COUNTING is underway today after voters across York and North Yorkshire went to the polls yesterday in an election that could prove a game-changer for the region.
The identity of the region’s first-ever Metro-style Mayor is expected to be announced some time this afternoon at the Harrogate convention centre.
The declaration, which will be made by returning officer Richard Flinton, will come after counts this morning at four venues across the region – one in York, and others in Scarborough, Northallerton and Harrogate.
The results of those counts will be fed through to a central counting team in Harrogate, where they will be verified before the declaration is made.
Returning officers say they expect the count to be completed by mid-afternoon.
The six candidates – Conservative Keane Duncan, Labour’s David Skaith, Lib Dem Felicity Cunliffe-Lister, the Greens’ Kevin Foster and Independent candidates Paul Haslam and Keith Tordoff – are expected to be at the Harrogate Convention Centre for the declaration.
The election of the region’s first Metro-style Mayor is widely expected to be a game-changer.
The new Mayor’s job will be to deliver ‘shared, long-term visions for the region’ using some of the money and powers previously held by central government which will be ‘devolved’ to the mayor’s office: a process known as devolution.
After the declaration today, the new Mayor will formally take office on Tuesday.
He or she will preside over a ‘York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority’ made up of delegates from both City of York Council and North Yorkshire Council and will chair a combined authority decision-making board or cabinet that includes two senior councillors from York and two from North Yorkshire.
The new Mayor’s areas of responsibility will include:
- administering the Mayoral Investment Fund, worth £540 million over 30 years
- powers to secure the development of brownfield land for housing
- powers to improve regional transport connections through a devolved, multi-year transport settlement
- adult education.
He or she will also assume the powers of the police, fire and crime commissioner.
In the first year alone the new Mayor will have a total of nearly £57m to spend.
This includes £12.7 million for housing, to deliver more than 700 new homes on brownfield sites, and a further £7 million to support transition to net zero.
The election of the new Mayor will represent a significant shift of power from Westminster to the region.
A spokesperson for the combined authority over which the Mayor will preside said: “Big decisions about our region will be taken by our Mayor and local leaders, as powers and funding is devolved from Westminster.
“This is an opportunity for more control over our region and how our economy can grow in the right ways to create new jobs and opportunities for local people. This is about more power and resources in the hands of local leaders.”
In an interview with The Press last month, University of York academic Dr Anna Sanders said the new Mayor would offer the ‘potential for real change’.
There would be more accountability because there would be a ‘single individual you hold to account’, she said.
But there would also be the potential for bolder decision-making – and for the new Mayor to work with the Mayors of other devolved authorities in West and South Yorkshire to give the region a more powerful voice.
The election of the region’s first ‘Metro’-style Mayor will also mean more decisions affecting local areas being taken by a local politician working with local people, as opposed to by a Whitehall mandarin, Dr Sanders said.
The new Mayor will have a salary of £81,300 and will serve an initial four-year term.
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