Civic chiefs start process that could lead to giant Solent City authority

As previously revealed in the Daily Echo, council leaders in the south are keen to follow the example of Manchester and grab more funding powers from Westminster.

They want to join forces to have more powers on how billions of pounds worth of public funds are spent on local transport, housing and health projects.

And there is hope the new authority could even become a reality within the next year, with a top level summit of council and business leaders set to take place in the new year.

Fresh powers were recently granted by Chancellor George Osborne to Manchester, which will see a new “metro mayor” in charge of a Great Manchester Combined Authority.

The new mayor will be in charge of more than £2 billion of funding currently allocated to projects by Government ministers.

Council leaders in the south, including Southampton’s Simon Letts and Portsmouth’s Donna Jones, are keen not to miss the opportunity.

They say if a Solent authority was created, it would mean the leaders of all the region’s councils would sit on one board, and have power on how money was spent on major projects, such as motorway improvements or initiatives to create more jobs.

The proposals were discussed at a meeting of the Partnership for Urban South Hampshire (PUSH), a forum for council leaders in the Solent, this week.

Many leaders want to use the PUSH boundaries, running from the Waterside to Havant, as the basis for the new authority.

But that could cause problems, as combined authorities have only been formed on the borders of existing councils, while PUSH only partially includes certain councils, such as New Forest and Test Valley.

PUSH chairman and Fareham Borough Council leader Sean Woodward will write to Cities Minister Greg Clark to get clarification on whether PUSH can be used as the boundary, or whether it will need a bigger boundary including the whole of Hampshire.

He said: “As things stand we cannot form a combined authority on the PUSH boundaries, and that’s the problem.

“The body of PUSH and the Local Enterprise Partnership is a natural economic boundary as opposed to more historical boundaries.”

But, saying a combined authority was a “huge opportunity” for the region, he said: “South Hampshire’s transport network is urgently in need of attention, and who better to know what is needed than local people?”

And Cllr Letts said: “This is possibly a once-in-a-generation opportunity to wrest power from central Government.

“This is not like we are going to merge with Portsmouth or any of the current councils losing their functions.

“This is about transferring power from Westminster elite to local people through their local representatives. We think it will take about a year to see the plans through.

“We want our proposals to sit on a minister’s desk when they take power after the general election in May.”