Big plans for Manchester but are they big enough

Hats off to all those involved in the new transport set up for Manchester. We only have to look at how London has benefited through running its own transport affairs to believe that Manchester can follow suit.

In April the Greater Manchester Combined Authority will take over a range of responsibilities: housing, economic development, employment as well as transport. I recognise the achievement of getting this far but I hope it is just the beginning. The big mistake, in my view is the name – just call it Mancheshire and have done with it.

People in England relate to counties and, for transport at least, counties are the basic unit. Most journeys are very local so apart from catering for the longer road or rail journeys all decisions can be made at county level. Counties should have the powers to invest in their own transport networks without permission from Westminster. This mean that they should be able to raise the funds required through taxation or from the investment markets. Counties should be able to set their own property tax levels or offer bonds to the public.

Only then can our transport system begin to achieve the results of Nottingham and London and even then it will take more than a decade.

Yet before we can safely let counties have this power two things have to take place: first, we need greater democracy; second, counties need to be made large enough.

The county elections in May are a farce. Councillors can get elected with fewer than ten per cent of voter support – in extreme cases a councillor has been elected with two per cent. This must stop. We must bring in the single transferable vote. It will instil a new vibrancy into the system.

Some counties are simply too small for transport purposes. We can discuss how small “too small” is but I would say that a county smaller in area than Bedfordshire (1,235km2) doesn’t really have enough area to play with – so Mancheshire (1,276km2) is just big enough.

You might not be aware that the number of counties has been growing at quite a pace recently – so they are getting smaller. Nowadays, there are many counties smaller than Rutland which is, itself, too small. We now have Halton, Telford, Luton – these are all too small to do a proper transport job. Now before the pickier among you say that these places are not counties but unitary authorities I say what is the difference? If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck – it is a duck.

Yet many great minds have got together to create these titchy counties. I would not presume to force these little places to join with their neighbours in order to create decent sized counties with the wherewithal to provide a comprehensive transport policy and deliver it. Instead I would ask the people to decide.

I would invite any town or city in England to stand as a county town. Every other city, town or village in the country could then nominate their favourite choices. On election day the people of each parish could vote for their county town of choice.

The first stage will produce a range of possible counties, some familiar: Norfolk, Cornwall, Surrey and some surprising: Plymouthshire, Sloughshire and Croydonshire. In the second stage any county smaller then 1,200km2 (or under 500,000 in population) would be eliminated – the smallest first.

I think the result would be rather similar to what we have now – except, and this is the big part, we would have got rid of the small counties and the over big cities. Birmingham at a million people is far too remote in the age of the “big society” Birmingham needs to be split up into the parishes which local people can readily indentify.

Until we develop a simple three tier government system in England: national, county and parish and become a normal country again, people will not know where they live (sadly the majority of people do not know what county they live in) nor who is responsible for what.

If the coalition government really favoured localism it would ensure that parishes ran everything “public” in our lives. Certain aspects, like transport, would pass up to the counties and only those things that counties cannot provide effectively like defence should pass up to the national level.

The national government is supposedly about to pass the NHS to groups of doctors – instead the people of each county could control public health policy. That would be make the recent moves around Manchester’s transport seem rather tame.

Add your comment

Your email address will not be published. Your name and email are required.