The new council for the East Midlands now has a spending budget of £160 million – seven times more than last year.
As it looks ahead to its first full financial year with an elected mayor, the East Midlands Combined County Authority is setting a £162.5 million spending budget, up from the £20.5 million it had last year.
This increase is due to the authority now receiving significant devolved funding from the Government to carry out responsibilities including transport, brownfield land development and adult skills.
Meanwhile, Claire Ward, East Midlands Mayor, would have a budget of £539,530 for the coming year to cover employees, premises, travel and supplies.
Ms Ward has a salary of £93,000, her deputy mayor, Cllr Nadine Peatfield (Derby City Council leader) receives no additional salary, and Amy Harhoff, the combined authority’s chief executive, has a salary of £185,000.
The combined authority says its funding for capital projects – building schemes – has risen by £80 million to £226 million in the past year, due to receipt of new Government grants.
Many of these are to kickstart projects across the two counties and cities.
This capital budget, combined with the spending budget, gives an overall pot of £385 million to be spent over the next year.
One of the big developments at the combined authority this year will be the adoption of public transport responsibilities – to be taken from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire county councils and Derby and Nottingham city councils.
It says this is scheduled to take place on October 1.
Ahead of this move, the combined authority is to receive £40 million in bus services improvement funding (half for revenue spending and half for capital improvements) that would previously have gone to the county and city councils.
Alongside this, the combined authority is getting £66 million from the City Region Sustainable Travel Settlement for funding major transport projects, with projects to be earmarked in March.
All in all, the authority claims the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire area is set to see £120 million more in funding than if the combined authority had not existed.
Of its upcoming budget, the combined authority will give £13.5 million to developers to boost house-building on brownfield land, with £75.7 million for highways maintenance improvement – up by £21.7 million.
The highways maintenance spending will be dished out to four constituent councils, with Derbyshire to receive £37.5 million (up £10.79 million), Nottinghamshire £29.5 million (up £8.5 million), Derby £4.4 million (up £1.26 million), and Nottingham £4.4 million (up £1.26 million – which a combined authority meeting was told has been calculated based on the length of road managed by each council.
A further £20 million is said to be available for councils to use for developing business cases for their own projects, a meeting was told.
The Mayor’s office is set to spend £334,530 on employees, £100,000 on travel, £55,000 on supplies and services and £50,000 on premises.
Ms Ward said during a combined authority meeting in Wingerworth, Derbyshire, today (February 10): “It is a key milestone to have a budget where we are thinking collectively about the priorities for this region that will demonstrate to people across the East Midlands the difference that it makes to have a combined county authority and an elected mayor.
“This is a great achievement of collaboration across partners, local authorities, constituent councils, district councils and others on a cross-party basis that is focusing on the needs of our constituents right across this region and we are already to demonstrate the success by having £120 million extra. The important thing now is to spend it wisely and to do so ensuring that what we get back from that is greater because we worked together than it would have been had we worked as separate authorities.”
Cllr Peatfield said the combined authority budget was “considerably less painful than our own council budgets” with her city council set to face £10.2 million in spending cuts including 37 redundancies.
Cllr Barry Lewis, Derbyshire County Council leader, said the increase in highways maintenance funding was “very welcome” but said there had been “confusion” over pothole repair money given to local councils.
Cllr Bruce Laughton, Nottinghamshire County Council deputy leader, said the extra highways funding to roads worth £2.3 billion would “not go very far” but was “positive”.
He said the budget proved extra funding was coming to the area due to the combined authority’s creation, putting it ahead of other areas who had not yet or were only now starting to form their own super councils.
Cllr Neghat Khan, Nottingham City Council leader, said the money would help the East Midlands catch up from being “left behind”.
