York and North Yorkshire have already spent £582,000 establishing their Mayoral combined authority and it isn’t up and running yet.

A combined authority Mayor usually has their own team of admin/secretarial support staff along with an elite Cabinet consisting of four councillors from each local authority. Typically, a Mayor’s salary would be in excess of £80,000.
Cllr Hammond claims that the introduction of a Mayor will not mean an additional level of bureaucracy.

In response to a question frome me Cllr Hammond says:

“The devolved authority is moving decisions made currently in Westminster to local areas, so moving systems of government, not duplicating them. The Government pays for your set up costs and agrees an annual figure to pay for the running of the devolved authority – so the cost is not funded by the local taxpayer”.

What he fails to acknowledge is that if the government does fund set up and running costs, that is money which will not be spent on social services, roads and education. It will instead be spent on administration. Regardless of whether it’s goverment or ERYC money it’ll be our taxes that fund this.

It has not been decided how much the two councils will bid for or how it would be spent. He emphasises that they will only progress a good deal, not just any deal.