Mayor pledges delivery after ‘difficult first year’

The mayor of the East Midlands insists the coming year will be of “delivery” for the region after getting off the ground from scratch in her new role.

Labour’s Claire Ward also said that a brutal set of local election results for the party, whereby they lost scores of councillors across the East Midlands, underlined the need “to really deliver for people”.

“I understand that frustration,” said Ward, who was elected as the first for the region last year to oversee the new East Midlands Combined Authority.

The position is supposed to serve as a boon for attracting investment into local areas, with powers transferred from Westminster to take charge of projects.

Claire Ward told the BBC: “This [was] a difficult first year because when I arrived a year ago into that office, they were literally unpacking the computers out of the boxes. There were 20 interim staff.

“So this year has been about building those foundations, building the capacity and capability of the organisation so that I can go and do things.

“And there’s nothing worse than trailing around the region promising things that I simply couldn’t deliver.”

She cited new brownfield sites being cleared for housebuilding and investment in adult skills in colleges across the region as examples of visible upcoming delivery, as well as £5m for a youth scheme.

The mayor said she would be increasing her presence across the region “now that some of those administrative pieces have been done”, amid some criticism from opposition parties that she has not done enough to reach out to local people.

She also insisted Derbyshire would benefit from “different funding pots and opportunities” for regeneration funding after Chesterfield was the only Derbyshire-based area in the region to be named as benefitting from £140m of regeneration funding.

Asked whether the government were listening amid criticism from Red Wall MPs that investment in local infrastructure was seen as “too difficult”, she said the government “needs to do more”.

“If you look at transport funding, [the East Midlands] are not just at the bottom of the pile…we are way down.

“What we need to see from the government is delivery, delivery, delivery. And they need to understand that in these regions, it’s really important that we get that change. And that’s why people are angry.

“But the money that we’ve got from devolution, we’re already investing.”

Ward pledged to “reinforce” a message of “delivery” to the government.

In anticipation of Reform UK taking the reins in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, where they will need to work with the mayor on a number of issues, she said,

“Look at the manifesto that I stood on last year and tell me which bits you don’t agree with.

“Work with me. We will work together and we will deliver for this region.”