Starting the offensive over West Midlands City Region

I've blogged about this West Midlands City Region before and today I decided to take the offensive over the secrecy and lack of information available for this proposal.

First port of call was the Regional Assembly which produced the one report I've managed to extract from Telford & Wrekin Council. They quickly directed me to a North Briton by the name of Sandy Taylor at Birmingham City Council. I left a message for him to call me, he didn't so I rang back and made a nuisance of myself until they put me through to him. We spoke for 20 minutes in which I told him how I saw it and cleared up a few queries.

Before I go any further, here are my problems with the proposed City Region:

• The Leader of each council subsumed into the City Region will be appointed to the Executive Board of the City Region
• The Chief Executive of each council subsumed into the City Region will be appointed to the City Region Steering Group
• The City Region Programme Board has already met twice despite the proposal not having been approved
• Telford will be a "safety valve" if development in the metropolitan areas falls below targets - extra development in Telford will take up the slack
• The unelected West Midlands Regional Assembly will provide scrutiny of the City Region
• Visibility and publicity activity ensuring local people know what the City Region is about will take place after the City Region has been implemented
• The City Region is supported by the West Midlands Regional Assembly
• The City Region will be unelected
• Proposals for an elected City Region mayor are opposed in favour of being wholly unelected
• The City Region is a "challenge" from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
• The City Region will be accountable to the unelected West Midlands Regional Assembly which is accountable only to John Prescott
• City Regions work elsewhere in the world but other countries don't have assymetric devolution with Cities competing against devolved national governments
• Extra funding promised by UK government as a condition of implementing the City Region which is tantamount to bribery*
• The proposal has been written up and submitted but won't be available to the public until June/July this year

* Birmingham says this is not true but other sources indicate that it is

Anyway, after discussing most of the above with the man from Birmingham, I decided to call the Standards Board of England which is the ombudsman for elected representitives. You see, the Chief Executive of Telford & Wrekin Council and the Leader or the Council both stand to gain from this proposal as they will gain positions in a highly influential regional government. The Standards Board for England says that if a councillor stands to gain status above that of fellow councillors as a result of a decision then they have a prejudicial interest.

With this in mind I called Telford & Wrekin Council's Legal and Democratic Services Department and put it to them that both these men have a prejudicial and personal interest in the proposal and that the leader of the council, who has publically endorsed the proposal, has a pre-determined opinion and will not be entering the meeting this month to rubber-stamp the proposal with an open mind as he is required by law to do so. They don't agree but said that I can put my case to the council's solicitor next week when he comes back off his jollies.

Descisions, decisions ...