York and North Yorkshire can be a blueprint for devolution outside the UK’s large city regions, says Mayor David Skaith.
Speaking at the halfway point of his four-year term, Mr Skaith said the launch of the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority in 2024 had delivered huge benefits for the region.
Millions of pounds of funding had been secured which the region would have missed out on without devolution — with more investment still to come, Mr Skaith told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
“I think for too long York and North Yorkshire has been overlooked and it hasn’t shown that ambition and now we’ve been able to sit around those top tables with fellow mayors, with ministers, with the Prime Minister to really showcase how brilliant our region is and bring in that much-needed investment that we haven’t seen in our region for many, many years.”
He added: “If you look at the investment we’ve been able to secure over the last couple of years, it wouldn’t have come in before.
“For example, our transport settlement is the biggest transport settlement we’ve ever seen. That’s not only money going into fixing highways but also into road safety — that’s something we’ve never seen before.
“We’ve also seen the most money we’ve ever had to build housing with a big emphasis on affordable social homes. Again, that’s money that we’ve never seen before.”
Mr Skaith said devolution had previously been introduced in large city regions such as Liverpool and Manchester, but York and North Yorkshire was showing how it could work in more rural parts of the country.
“It’s never been shown how it could work in regions like ours and we’re showing how it can work and how it should work, and we want to be the blueprint as devolution is rolled out elsewhere in the country.”
Asked what he hoped to achieve over the next two years, Mr Skaith said the authority was now moving from establishment to delivery.
“We’ve had to create a combined authority from scratch and deliver at pace and do all this in two years. For us now, we’ve laid the groundwork for our transport system. We are the first region to get a rural franchising pilot and we want to be showing how franchising models can be delivered in York and North Yorkshire, which took Greater Manchester nearly a decade to get through.
“We’re also emphasising the need to keep pushing on the homes building — we’ve built a lot of homes but we’ve got a lot more to do.
“And the message to government is how regions like ours can add to the national agenda on growth and the things we’re doing around rail innovation, food and farming and agritech. These are things that we are leading the way on in York and North Yorkshire.”
Mr Skaith and senior members of North Yorkshire Council have recently publicly disagreed over the allocation of transport maintenance funding.
However, the mayor said such disagreements had been rare during the authority’s first two years.
“I think to go two years and hundreds of millions out of the door, and have just one thing we haven’t agreed on is pretty good.
“I think, generally speaking, we’ve worked really well. Yes, there’s always going to be challenging conversations and that’s borne out of frustration that we all probably feel, but I think we are in a really good place.”
The next mayoral election is due to take place in 2028, and Mr Skaith confirmed he hopes to seek a second term.
“Yes, absolutely,” he said, adding: “I don’t take this job for granted any day. I absolutely love the opportunity to be able to represent the region that I am from, and that I’m raising my family in. It’s an absolute honour, and I would love the opportunity to run again in two years’ time.”
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