Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whether he plans to bring forward proposals to introduce metro mayors in metropolitan counties other than Greater Manchester.

The Government’s response to the Heseltine review (Cm 8587, March 2013) stated that the Government would support local authorities that wish to create a combined authority or implement other forms of collaboration (for example, shared management), and would also support local authorities that wished to have a directly-elected conurbation mayor.

The Government is open to discuss proposals from any areas on the scope to further decentralise in England, where there is both strong governance and the capacity and capability to deliver on driving economic growth. A directly-elected mayor may be one element of such a case. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution.

The recent command paper, Implications of devolution for England (Cm 8969, December 2014) also sets the views of both Coalition parties on decentralisation in England.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/implications-of-devolution-for-england