The Green Party has named its candidate for 2024’s historic North East mayoral election.
Andrew Gray vowed to put communities “back in control” of the major resources set to be handed to the new regional leader if he is successful in next May’s poll.
An archivist at Durham University, Mr Gray has previously stood for the Greens in local council and Parliamentary elections in Newcastle.
The 55-year-old said that, with the new North East Mayoral Combined Authority due to receive billions in Government funding, money should be spent “directly within the neighbourhoods” rather than “trickling down from big regional projects”.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service in Durham city centre on Friday, ahead of launching his campaign by meeting residents in the Biddick area of South Tyneside today [Saturday], Mr Gray said his top priority would be retrofitting houses to make them warmer and cheaper to heat.
He added: “The North East is full of housing that is not well-built. It is not really acceptable in the 21st century that people are paying more and more for their fuel bills and rent while living in homes that could be more efficient.
“That is an absolute priority for me – giving people that security so they are not always on the lookout for another house because they cannot afford to pay their bills.”
His manifesto will also include a pledge to ensure “reliable, integrated, frequent” public transport for the North East.
Mr Gray joins Labour’s Kim McGuinness, independent Jamie Driscoll and Conservative Guy Renner-Thompson in the mayoral race. The Liberal Democrats are expected to announce a candidate in the coming weeks for the election, which will see a regional figurehead chosen to govern a combined authority covering Northumberland, Tyne and Wear and County Durham.
Speaking about his hopes of the mayoralty providing a major boost to skills and training for jobs in the North East’s burgeoning renewable energy sector, Mr Gray said: “There is a big green industry opportunity and has been for some time – we need to be able to make that happen. A lot of that is linked with the skills and education funding [that the mayor will hold].
“You cannot just push a button and suddenly things happen, it takes time. One of the benefits of green industry developments is that they tend to be very people-heavy and create a lot of employment.
“It can mean a lot of jobs for communities, older people engaging with the history and heritage [of regenerating old industrial areas]. It can bring back pride of place, so there is a really big opportunity there.
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“The key is to do it in a way that involves people and gets as many different communities involved as possible, not just landing some big project in the middle of an industrial wasteland somewhere.”
Mr Gray, who was brought up in Northumberland and now lives in the Heaton area of Newcastle, said he hoped to “hold other candidates’ feet to the fire” over their own environmental pledges and acknowledged that some controversial issues – such as low traffic neighbourhoods and Newcastle’s Clean Air Zone – had become “political hot potatoes”.
He said that as mayor he would seek to support local councils and ensure such schemes are subject to thorough planning and public involvement – rather than “not being developed well and then going wrong”.
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