Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
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by Lib Dem team on 18 March, 2010
As I reported last month, there’s an ongoing debate about a so-called “City Region” for Manchester. Although still vague, it boils down to a new body to take control of transport and economic/skills development across the Greater Manchester area, with all the local authorities having input.
In Stockport, none of the main parties were happy with the proposals. They were vague and wooly, removed the two-thirds majority voting and, once in, an authority couldn’t choose to leave.
Stockport and Trafford declined to support the proposals on 1st March.
Now I hear that Trafford has changed its mind and will be supporting the City Region. According to Crain’s:
council leader Matt Colledge said in a news release that the authority had “secured assurances”, without giving further details.
The powers that be at AGMA (the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities) have come back to Stockport with revised proposals too. I don’t have all the details, but it looks broadly like they’ve tried to address the concerns Stockport and Trafford had, and I suspect it’s a matter of judgement whether they’ve succeeded.
We’ll be discussing this next week, so I’ll report back then.
1 Comment
Iain
I think the City Region debate is very serious and although Howard Bernstein and co have made some clarifications on voting they have not said that if a Council wanted to leave they could do “automatically” without going throught the Secretary of State. All the nonesense about 10 signing a letter is just garbage.
I am not a fan of the whole concept and I don’t like the Commissions or the Combined Authority as they reduce Democracy.
The situation with “More Powers” There are no powers only the vague indication of more talks on the possibility of talks about wortking through some Quango or other. Skills is mentioned the whole time but that will be through the Apprentices Agency (not me saying that but Howard Bernstein.
Threats, bullying and intimidation are not a good start down the road to building consensus.
Right now we can leave what will they do when we can’t leave.
The people of Greater Manchester should decide what they want and not be excluded by AGMA from the whole process.
David White (IN personal Capacity)