Find out what each candidate running for Greater Manchester Metro Mayor has proposed across key policy areas.

1. youth and
adult skills
West Midlands Metro Mayor - Candidate Manifestos
• Train a new Mayor’s Army of skilled construction
workers;
• Invest in apprenticeships and skills training, with
a focus on construction and manufacturing;
• Create a Mayor’s Digital Skills Institute with
responsibility for leading digital training efforts
in the West Midlands;
• Retain graduates who study in the West Midlands
or who grew up in the West Midlands with a
“West Midlands First” programme;
• Create a West Midlands Skills Fund from the
£150–180 million Apprenticeship Levy;
• Focus the adult skills budget on courses of
twenty-first century skills;
• Make any business that provides goods or
services to the WMCA provide employment or
training opportunities to young people;
• Launch a “Mayor’s Mentors” scheme;
• Extend the Work Coaches programme across
the entire West Midlands area.
Andy Street, Conservatives
• Subsidise student loan repayments when they decide
after studying in the West Midlands to work with
SMEs or manufacturers and live here;
• Bursaries worth up to £5,000 to anyone living and
working with local SMEs or manufacturers with
apprenticeships or upskilling qualifications;
• Upskilling workforce for career in emerging
construction, connected homes and smart urban
environments
Beverley Neilson, Liberal Democrats
• Adult Skills Budget.
The metro mayor will have control over the:
• Establish a tech talent pipeline with more young
people enabled to gain key digital skills, and more
apprenticeships in the sector;
• Bring forward a new West Midlands Commission
on Employment and Skills which will much more
closely align skills and infrastructure planning;
• Deliver 8,000 new technical apprenticeships by
using new infrastructure spending on HS2;
• Contribute to a £30 million university centre - a
new, university-level technical and hi-tech
manufacturing centre in the heart of the
Black Country;
• Deepen ties between schools and successful
local businesses – including getting local
business people into schools.
Siôn Simon, Labour
James Burn, GreensGraham Stevenson, Communists
Peter Durnell, UKIP
• Enable transfer to grammar schools for children
between 11 and 13 years;
• Identify and ensure that our colleges provide
courses in the key skills local employers need,
in particular by increasing vocational training
options.
• Aim to ensure that the skills budget is spent in
areas and communities where there is employment
demand, and with the objective of increasing
productivity,
• Ensure that people in the West Midlands have the
skills needed to match vacancies
• Improve careers advice by improving work
experience
• Make recruitment to all TfWM and contractor
jobs anonymous
No skills policies featured in manifesto

