Confusion over metro question

It's all very confusing.

What, after all, is the West Midlands? Does it actually include Shropshire at all?

In the recent past Shropshire came under the umbrella of the regional development authority Advantage West Midlands.

In the more distant past the West Midlands County Council stretched from Wolverhampton to Coventry and excluded all the surrounding shires. Now the West Midlands is whatever you want it to be – or it's nothing at all. In the Black Country they're fighting a rearguard action against the bid to subsume them into an area some people think should be called Greater Birmingham.

These same people plan a "combined authority" from Wolverhampton to Warwickshire. This would be the West Midlands' version of the Manchester-based "Northern Powerhouse".

One drawback is that, if it is to be given the power and money being handed to Greater Manchester, it would have to elect a single mayor to run the whole show.

And nobody can seriously imagine any of the local political pygmies stepping into the same sort of role that made London's Mayor Boris Johnson famous.

With all this confusion and back-biting going on, it could be argued Shropshire in general, and Telford and the Wrekin, in particular, are well out of it.

On the other hand, this is about money and power. If Shropshire stands aside, there is a danger all the money and power will be sucked into the new combined authority and its neighbours will lose out.

In an era of ever-tightening public spending budgets, every council has to squeeze as much as it can out of every pound it spends.

That means doing things more efficiently even cooperating between different arms of Government.

In the metro West Midlands it will eventually see councils and the NHS merging so care for the elderly doesn't create overloaded A&E departments and bed-blocking patients.

It should not be necessary to create a new authority with a mayor to bash heads together – it shouldn't be but it is because, everyone is busy defending his or her empire.

There are benefits to be had for Shropshire if it were to join in this process. There are also costs because, if and when it does happen, one result will be more emphasis on care in the community and another round of hospital closures.

The "combined authority" will also get its hands on money for skills training and may, in theory, set priorities for the education of young people which suit the metro West Midlands only.

Again, there is something to be said for Shropshire having a say in how the millions are spent.

Then there's infrastructure. The combined authority will have planning and investment powers over roads, railways, airports, housing and industrial developments.

The risk for Shropshire is that it won't get much of a look in when these issues are debated and decisions are made about where to site new projects.

It does mean, however, that local accountability goes out the window. It was explained to me recently one of the great advantages of a combined authority was that a local councillor would no longer be accountable for a new housing estate in his ward.

When planning applications can be a source of so much controversy, local councillors come in for a great deal of stick over new developments.

The great advantage of a combined authority is they can side with the Nimby voters against the elected mayor, safe in the knowledge the application will get planning permission anyway and the local councillor won't lose his seat.

In planning terms, a combined authority promises to be a hypocrite's charter for local councillors.

That's not a good reason for the people of Shropshire to sign up to it though it is a very good reason why our elected representatives might want to go for it.

There are alternatives, of course – doing some sort of deal between Shropshire and those bits of Staffordshire, mostly Stoke-on-Trent, which don't join the combined authority. Though whether Staffordshire and Stoke can work together is debatable.

There's no logic to this and it makes the two counties look like the poor relations stuck between Manchester and Birmingham. But it might be better than nothing.

Another idea is the "polo" authority – a circle of Staffordshire, Shropshire, Hereford, Worcester and Warwick surrounding the metro area.

The shire counties do need to assert themselves. But just because something is flavour of the month doesn't mean everyone has to rush to taste the poison. There's a lot to be said for watching and waiting. Constantly rearranging deckchairs doesn't keep the ship afloat.