Meet the new mayor of the West Midlands Richard Parker

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Transcript

00:00 I'm Richard Parker and I'm Metro Mayor for the West Midlands. It was a long time since I walked

00:04 into a new job but no it's been fantastic. The team here at the Combined Authority have

00:09 given me a great welcome, a great induction. We've talked about how we're going to work together

00:13 over the next few weeks, in the next four years and I'm really really pleased that they're really

00:20 well prepared. They've been through a manifesto and we've now got a joint plan to deliver it.

00:26 I've got a different set of priorities and I want to do things very differently to the previous

00:30 Mayor and I'm really pleased that the officers here are prepared for that and we've talked

00:35 about how we're going to work together and I think we've made a great start today. We're really really

00:40 clear about those, about bringing the buses back into public control, having a franchising system

00:44 that will ensure that people can get around the region cheaper and more easily, get to the shops,

00:50 get to the doctors, get to college, get to work in a way that they can't now. We're going to deliver

00:57 the biggest programme of social housing we've seen for 40 years. We're going to redeploy the

01:02 previous Mayor's resources and we're going to use future housing resources to deliver

01:10 at least 2,000 units of social housing every year and we're going to overhaul the skills system that

01:16 fails too many of our young people. So we want a skills system, I want a skills system that allows

01:21 young people to get the skills they need to get better jobs and better paid jobs and I think that

01:26 a particular focus on the black country because too many young people in the black country aren't

01:30 afforded the opportunities they need to make a success of their lives. Firstly I've got some big

01:35 plans for the black country and I've talked about the skills agenda but I've also talked about the

01:38 fact I want a mayoral base there and we're discussing where that base will be so the black

01:42 country is a very important part of the region for me. It's been overlooked and left behind for too

01:46 long. On the issue of crime there is a separately elected and I'm very pleased, a separately elected

01:51 Labour Police and Crime Commissioner and I'll be meeting him later this week to talk about some of

01:55 the issues that he faces, his responsibilities but also how we can work together collectively

02:00 to address those issues on the ground with the way we deploy resources, the way we focus on our

02:05 policy priorities to address some of those issues. But I hope that a programme of investment in

02:10 people, in skills and improving the economy, improving the hopes of the region and a will not

02:15 to change people's lives will make a big difference to everyone in the black country.

02:18 I hope to have started, yep, to make real progress on delivering the outcomes that I want to deliver

02:26 on buses, on houses and on skills. I will be a mayor for all of our communities across every

02:33 part of the West Midlands. I believe that my policy programme, the focus of my policies

02:41 will be relevant and have resonance across every part of this region. I want to be a mayor who's

02:45 visible, accessible and accountable everywhere and that's why I made an early commitment to not just

02:50 having this base in Birmingham but also to work from offices in Coventry and the black country too.