Pledges With Dates: A Six-Month Ledger for the New Metro Mayor

May 2026 installed a fresh round of metro mayors and combined authority deals. By November 2026, the first delivery plans, investment fund papers and board minutes are finally in the public domain. The temptation is to treat the publication of a delivery plan as the achievement. It is not. A delivery plan is a claim on public money, public attention and public patience. Our task is to test whether the claim survives contact with a finance department.

Read the delivery plan as a contract, not a brochure

Start with the document itself, but do not read it for mood. Read it for four things: a pound sign, a date, a named owner and a decision point. Every commitment that matters should tell you how much is allocated, when it will be spent, who is accountable and which board or committee will authorise it. If a pledge has none of those, it is not a pledge. It is a sentence with a future tense.

Take a printed copy and tag each commitment. Use four columns in the margin: money, date, owner, decision. Then count how many survive. A delivery plan that cannot fill those columns is not necessarily dishonest, but it is not yet a plan. It is a prospectus for a plan. Campaigners should say so plainly, and then ask for the missing columns.

Follow the money into the investment fund

Combined authorities rarely deliver through one budget line. They deliver through investment funds, mayoral development corporations, grant programmes, business rates retention, gainshare and, where it exists, the mayoral precept. The delivery plan will mention these instruments. The board papers will show what has actually been approved.

Ask for the fund prospectus and the schedule of allocations. Distinguish between money announced and money approved. Distinguish between capital and revenue: capital builds things, revenue pays the staff and consultants who make building possible. Look for the phrases subject to due diligence and subject to funding. They are not automatically bad, but they need a named funding source and a date for the decision. A pledge that is always subject to something is a pledge that has not been decided.

Check whether the fund is borrowing or grant. Check the repayment terms where borrowing is used. Check whether the combined authority is relying on receipts that have not yet arrived. These are technical questions, but they are the difference between a headline and a budget.

Board minutes reveal who actually decides

Read the minutes before and after each board meeting. Look for recommendations, officer delegations, urgent decisions and declarations of interest. Look at attendance. Look at whether the scrutiny committee received papers with enough time to read them. Look at the risk register and the assurance framework. A delivery plan may be signed by the mayor, but it is delivered through a chain of decisions. The minutes show where that chain is strong and where it is missing links.

If a decision has been taken by an officer under delegated authority, ask for the delegation and the date. If a decision has been taken as urgent, ask why. If a board has noted a plan without approving a budget, say so. The distinction between noted and approved is not bureaucratic pedantry. It is the difference between a press release and a payment.

Audit the precept narrative, even where there is no precept

Where the mayor sets a precept, compare the increase with the delivery plan. Ask which commitments depend on the precept and which would survive without it. Where there is no mayoral precept, do not let that imply there is no cost. Combined authority levies, grant and business rates all carry a cost to residents and businesses. The question is not only who pays, but who decides. Follow the decision, not just the bill.

Build a public scorecard you can defend

A scorecard is not a rant. It is a repeatable table, published on a fixed date, with page references. Use these columns:

Commitment	2026/27 budget line	Named owner	Decision date	Evidence published	Rating
Example: bus corridor	Not yet allocated	Transport director	Board, 14 January 2027	No	Amber

Use a simple rating: Green where money, date, owner and decision are all evidenced; Amber where some are missing; Red where the commitment has no budget line or has slipped without explanation. Publish the table on a blog, in a newsletter or on a community noticeboard. Send it to local councillors, the combined authority scrutiny committee and local media. The point is not to be clever. The point is to be repeatable.

Send the letter before the next board meeting

Before the next board meeting, write to the combined authority. Keep it short, specific and public.

Dear [Combined Authority],

I am a resident of [area] and I am writing ahead of the board meeting on [date]. Please provide the following information, preferably in open session:

1. For each commitment in the 2026 delivery plan, the 2026/27 budget line, the named officer owner, the decision date and the board or committee responsible.
2. An itemised schedule of allocations from the investment fund, distinguishing approved allocations from pipeline proposals.
3. The risk register entries relating to delivery of the plan, and the assurance framework used by the board.
4. A list of delegated decisions taken under the plan since May 2026, with the delegation and date.
5. Confirmation of when the scrutiny committee received the relevant papers.

I intend to publish the response, or the absence of one, in my local newsletter. I would be grateful for a reply before the board meeting.

Yours faithfully,

[Name]

The six-month test

At six months, a serious mayor should be able to show a decision schedule, a fund allocation, a risk register and a scrutiny timetable. Not every pledge will be delivered. Politics is not a project plan. But the paperwork should show that delivery is being decided, not merely described. If the plan cannot show dates, pounds, owners and decisions, it is already expiring quietly. The next election is not the accountability moment. The next board meeting is.