One way of getting to grips with the nature of the North East Combined Authority is to look at the membership of its Boards. There are three of these:
Business and Economy Board
Culture, Creative, Tourism and Sport Advisory Board
Environment, Coast and Rural Advisory Board
For the Culture etc. Board the membership seems reasonable and representative of those sectors, although there is no representative from a community background.
For the Environment etc. Board from a membership of 28 we have two from the National Farmers Union, two from the Country Land and Business Association (former name Country Landowners’ which indicates what this represents) and Lord Curry of Kirkharle, a British farmer and businessman who is the former chair of NFU Mutual. The urban North East seems not to have an environment given the presence of deep rural reps on this board and Tyne and Wear having only one Councillor rep with Durham having none. There is no rep from users of the rural environment – where is the Ramblers’ Association? In Scotland there is a right of responsible access to all rural land. Now that is way out of Mayoral powers, although it should be devolved, but fat chance of pressing for that with this bunch in control and fat chance of serious attention to river pollution from agricultural runoff.
We only have information on two members of the Business and Economy Board and that from a tweet from McManus informing us as to her such a busy week. These are the Chair, John McCabe, Chief executive at North East Chamber of Commerce and Vice Chair, Emily Cox Group Ambassador for the North and Director of Colleague Relations at Lloyds Banking Group, previously the Director of Public Affairs at Virgin Money with a law degree from Cambridge and who splits her time between (!) (does she know between is for two cases – should be among) Edinburgh, London and Newcastle. Will there be a trade unionist – even just one? The North East LEP has now been merged into the Combined Authority. At least it had some members from productive industrial capital as opposed to finance and real estate. I will report on the full composition of this crucial board in due course.
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