The West Yorkshire Housing Partnership welcomes the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill which received Royal Assent Wednesday 29 April.
Our Chair, Rachael Dennis, said: “We’re pleased to see the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill receive Royal Assent. It is an important step towards putting more decisions in the hands of local people and strengthening leadership across our communities.
“The new powers for mayoral and strategic authorities give us more scope to plan across boundaries, unlock land and invest at scale. For housing partners across West Yorkshire, this opens up real opportunities to speed up the delivery of affordable homes and better align housing growth with health, transport, infrastructure and economic opportunity.
“By working closely with the Mayor, Tracy Brabin, councils and local communities, we are looking forward to using these devolved powers to deliver better homes and better futures across our region.”
The Act will introduce new measures to expand devolution and empower mayors and local people. Such as:
- Mandating Mayoral Strategic Authorities to develop local growth plans, aligning regional economic strategies with national policy.
- A new bespoke duty for Mayors and Strategic Authorities to ensure they formally consider local health improvement and health inequalities when making policy decisions.
- New powers for Mayors to intervene in planning applications of potential strategic importance, make mayoral development orders and charge a mayoral community infrastructure levy on developers.