Leading Business Organisations Throw Their Weight Behind An Elected Mayor For The Humber Region

THE THREE leading business organisations in the Humber are strongly backing the idea of an Elected Mayor for the Humber region as the Government’s devolution debate gathers momentum.

The Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce, the Institute of Directors and the Federation of Small Businesses have written a joint letter to the Chancellor George Osborne and Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Greg Clark to enter into discussions with the local business community to create a “Elected Metro” Mayor for the Humber region as the best way of devolving powers away from Westminster.

In the letter to the two senior Government Ministers, signed by the President of the Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce Steve Eastwood, the Chair of the IOD Humber, Pat Coyle, and the Chairman of the FSB, Mike Bisby, the business organisations say the UK’s Energy Estuary as an economic area has helped to attract massive inward investment in the last few years and generated a new optimism which has been spreading throughout the Humber business community as more strategic thinking about the area’s economic development has steadily emerged.

Local MPs and the Humber LEP have become used to working together with and for the benefit of business in the Humber region which is the UK’s largest trading Estuary and the fourth largest in Europe.

The three business organisations believe a Humber region led by a forward thinking, democratically elected Metro Mayor who has real powers is the best way forward for the area.

Dr Ian Kelly, Chief Executive of the Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce, said: “If devolution is coming what the business community wants is a strong, bright, strategic thinking local Mayor for the Humber, not weak local leadership which hands over our destiny to people in Leeds, Lincoln, or elsewhere”.