar to those enjoyed by Boris Johnson over transport, strategic planning, housing, policing and, increasingly, the economy?

- In the Town and Country Planning Association journal, the planner Sir Peter Hall recounts that in 1966 a law in France required its 14 largest provincial cities to establish a new kind of metropolitan authority to overcome the fragmentation of local power. A political consensus across council boundaries was hammered out to propel the once-depressed Lille city-region, with a population of 1.1 million, on to the European stage. With a mixture of local taxes and government grants, its economy was transformed.

- In France today – with strong mayors or city regions, often both – the national economy is proving more balanced than in Britain, with wealth and power spread more evenly across the country, rather than concentrated in one capital. As Hall points out, the moral is that UK city mayors have to embrace a much wider area if they are to prove successful.

- All of which raises the issue of how the government responds to the resounding no votes in nine mayoral referendums. David Cameron recently promised a mayors' cabinet to drive forward a new policy for cities. Will it still function? And, crucially, where now for urban policy? For that, we will have to wait for the likely departure of the local government secretary, Eric Pickles, in a forthcoming reshuffle.

.....



Boris Johnson with David Cameron at City Hall, London, following Johnson's re-election as the mayor of London. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

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