Leading by example: metro mayors

Housing is on the six new metro mayors’ agendas, says Andrew Carter, chief executive of the Centre for Cities thinktank. “Housing issues are different in each combined authority, but they have all identified it as an issue.”

Virtually the first steps taken by both Mr Burnham and Mr Street were on homelessness. Mr Burnham’s first job, after spending the evening of his election victory celebrating with his campaign team, was to turn up at an early-morning soup run in Manchester city centre. Like Mr Street, who has set up a rough sleeping task force, he did this even though housing isn’t formally part of the metro mayors’ statutory remit.

OUR WHO’S WHO IN LOCAL AUTHORITY HOUSING DEVELOPMENT LIST IN FULL

Two of the new metro mayors also have housing budgets. Mr Burnham receives £30m per annum, while James Palmer, who won the new combined authority that runs from Cambridge to Peterborough for the Conservatives, has been awarded a £170m homes pot as part of his area’s devolution deal.

It is on a strategic level, however, that the new breed of mayors are expected to make the biggest waves in housing.

David Cowans, Who’s Who judge and group chief executive at Places for People, sees many benefits in taking a cross-authority approach to housing, planning and infrastructure.

“A process that looks at real housing markets and goes beyond local authorities is crucial.”

He is particularly excited by the work being done in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, where Mr Palmer has advocated the very un-Tory idea of a land value cap. “They’re embracing change in a way other parts of the country aren’t,” he says.

“True city regional thinking means not everybody getting a portion of the pie.”

Mr Carter agrees: “This layer is actually getting to grips with some of these issues which will determine land use planning and the ability to deliver new development. If that translates into sensible planning policies, we’ll start to see some change.”

The added benefit, says Mr Carter, is to bring together different strategic functions, notably planning and transport.

All six combined authorities set up have control over a consolidated transport budget. Only two – Tees Valley and the West Midlands – lack strategic planning powers. In addition, all but two of the mayors have been handed compulsory purchase powers.

Yet none of the devolution deals include development control powers to call in or reject planning applications, like the London mayor is able to.

Nevertheless, Mr Carter believes the packages of mayoral powers are even more important than cash for helping to bring housing forward. “When you bring those together, that unlocks land for housing development. The most important mechanism the London mayor has had is the London Plan, which galvanises what can be quite abstract conversations about development.”

Over the next year, those combined authorities with strategic planning powers will be drawing up development frameworks for their areas.

This process will be the real test of how far individual areas will go to make sacrifices for the greater good of the city region, says Hugh Owen, director of strategy and public affairs at Riverside.

“Each city region is at a different stage in terms of truly strategic thinking about housing. The litmus test of the effectiveness of combined authorities and mayoral leadership will be the extent to which that strategic thinking about housing is different to just adding up the sum of the parts.

“A step up in thinking at a new spatial level is the goal, but local authorities need to be quite brave.”

This, he says, will present challenges for councils within the combined authorities. “It will be hard for councils, given the whole city region model is predicated on soft power. It will be tricky because statutory responsibilities rest with local authorities: effective city regional leadership comes in transcending the relative parochialism.

“True city regional thinking means not everybody getting a portion of the pie,” says Mr Owen.

Tensions are already brewing between councils and the new combined authorities: Mr Burnham’s homelessness initiative proved a flashpoint in Greater Manchester, with the metro mayor perceived to have overstepped his mark on the issue.

Mr Burnham also ruffled feathers by ordering the Greater Manchester spatial framework for the conurbation back to the drawing board as he doesn’t want development in the green belt.

These problems also flared up in Greater Manchester, viewed as the showpiece example of joint working by authorities.Besides long-established arrangements between the conurbation’s local authorities, Mr Burnham and the overwhelming majority of council leaders on his combined authority board are all Labour. This is not true in other combined authorities.

In the West of England, the Conservative metro mayor, Tim Bowles, has to find a way of working with Labour’s Mr Rees, who heads the biggest council in the combined authority area.

“The litmus test will be the extent to which that strategic thinking is different to the sum of the parts.”

And even where there is ideological unanimity at a local level, there is scope for tensions, such as in Merseyside.

“The litmus test will be the extent to which that strategic thinking is different to the sum of the parts"

There, the directly elected Labour mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, lost the nomination for the metro post to former MP Steve Rotheram, who subsequently won a landslide in May’s election.

Hugh Ellis, head of policy at Town and Country Planning Association, worries about the adequacy of the institutional framework for combined authorities, which rely on mayors obtaining consent for their decisions from cabinets made up of local council leaders. “These arrangements are nowhere near as robust as we’d like,” he says.

Yet the Centre for Cities’ Mr Carter believes the metro mayors will survive, partly because the component councils have signed up, too.“The fact that they voted for it in the first place means they have created a basis for collaboration.”

The government too has an interest in the devolution game, with four of the metro mayors having won on Tory tickets, providing the party with allies in parts of the country where it otherwise lacks power at a local government level, adds Mr Carter.

“The suspicion is [councils] will get there in the end because, if they develop a powerful negotiating block, they’ll do better deals with a government that seems to want to do those sorts of deals.

The everyday friction will probably be there, but it has potential to be better than before.

”Meanwhile, the metro mayors are making waves at a national level, such as leading the North-wide campaign against the government’s announcement in August, which passed the buck for taking forward the trans-Pennines new High Speed 3 rail line

.The road may be bumpy, but the metro mayors can expect to have a high profile in the housing world for some time to come.