Ordinarily I don't spend time dwelling on the opinion columns of journalists. In fact, our team at the county council encourage me not to! The pieces often set out to provoke debate and it’s challenging for any local journalist to be fully across the detail of the subjects they discuss. But I couldn’t allow Paul Geater's column of last week about our “thoroughly bad” county deal to pass without comment.  It was just so fantastically wrong on almost every level - that I feel compelled to correct the record. The Labour government's decision to bin it is not only bad for Suffolk - but bad for the chance of any future deal succeeding. It is an early reminder that Labour have no ambition for Suffolk.  

Suffolk’s deal had been negotiated at length since mid 2022.  We spent many hours talking with stakeholders in Suffolk, communities and businesses, along with government officials on the tricky ask of balancing the powers and opportunities we wanted, against the money the government was prepared to put on the table. 

What we secured for Suffolk financially, £16 million a year for 30 years plus some additional packages of funding for things like developing brownfield land, worked out to be over half-a-billion pounds of new investment.  Paul thinks this a paltry amount. Let me put £16m in context. It is over 50% of the entire annual Suffolk Fire Service budget. It is just under the entire Mid Suffolk Council revenue budget for last year. To add further context it could pay for hundreds of new SEND places. It could build new Household Waste Sites in places like Newmarket. It could build new roads, address traffic problems and support new bus services. This was not a "bad deal".  It was considered and most importantly it was ambitious.  We weren't looking at this as a one-off deal. It was the first rung on the ladder for future deals, in the same way that Manchester and other authorities across the country have done with some now on their seventh deal. All this has been lost - for absolutely nothing in return.

Paul wrote of his concerns about the leader of Suffolk County Council being directly elected - and the chaos this would undoubtably cause if the leader came from a different party to the one that held the most seats.  I was surprised to read Paul's concerns. This exact situation already happens in councils across the UK, including in West Suffolk where the current Labour leader of the council is leading a coalition of other parties, with the single largest party in opposition.  It isn't new and however much I disagree with some of the decisions they have taken, it hasn’t caused chaos.  If the directly elected leader of Suffolk County Council needed to work across party boundaries to get budgets passed and policies changed, then that is exactly what they would do. 

Back to a combined authority between Norfolk and Suffolk - those with memories better than Paul's will recall that Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire went through a process for a combined authority, with an elected Mayor, relatively recently.  In 2016, a deal was put to councils and to the public.  It was rejected by district councils in Norfolk. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough went their own way, and Suffolk was left without a deal and without any of the extra money it could have had.  This is why the letter from district and borough councils, led by calls from the Labour leader of West Suffolk, for our deal to be scrapped so that district and borough councils can have more say is so maddening. It was three district councils which effectively destroyed the combined authority deal in 2016. There was also no public appetite in Suffolk for a shared mayor with Norfolk, and I see nothing to suggest that things have changed.

Was our deal perfect? No, but it was a starting point for more money and powers for Suffolk. As Paul did acknowledge in his column, "I don't expect any new devolution plans to come forward anytime soon".  Neither do I, Paul.  They take years to negotiate, and every year we are without a deal sees another £16m opportunities lost. When a deal does come, I’ve no doubt the Labour government will want to put Suffolk together with other counties, in a vast area, that would be electorally advantageous to them. It could see Suffolk governed from Norwich, Cambridge or further afield. Paul may disagree with some of the decisions we have taken but I’m sure when a councillor from Kings Lynn is making a decision about roads in Hadleigh, he’ll also have something to say.

County deals aren’t like buses, you don't wait for ages for two to turn up together, you just end up waiting in the cold and rain. If and when money and opportunity is offered to Suffolk, we stand ready to engage and to try to secure the best possible future for our residents. But be in no doubt, until then, our county is £16m a year worse off and you – our residents – are worse off.

Councillor Matthew Hicks is Conservative leader of Suffolk County Council