2. West Midlands Metro Mayor - Candidate Manifestos
• Rule out any universal congestion charge on
drivers in the West Midlands;
• Explore a scheme to incentivise more lorries and
heavy vehicles to use the M6 Toll at peak times,
and open up the M6 Toll for free where it will help
during a serious traffic incident on the M6;
• Explore a lane rental scheme to charge companies
for delays in digging up the road;
• Reopen the Camp Hill / Tamworth rail line, with
new stations and reopen Sutton Park line to
Aldridge Station;
• Start the construction of the Midlands Metro
extension to Brierley Hill;
• Accelerate the rollout of contactless and smart
payments on West Midlands buses, meaning that
fares can have a daily maximum price cap;
• Increase cycling from 1% of all journeys to 5% of
all journeys by 2023.
Andy Street, Conservatives
• 16-25s living in WMCA offered a Swift Travel Card
worth up to £300 credit for free travel off-peak;
• Free bus passes for all living here every first
Saturday of the month
• Zero congestion, integrated transport infrastructure
development with Transport for West Midlands
• Appoint an internationally experience Transport
Commissioner
• Major programme of tram extensions to develop
network of destinations including Brierley Hill,
Digbeth, Birmingham Airport and Solihull Town Centre
• Birmingham and Moseley railway
• Extend available train carriages
• Extend the Universal Fare System, one payment
system for all transport modes
• Invest £10 per head into cycling
• Appoint a Cycle ‘Tsar’
Beverley Neilson, Liberal Democrats
• Bring forward a plan to strenghten the role of the
airport;
• Double the size of our tram system by creating a
new 18-mile Metro-spine and by building out three
key spurs;
• Drive forward a programme of new rail lines and
stations across the region;
• Push the government to nationalise the M6 toll
road so that all drivers can use it without charge;
• Create a Tube-style map of the whole transport
system;
• Cap bus fares at £4.40 for an all-day ticket and
freeze this price cap for at least a year;
• Introduce an integrated contactless payment
system;
• Deliver free travel on bus and metro for all aged
16-19 in FE College;
• Establish RideShareWM - a portal for all car and
bike hire and ridesharing opportunities.
Siôn Simon, Labour
James Burn, GreensGraham Stevenson, Communists
Peter Durnell, UKIP
• Work with Highways England to improve the quality/
timeliness of information on signs across the West
Mid road network;
• Investigate reopening Worcester to Derby (via Black
Country) railway line, reintroducing passengers onto
the Camp Hill line;
• Oppose the ‘London commuter belt extension’ (HS2).
• Bring together local councils, the community and other
partners to form a regional infra-structure plan
• Produce an annual broadband action plan and pressure
central government to vastly improve broadband speed
• Prioritise transport spending on local and regional links
as much as national links
• Bus franchising as soon as practicable
• Introduce good-quality and fast Bus Rapid Transit routes
• Oyster card
• Student train and bus fares
• Free public transport for 16-19 year olds in FE
• Reopen railway lines in the Black Country, south
Staffordshire and Birmingham
• £10 per head on cycling and cycling charter
• Initiate plans for cycle hire and cycle superhigh-ways.
• Introduce smart road charging in areas where public
transport is a viable alternative to driving, and use this
income to fund improvements in public transport
• Investigate instituting a workplace parking levy in
areas well served by public transport.
• Bring an electric car-sharing scheme to the West
Midlands.
• Complete public ownership of public transport -
nationalising the M6 Toll Road, and looking at how
to bring the National Express into line;
• Road re-instatement and tougher control of parking
and on-street emissions
transport and
infrastructure
• Consolidated transport budget
• Local roads network
• Bus franchising and smart ticketing
The metro mayor will have control over the:

3. West Midlands Metro Mayor - Candidate Manifestos
• Fast-track crucial new developments such as
Friargate, the extension to the i54 Business Park,
the transformation of the Wolverhampton City
Council, the area around Bescot Rail, and the
Grove Lane/Cranford area;
• Ask every public body to pay the West Midlands
(real) living wage, becoming an accredited living
wage employer, buying only from real living wage
suppliers;
• Run a micro-pilot on the use of a Universal Basic
Income (UBI).
Andy Street, Conservatives
• Create a WM Regional Bank
• Create a £1bn Innovation fund, soundly underpinned
with regional assets and funding streams, to provide
grants to start-ups
• Create high craft-led and intermediate technology
clusters bringing together cooperative-led growth
through a new Chamber for Business Growth
• Provide firms that work with schools, colleges and
universities, or are acting as responsible partners in
our communities, preferential terms on grants and
reduced rates
• Real Living Wage for all employees, using local
procurement, and in addition bringing production
back to the West Midlands and supporting local
communities setting up micro and small businesses
Beverley Neilson, Liberal Democrats
• Lead the success of the WMCA Growth Company,
helping West Midlands businesses to market
themselves and gain investment;
• Support local authorities and developers with major
redevelopment projects across the West Midlands,
for example Friargate in Coventry, Snow Hill in
Birmingham and Springfield in Wolverhampton;
• Co-sponsor technology accelerators with large
businesses across the West Midlands to develop
new spin-off start up ventures in their industries;
• Work with banks, venture capital firms and other
investors to make it easier for small businesses and
entrepreneurs to access capital;
• Turn unused public sector office space into
co-working spaces for use;
• Set up Business Improvement Districts, where
businesses club together to pay for improvements
to their local areas
Siôn Simon, Labour
James Burn, GreensGraham Stevenson, Communists
Peter Durnell, UKIP
• Concentrate WMCA policies on supporting small and
medium sized businesses
• Appoint a deputy mayor charged with championing inclusive
growth
• Pressure WMCA to produce comprehensive assessment of
deprivation across the area, and a action plan to address it
• Push WMCA to use investment monies to support businesses
(including social enterprises) and co-ops especially in the
least well-off areas
• Try and ensure at least one third of public procurement spend
in the WM goes to SMEs or co-ops and spend is localised
wherever possible.
• SME representative on the WMCA board.
• Report annually on the availability and affordability of
industrial and leisure space in the West Midlands
• One-stop shop for small business support and advice
• Champion the living wage throughout the WMCA and for
its contractors
• Develop urban poly-tunnel farms;
• Adopt the Living wage as the only acceptable wage
business and
enterprise

