All 20 cities bidding for the second wave of city deals will be invited to negotiate new powers with the Government, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has announced.
In a speech at Mansion House in London last night, Mr Clegg revealed the 20 areas would negotiate with Whitehall over the next year to secure new levels of local autonomy to help boost their local economies.
They join the eight core cities that signed deals last summer, in being granted greater control over their budgets in areas such as training, skills and road building, in return for demonstrating strong plans for how they would use the powers to increase growth.
‘These deals help cities and their wider areas make once in a generation changes that will be felt by everyone across their region,’ Clegg said.
‘Letting go of power and money doesn’t come naturally to Whitehall. Over time, the economic importance of other parts of the country has been devastatingly downplayed, as the economic elite have narrowed the debate towards a London-centric view.’
The 20 cities are: the Black Country, Bournemouth and Poole, Brighton and Hove, Greater Cambridge, Coventry and Warwickshire, Hull and Humber, Ipswich, Leicester and Leicestershire, Milton Keynes and the South East Midlands, Greater Norwich, Oxford and Oxfordshire, Reading and Central Berkshire, Plymouth, Preston, Southampton and Portsmouth, Southend and Thames Gateway South Essex, Stoke and Staffordshire, Sunderland and the North East, Swindon and Wiltshire, and Tees Valley.
Combined with the eight core cities these areas account for 71% of the population of England and 68% of the jobs.