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WY&H Health and Care Partnership Board 2 March 2021

Summary report Item No: 09/21 Item: West Devolution Report author: Paul Bollom, Head of Plan Presenters: Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, Chair of the ; and Tom Riordan CBE, Chief Executive, Executive summary

West Yorkshire’s five council leaders agreed an outline devolution deal with the Government in March 2020. This is currently close to completing parliamentary approval. The West Yorkshire deal is the biggest deal of its kind, bringing more than £1.8 billion of investment for the region into local control. It will also see the creation of the first ever directly elected , with elections taking place in May 2021. At this time the deal will come into full effect.

Devolution ambitions are that through better use of funding, powers and influence better outcomes can be sought for West Yorkshire citizens. The deal focuses on areas of skills, economy and transport which strongly align with the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership’s ambitions, both around wider determinants of health but also with practical enablers of the WY&H ‘10 Big Ambitions’. The deal does not include any devolution of nationally held health or care public expenditure or national powers in relation to health and care services.

Developmental partnership working will be required between the ICS (itself developing in light of the legislative changes outlined in the recent White Paper) and the emergent Mayoral authority, Police and Crime Commissioner and the wider implications of the deal to maximise benefits both within and without the health and care system.

Recommendations and next steps

The WY&H Partnership Board is asked to note:

 the significant progress to date of the deal and the areas of financial and powers devolution encompassed in the West Yorkshire agreement;  the scope of opportunities the deal offers in relation to health and care outcomes and wider determinants of health; and  the requirement to engage with the devolution structures and consider how they may best be linked across the ICS and associated partnership forums.

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West Yorkshire Devolution

Context and Background

1. UK governments of different types have attempted to create new forms of subnational democracy and to decentralise power for the past two decades. This has included the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish devolutions. However, by international standards, political control – within England at least – remains highly centralised.

2. In the summer of 2014, the Chancellor of the Exchequer highlighted the concept of a ‘’. This signalled the start of a new devolution programme aimed at devolving powers to cities in the North of England, with the aim of stimulating growth and productivity and tackling the north–south divide.

3. The aims of devolution deals are broadly threefold. To boost economic productivity and growth, to join up and reform public services (e.g. across health, social care, employment, skills and transport) and to promote innovation and new responses by public services to demand. To date ten deals have been nationally agreed, including most Core City regions, alongside a number of more rural areas. Deals now also extend beyond the original geographical focus of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’.

4. The context for the deal is that Leeds and West Yorkshire councils have built a number of significant sub-regional structures and won funding tranches from central government over more than 15 years of successful partnership working. The devolution deal therefore is set in a recent history of securing a £1.2 billion Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Growth Deal, the country’s largest – and establishing a £1 billion Transport Fund to deliver local transport improvements in West Yorkshire and . The Integrated Care System (ICS) is a further example of the strength of regional partnership working.

5. West Yorkshire’s five council leaders agreed the outline deal with the Government in March 2020. This was followed by an eight-week public consultation. In line with the participative approach across WY this resulted in the largest ever public consultation on English devolution with 4,400 responses.

6. The devolution deal will help the region invest in economic recovery by supporting transport improvements, adult education, skills and jobs, infrastructure, housing and regeneration.

7. Devolution ambitions are that it will enable us to achieve more:

 Funding: to invest in our people, businesses and communities;  Powers: to shape our own destiny and take decisions closer to our people; and  Influence: to shape Government policy and access further devolution and funds

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The Devolution Deal Content

8. The West Yorkshire devolution deal is the biggest deal of its kind bringing more than £1.8 billion of investment for the region into local control. It will also see the creation of the first ever directly elected Mayor of West Yorkshire with elections taking place in May 2021.

9. The deal will give the Combined Authority and Mayor new powers and funding including:

 Control of £38 million per year allocation of gainshare investment funding over 30 years, to drive growth and take forward our priorities. This will focus particularly on innovation pipeline support both for early entrepreneurship but also support the existing links in place with the Regional Entrepreneurship Accelerator Programme with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT REAP).  Building on the West Yorkshire Transport Fund to design a five-year integrated transport settlement starting in 2022/23, and agreement to explore West Yorkshire Mass Transit.  Gaining new powers on transport, including easier access to bus franchising and a regional approach to control of a Key Route Network  Transport infrastructure development and funding for the Bradford Station Masterplan and the Outline Business Case for Leeds Station redevelopment  Devolution of Adult Education powers and the Adult Education Budget to shape local skills provision to respond to local needs  Devolution of £25 million Heritage Fund to support the establishment of a potential ‘British Library North’ (building on the Libraries existing presence in North East Leeds).  New powers on planning, focusing on zero carbon  £3.2 million to support development of a pipeline of housing sites across West Yorkshire  Ongoing partnership with the Environment Agency on identifying and addressing flood risk management requirements with £101 million allocated for West Yorkshire flood risk management schemes  £200,000 for the Yorkshire Leaders Board  £75,000 West Yorkshire Local Digital Skills Partnership  Piloting the new National Green Infrastructure Standards with Natural England and DEFRA  Transfer of Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) functions to the new Mayor in 2021  Commitment to working in partnership to explore an “Act Early” Health Institute  Strengthened collaboration and partnership with Government

10. Unlike devolution in Greater , the West Yorkshire deal does not include any nationally held public expenditure for health or care services or devolution of any nationally held powers in relation to health and care.

