This week there were a couple of big decisions to be made by your Cheshire East Councillors.  So big in fact that there was an extraordinary full council meeting held on Wednesday.  As these were such important issues, it’s important for transparency and accountability that we explain our thoughts and rationale for the way we, your RoW councillors, voted.

The first was about devolution.  It was about whether Cheshire East Council should enter into a combined authority with Cheshire West and Warrington (like Manchester or Liverpool) with an elected mayor. 

Your RoW councillors voted for it but, before we explain why, first some headline points on what agreeing to it means and some mythbusting.  If you want the full detail, they are in the meeting papers or you can listen to the audio of the meeting here Agenda for Council on Wednesday, 17th September, 2025, 2.00 pm | Cheshire East Council:

• Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester and Warrington councils would form a combined authority, which is a very light structure comprising an elected mayor, two councillors from each of the three councils, and up to six “non-constituent and associate members”.  Some argue that it is an extra level of bureaucracy above councils, but, in reality, it is just moving decision-making from London to Cheshire; it allows the government to deal with fewer people and councils around the country and someone local who knows the area, make decisions instead of government.

• The councils are not combining and the combined authority does not replace them, nor do the constituent councils get involved with each other’s council business (we are not combining councils or taking on the debts of the other councils for example).

• The combined authority will receive money from the government to spend in Cheshire and Warrington.  The “base” (guaranteed) funding is a little over £21m per year (about £650m over the next 30 years) but there are other ring-fenced funding streams on top of that so the total could and will be quite a lot more.

• The mayor does have the ability to set a precept (a charge on top of our current council tax to fund specific projects) but very few do as it obviously isn’t very popular and they might not get re-elected.

• Where the money is spent is up to the combined authority and the mayor, but as Cheshire East has the largest population (i.e. voters) of the three councils, any mayor who doesn’t allocate funding to Cheshire East is not likely to get re-elected.

There is a lot more to it but those are the key points, so why did your RoW councillors vote for it?

The key thing to understand about the mayoral authorities is that they get priority from the government for funding and investment.  Our neighbours, Manchester and Liverpool (and the other mayoral authorities around the country), who have already gone down the devolution route have received so much more investment than Cheshire East.  We don’t currently have a seat at the table where these things are discussed, never mind access to them.

Business is also massively in favour of it, citing missed opportunities for sales as well as the funding that will be invested in skills and training (one of the main objectives of the Cheshire and Warrington devolution deal).

The deal isn’t perfect, but it gives the sub-region access to a lot of money not currently available to us. It gives local control of funding that is currently held in London and, crucially it gives us opportunities to leverage that funding so we can really improve the borough. 

At root, we are convinced that this can get (sustainable) economic growth into Cheshire & Warrington.  To give an indication of what this might look like, here is the recent Lancashire County Combined Authority £20Bn Growth Plan: AWDIGITAL_new-growth-report.pdf

In the case of Lancashire, they are focusing on:

• National security and resilience
• Clean growth and a nuclear renaissance
• Digital and artificial intelligence
• Advanced engineering and manufacturing excellence
• Culture and tourism

We will now need to start the debate in Cheshire & Warrington about the type of economic growth we want – and the pipeline projects we will support, working with appropriate partners and agencies.

The final point we want to make is that the government has also signalled its intent to impose this on all regions in the next few years. So, we either get in now whilst we can still negotiate, gain access to the opportunities and grab a few years of the £21m per annum funding in the meantime, or we can wait and get the deal that the government imposes on us.

We decided to be bold and grasp the opportunity.

The second decision was about governance at Cheshire East Council. 

Some of you may recall a campaign, lead by the Cheshire East Independents in about 2019, to change the governance structure of Cheshire East Council from a cabinet system to a committee system to improve openness and involve all councillors in decision-making instead of just eight cabinet members.

That was successful and has been instrumental in improving the culture at the council from one known for bullying, alleged corruption and scandals to one which has much more transparency and improved staff morale.

However, the government has now signalled its intent to impose the cabinet system on all councils requiring councils like ours to change structure again!

This is a major change which will require a lot of work by officers to change the structure of the council, rewrite the constitution and amend many policies so we need to make preparations for that.  The decision yesterday was to agree that at full council.

The outcome was that the council will change back to a cabinet system next May.  Some of your RoW councillors voted for the motion on the basis that it is inevitable and we should set it in stone now, and some of us voted against, preferring to wait until it is necessary or at least until the legislation requiring it is passed.

There was probably no right or wrong answer on when the change should be made but people have their own opinions and the advantage of being an Independent, as RoW councillors are, is that you are free to vote with your conscience and how you believe best serves the interests of your residents.

Written by David Jefferay on behalf of Resident of Wilmslow Cheshire East Cllrs:

David Jefferay

Lata Anderson

Mark Goldsmith

Michael Gorman