Mayoral control for England's widest spread of £540 million
August 2, 2022

Districts shown will be abolished. North Yorkshire and City of York will get a mayoral combined authorityFollowing its plans to flatten the seven huge district authorities of North Yorkshire into their single county authority, the Government is now insisting on the election of a powerful mayor to take control over both North Yorkshire and the separate City of York unitary authority as part of the release of a 30-year funding package for the area.

The one individual will take charge in an area of North Yorkshire covering more than 3,100 square miles with more than 500 villages and towns plus a further 105 square miles of the City of York authority again with many villages and a town in addition to the city itself.

Having chosen to eliminate the district authorities from 2023, the Government wants a new combined authority for York and North Yorkshire as part of its ‘devolution deal’.

Following election, the mayor will have powers to invest in transport, education and housing, including compulsory purchase powers, in England’s largest area authority.

The individual will be expected to take charge of buses and travel organisation, house-building and planning and adult education, but will also need to assume the current responsibilities of the recently combined fire and police role of Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for York and North Yorkshire.

The move is dictated by the Government’s levelling-up agenda to allow £540 million to be released to the region over 30 years.

To put that £540 million in some context, the Crossrail railway project in London has cost more than 34 times that amount, wheras the 30-year total is about 25 times the amount Harrogate district council would spend in one year.

Announcing the deal on Yorkshire Day (August 1), Levelling Up Secretary Greg Clark MP said: “Yorkshire Day 2022 is an historic one. It marks the return of powers and resources from London to much of the historic North Riding.”

Greg Clark, who has held the Levelling Up Secretary post since July 7, 2022, is MP for Tunbridge Wells in Kent, but was born in Middlesbrough, then a county borough in the North Riding and just before it became part of the Borough of Teesside, straddling the border with County Durham and the first of a succession of local government changes on Teesside.

The boundaries and area of North Yorkshire are considerably different to the North Riding. The area is much wider as, in 1974, it also took on vast areas of the West Riding in the  Craven,  Harrogate and  Selby districts, also parts of the East Riding around Filey joined  Scarborough district and around Norton-on-Derwent the  Ryedale district. Portions of the North Riding were also lost in areas which have undergone a series of local government changes since 1974, but are now the unitary authorities of  Redcar and Cleveland,  Middlesbrough, and parts of  Durham County and  Stockton-on-Tees authorities.

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Did you know?: The planned unitary authority covering the North Yorkshire county from 2023 has more than three times the area of the neighbouring East Riding of Yorkshire unitary authority, which is currently among the largest in England.

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