Mayor of West Yorkshire must take a co-operative approach to be successful - YEP letters

Whoever is elected as Mayor of West Yorkshire next May, the key to their success will be to take a co-operative approach.

It goes without saying that they will need to co-operate with the leaders of Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield councils.

But they will also need to co-operate with Dan Jarvis, elected Mayor of South Yorkshire, a county facing so many of the same issues that we face in West Yorkshire.

And that co-operation will need to extend also to the leaders of councils in York, North Yorkshire and East Yorkshire; not least in order to create a Council of Yorkshire as a precursor of a genuinely democratically elected Yorkshire Assembly (or even parliament).

But guess what? It doesn’t stop there.

The new West Yorkshire Mayor will have to take a co-operative approach to working with Andy Burnham, the elected Mayor of Greater Manchester, and Steve Rotherham, the elected Mayor of what is called the Liverpool City Region, if only so that between them, they can seize control of the joint regions’ rail network; and get electrification done “tomorrow” - not at some time in the distant future.

Of course, the new mayor will have much other work to do, but by taking co-operative approach with neighbouring authorities in the Northern region, they will be able to achieve so much more.