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









North Yorkshire City of York