4. West Midlands Metro Mayor - Candidate Manifestos
• Spend £200 million on preparation and
decontamination of brownfield sites;
• Introduce measures to speed up housebuilding,
such as a tax on vacant land being held for
development;
• Push local authorities to bring more empty homes
back into use;
• Make it easier for developers to convert buildings;
• Support a pilot of the Government’s new Voluntary
Right to Buy programme in the West Midlands;
• Trial a Housing First service with intensive mental
health support;.
Andy Street, Conservatives
• Start a house building programme that ensures
access to homes of varying tenure and levels of
affordability for everyone;
• Make available more public homes for rent and sale,
building on models such as Birmingham Municipal
Housing Trust
• Expand the private rental sector by ensuring
responsible practices from both landlords and tenants
• Provide sites for self build
• Provide more locally built affordable starter homes
• Identify, and make available, land for development
following a Land Commission Report, especially
smaller infill plots
• Ensure access to finance for smaller regional
developers who bring forward viable opportunities
• Campaign to remove the borrowing cap
• Work with social enterprises to convert empty homes
Beverley Neilson, Liberal Democrats
• Create a Mayor’s Office of Housing and
Development to oversee the development of
a statutory Regional Spatial Plan;
• Double the number of affordable new homes
to over 3000 per year
Siôn Simon, Labour
James Burn, GreensGraham Stevenson, Communists
Peter Durnell, UKIP
• Identify and refurbish empty houses;
• Convert empty shops and offices into affordable housing;
• Quantify and work to end the large scale relocation of
families from other parts of UK to the West Midlands.
• Work with local authorities to support developments and
increase housing density near existing good-quality rail and
Rapid Transit routes and hubs
• Support and extend the current work started by the WMCA
on forming a plan for the region
• Push for small developers, self-builders, Community Land
Trusts and housing co-op brownfield land first
• Use CPOs to force land bankers to bring sites into use
• Planning of housing and brownfield sites linked
to economic regeneration;
housing and
planning • Compulsory purchase powers
The metro mayor will have control over the:

5. West Midlands Metro Mayor - Candidate Manifestos
Andy Street, Conservatives
• Drive an effective home insulation strategy and
address fuel poverty
Beverley Neilson, Liberal Democrats
• Engage with Energy Capital and other energy
stakeholder groups in efforts to promote
sustainability and low-carbon businesses
Siôn Simon, Labour
James Burn, GreensGraham Stevenson, Communists
Peter Durnell, UKIP
No environment policies featured in manifesto
• Use bus franchising powers to ensure that 10% of buses
are electric hybrid or hydrogen powered by 2020
• Pursue setting up a municipally owned West Midlands
Energy Company
• Work with local authorities to issue green bonds to
encourage decarbonisation
• Push for all new developments to include green
space and parks
environment
No environment policies featured in manifesto
No environment policies featured in manifesto

6. West Midlands Metro Mayor - Candidate Manifestos
Andy Street, Conservatives
Beverley Neilson, Liberal Democrats
• Engage with Energy Capital and other energy
stakeholder groups in efforts to promote
sustainability and low-carbon businesses
Siôn Simon, Labour
James Burn, GreensGraham Stevenson, Communists
Peter Durnell, UKIP
No health policies featured in manifesto• Support the development of apps that provide
health information
• Support the development of personalised care
budgets,
• Improve prevention of health problems;
health and
social care
No health policies featured in manifesto • Implement wellbeing measures, and prioritise
as indicators of success as mayor
• Launch a campaign to tackle loneliness and
social exclusion
• Oppose local government cuts to public health
budget
No health policies featured in manifesto