Leader of Nottinghamshire County Council explains how historic devolution deal can benefit Hucknall

The Leader of Nottinghamshire County Council believes that the historic £1.14 billion devolution deal covering Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Derby, and Nottingham will benefit towns like Hucknall.

Ben Bradley MP spoke passionately about the benefits the deal, which has moved a step closer to being realised, would bring to the East Midlands.

Speaking exclusively to Hucknall Nub News, he said: " Firstly it's a billion pounds of extra investment in economic development bringing jobs, bringing infrastructure to the area. I think from a resident's perspective, depending on whatever the challenges you're facing locally, it will give us more clout. To make sure that that bus that you need to get to your job is there and runs, is feasible, that local transport connection, whether it's buses, or rail or even roads.

"If you're trying to get a better job, a well paid job, improve your lot, we will have more ability to attract those kinds of businesses and employers to our area in a way Teesside in particular has done really well through this model. We were at Rolls Royce (to sign the deal last week), 12,500 staff, if you could attract even one more business on that scale to North Nottinghamshire that would change lives, so huge opportunity.

"And the other big thing is skills in particular. If you want to get that job you might need to retrain, you might need to get new qualifications. We will be able to direct locally what skills and qualifications are funded and where, how that links in with businesses, so that those pipelines for skills and qualifications into big new jobs are here and local and available for people.

"If just by example, say Tesla come and build a big factory in Hucknall and you need a certain set of skills you need engineers. We can make sure that West Notts College, Nottingham College, Nottingham Trent University that they're putting on the right courses in the right places. That we're working with that business to make sure that those skills and qualifications meet their needs and we can tie those things together. Which is not only great for residents to be able to take advantage of the opportunity but it also makes it more attractive for that business to want to come and invest here in the first place because we can do that."

It has been widely suggested that the deal will help the East Midlands to catch up with other areas of the country such as the West Midlands and Manchester who already benefit from this level of devolution.

When asked why the East Midlands was so far behind, Mr Bradley said: "I think the difference between existing deals and us has been the geography. They're metro deals, they're cities with much less complicated local government structures than we've got. We're unique actually, we're the first place that is this two tier county, district, city complicated structures to get a deal like this and it's needed the legislation to change for us to be able to do that.

"Whereas in Birmingham it's one council, it's much more straightforward. Historically we've just not been able to agree so one of the biggest things has been building relationships and trust with all of those partners and that's been my big priority over the last year to get us into a place where we could do that."

When the deal was first rumoured, there was a large amount of of scepticism about both Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire based councils being involved. Mr Bradley explained that this opened up more funding opportunities but was keen to point out that it won't mean decisions about Hucknall being influenced by Derbyshire Councils.

"There are no decisions here that will go from local councils up to a regional level. Nobody's going to take things away from Ashfield District Council and make them on a big regional footprint that's not what we're trying to achieve.

"What this is about is bringing things from London to us locally. So actually the bigger the scale in that sense, the bigger the population, the bigger the economy the more Government is willing to give you. So by having Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, 2.2 million people as opposed to us doing it as just Nottinghamshire and 800,000 people, that means we get more money more clout more opportunity to draw in investment. Because people in Hucknall are just as likely to work in North Derbyshire as they are in North Nottinghamshire, there's a lot of connectivity there so tying the two together is really important."

When Mr Bradley first stood for a County Council seat, he was criticised in some quarters with people questioning if he would be able to juggle the role alongside being an MP. However, he feels this devolution deal alone vindicates his decision.

He said: "I've made the argument that doing both roles would be beneficial because it would help us to join the dots together in terms of local and nationally. We had officials coming back to us saying there's a barrier here that we're struggling to move, and I've been able to pick up the phone to a minister and say 'this is a problem can you help?' And we've managed to get it over the line that way. So I do feel that influence that we've got in Westminster has made a huge difference. Even if this is the only thing that I manage to achieve by doing that it certainly is a massive thing."