Despite the opposition of your Focus Team, on Monday South Glos Council voted to go into the new devolution deal, where a single Mayor will make decisions covering a wide area of the West of England, but without North Somerset. The Metro Mayor will be elected on the first Thursday in May next year.
We were not against a combined authority for the West of England, but thought it was a poor deal that gives us only a fraction of the money needed to fix our transport problems, let alone anything else. We saw no need for the imposition of a Mayor and thought it made no sense without North Somerset on board. We wanted to work with the Government to bring them back in, because none of the problems facing our region - housing, transport and skills issues - end just south of Bristol.
To give one example of the problems of North Somerset being excluded, the Joint Spatial Plan that is setting out where thousands of new homes should be built covers the whole of the West of England but the Mayor is required to have a spatial plan of their own covering only the area of the Combined Authority. The last thing we need is any more planning uncertainty while that is resolved.
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