11. Devolution and the process of the Combined Authority becoming a Mayoral Combined Authority is already having an impact on access to funding and increasing opportunities. The region has joined the M9 group of mayoral combined authorities, giving it stronger national influence alongside the other elected mayors in England.

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12. Early benefits that have been secured include:

 £317 million Transforming Cities Fund, the largest allocation to any region, to deliver transformational walking and cycling schemes across West Yorkshire and creating jobs;  £67 million funding for new homes on Brownfield sites; and  a seat at the national table on economic recovery.

Progress

13. The legal process to implement the devolution deal is now complete. All councils and WYCA gave the necessary consents at the end of 2020 and the Order enacting the deal has now been made in Parliament, following debates in both the Commons and the Lords. West Yorkshire’s first mayoral election is due to take place in May, at which point the full powers of the deal will be operational, including responsibility for Adult Education and Policing and Crime.

14. As a result of this progress, West Yorkshire is receiving its first gainshare payment of £38m in financial year 2020/21 – work is currently underway to allocate this funding to priority activity. A further gainshare payment will follow at the beginning of financial year 2021/22.

15. Work to prepare for devolution on the ground is ongoing. There are longstanding partnerships in place across West Yorkshire, many of which pre-date the existence of WYCA, and provide a strong foundation on which to build. As would be expected, organisational changes at a regional level will be required to adapt to the range of new powers and funding being devolved, and work to consider those is ongoing. This will include adapting to the introduction of a directly elected mayor, who will enter office with their own priorities and manifesto.

16. Councils and the combined authority are also re-focusing efforts on strengthening our joint approach to partnership working, making the most of the talents and resources across organisations in achieving our collective aims. Lord Bob Kerslake – former head of the UK Civil Service – is working closely with West Yorkshire Leaders and Chief Executives to explore these opportunities and to help refresh and define their collective vision for the region.

ICS Implications

17. The devolution deal provides significant opportunities to the ICS to work collaboratively within the new powers, devolved funding and mayoral authority to progress better health and care outcomes, in line with its priorities. The scope of the deal in skills, economic growth and transport is firmly part of the wider determinants of health within which proposed legislation states ICSs will have a strong partnership role. More concretely, the deal has significant potential to both directly and indirectly support the ICS ’10 Big Ambitions’. A programme of engagement and development of links and relationships between the ICS and the implications of the deal will need to be nurtured to utilise the opportunities in full. The strength of the WY ICSs links to the economic agenda are already a good basis for these.

18. In addition to the pre-eminent role the skills agenda plays overall in good jobs, mental health and growth, the skills and education devolution provides a route to shaping 4

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more locally our health and care skills requirements. This has a local and direct implication for our existing workforce developments in these areas and will help ensure a pipeline of talent for our local health and care system. The devolution of local workforce planning to ICS structures will provide a powerful opportunity for aligned working.

19. The success of the economic growth agenda at the heart of the deal will be key to the ambitions in reducing and eliminating child poverty and the ICS ambition around strengthening economic growth. More widely the innovation and entrepreneurship support will link to the regional strengths in digital health and medical technologies building on the work already underway within ICS, Places, the AHSN and the local partnership with universities such as the Leeds Academic Health Partnership. This will be even more critical in the context of COVID-19 economic recovery.

20. There is significant and systemic impact of transport on health and care which the local autonomy of the deal can help maximise for positive benefit. We know that in population surveys of wellbeing, access to high quality transport has a plethora of health and wellbeing benefits. These include a better sense of connection within communities, access to employment, resilience of families and support for carers (and those cared for). More practically it has a strong bearing on perceptions of accessibility of health and care settings. Access to services and employment for those often with the greatest inequalities are eased with a strong public transport network, particularly for households without a car. Active travel as a contributor to population wellbeing can be built collaboratively across boundaries. The ICS ambitions around sustainable health services and carbon minimisation may also be explored through this lens.

21. The opportunities briefly outlined above are an incomplete list of the linked benefits of the deal. The opportunities will need to be explored significantly as the deal structures come into place to ensure mutual benefits are secured.

Paul Bollom Head of Leeds Plan

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