Graham, Tom and Ian

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A Mayor for Greater Manchester – what is the Combined Authority?

by Lib Dem team on 11 November, 2014

Last week I signed up to a new deal for Greater Manchester, giving us control of nearly £2 billion currently spent down in Whitehall, along with new powers to improve transport, skills, business, housing, planning and more.

As part of that, we’re getting a mayor for Greater Manchester – appointed at first (since they need to change the law to allow an election), then elected from 2017. But we’re not getting another Boris. Our mayor is Made in Greater Manchester – not a single person with all the power, sitting above the councils but the leader of the Combined Authority, working with the ten Greater Manchester Authorities and only able to do things in agreement with them.

What is the Combined Authority and what does it do?

The Combined Authority is a way for the ten Greater Manchester councils to work together and get things done collectively that they couldn’t do on their own. The ten councils are Stockport, Tameside, Oldham, Rochdale, Bury, Bolton, Wigan, Trafford, Salford and Manchester.

By far the biggest thing the Combined Authority does right now is transport, and TfGM is part of the CA. The Combined Authority plays a key role in new tram lines, funding for the A6 to Manchester Airport Relief Road, Stockport’s proposed new Transport Interchange and Town Centre Access Package, subsidised bus services and train improvements. Through TfGM it manages major junctions across Greater Manchester (including our local Kingsway/Gatley Road junction) and maintains traffic lights.

The Combined Authority allows the councils to work together on other issues too. It offers loans to businesses, works on cross-GM planning issues, funds skills and business development work, works in partnership with the Police and Crime Commissioner on a whole range of areas, co-ordinates the approach to health and social care and more besides.

Of course, the powers of the Combined Authority are currently limited – if the devolution deal goes through it will be able to do a lot more.

The Combined Authority is currently led by the leaders of the ten councils. The devolution deal means they’ll be joined by an eleventh leader – the mayor of Greater Manchester. Many other people (councillors and non-councillors) are involved in other committees, such as TfGMC – the Transport for Greater Manchester Committee that looks in detail at the issues around trams, trains, buses, roads and cycling.

AGMA

You might also have heard of AGMA – the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities – and wondered what that was all about. AGMA is an informal partnership of the ten authorities formed when the Greater Manchester Council was abolished thirty years ago. It has limited legal powers (e.g. it can’t hold money) but has been a very useful way for the councils to work together in the past.

The Combined Authority is a more recent partnership of the same ten councils, but unlike AGMA it has legal powers from government. At the moment both exist side by side – for legal reasons there are some things only AGMA can do and some things only the CA can do. AGMA and the CA are two different ways for the ten councils to work together.

Holding the Combined Authority to account

The Lib Dems on Stockport Council see the Combined Authority as a positive development: it allows us to achieve more for local people. I believe Devo Manc will take that to the next level and help us to make a real and positive difference to the lives of local people.

It’s not perfect though! The fact that very few people know what the Combined Authority is and what it does tells me that a lot more needs to be done to explain it to people.

We also need to get much better at holding the leaders to account for decisions they make in the Combined Authority. It needs to become a lot more transparent. The CA makes important decisions that affect our lives so we need to get those out there – on websites and in the local media. People are going to disagree with things, and we need to get those debates out in the open.

Stockport Full Council meetings are webcast so everyone can see what we do (even if our viewing figures lag disappointingly far behind X-Factor). Shouldn’t key Combined Authority meetings be webcast too?

   8 Comments

8 Responses

  1. DR C says:

    A single council for ‘Manchester’ be better than the current parochial set-up.
    Abolish Stockport Council and the other nine.

    • ARTHUR lampkin says:

      I say abolish the 10 councils and have one Authority with say 8 representatives for each of the old authorities and combine all back offices into one with less people, could also combine all the public health staff into one. This would save so much more money without cuts to services. Just think instead of 10 directors of finance would be just 1, 1 directors of HR Iinstead of 10, I leader of the council instead of 10, now look at these savings and say it is not a good idea.

      • Iain Roberts says:

        Arthur – there are certainly savings to be made by councils working together and combining back-office functions, but perhaps not as big as you might think

        Assuming you want your new council to do the same work on the ground as the old ten, it still needs the same number of front-line staff. There’s only so many people a manager can sensibly manage so you’ll need roughly the same number of managers. There’ll be ten times as much back-office work to do as for one council so, although you’ll make some savings, they won’t be huge.

        There’s a reason why any big organisation – public or private sector – has a big bureaucracy with lots of layers of management.

        Your proposal also does away with the idea of local councillors who can do the sort of work we do at the moment – there’s no way 8 councillors could do that in the same way as 63.

        • ARTHUR lampkin says:

          The NHS managed to do this and made a big saving.

          • ARTHUR lampkin says:

            I also can’t see why Stockport need 63 councillors. When it is basically just one who gets thing done in Cheadle/Gatley. I guess they all get a good amount of money for it too.

  2. MK says:

    There needs to be more education about politics in school. Those citizenship classes are rubbish, inform students of the political landscape of the UK and their local community. Give them lots of knowledge and promise of how it could change things for the better. They will go home, talk with their parents about it and hopefully more political interaction will happen.

    The whole culture of not discussing politics and who you voted for is a pox on democracy. People feel disengaged because they are not engaged. Give the kids a chance to send a representative to the council meetings so they can have an input. I’m so forward about engaging kids because they are the future, not old people; and old people are the only ones who know whats what thanks to their experience. This experience needs to be better fostered in the young uns.

  3. Les Leckie says:

    I agree with you MK but old people are the future too.

  4. Alan Gent says:

    Iain, thanks for the explanation. I suspect you may have to do it several more times, but its a start!
    One of the things you mentioned was the Stockport interchange. Walking though Stockport on Friday, we wondered why the bus station isn’t being moved next to the train station? The area isn’t as big as the current site but the present site is rarely full of buses and the integration between rail and bus would be far more evident.

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