Councils in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have signed up to the Government’s ‘devolution’ proposal – and are now consulting on it.

The ‘devolution deal’ includes £20m a year, plus a one-off £100m for housing and £70m specifically for housing in Cambridge.

The price of the deal, on which the Government has been totally insistent, is an extra tier of government – a ‘combined authority’ consisting of the leaders of all the local councils – and a political Mayor for the whole of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough.

Some powers over things like housing, apprenticeships, transport and health will transfer from the Government to the Mayor; and some powers will be taken upwards from the county council. The Mayor will have a veto on all the decisions of the new combined authority.

The Mayor will receive a salary of somewhere between £65,000 and £80,000 a year. The former Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire Andrew Lansley is being tipped for the new post.

At a time of drastic public spending cutbacks, local Liberal Democrats say proposals for an expensive new Mayor of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough are not what is needed to help improve the lives of local residents.

The proposed funding for housing and transport is welcome, but  there is no reason for the government to force a Mayor on us as the price of it. I would rather see the Mayor’s lavish salary spent on more vital public services.

Only 18 per cent (fewer than one in five) of residents in East Cambridgeshire bothered to vote in the election for a Police & Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough in May. Why do we need another of these unwanted expensive bureaucratic posts?

Liberal Democrats are fighting the plan to introduce a Mayor of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough. If you agree that a Mayor’s salary and office isn’t a priority right now, please sign the petition online.

If you want to complete the council’s consultation, it is here until 23 August.