NORTH Somerset Council will vote next week on whether to join the West of England Combined Authority (WECA), a move that would bring it into the same regional body as Bath and North East Somerset.

Councillors are set to vote at full council on September 16 on whether to begin the year-long process of joining Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, and South Gloucestershire as a member of WECA.

North Somerset had previously refused to join what many in the area felt was a mayor-run resurrection of the County of Avon, but now the council says it is missing out on funding by remaining outside.

However, joining WECA will also come at a cost. A report going before the meeting on September 16 said £290,000 had been allocated “to fund staff, specialist support and consultation activity as part of the membership process.”

The process would see an eight week consultation across North Somerset and the current members of WECA, another vote of North Somerset Council, and Parliamentary approval before the council could become a member.

The report said: “It is unclear at present whether this would take immediate effect, or if full membership would wait until after the next 2029 mayoral election.”

Joining before the 2029 mayoral election would mean that current Labour WECA mayor Cllr Helen Godwin would have major powers over North Somerset, despite nobody in the area having voted in the election. She narrowly beat Reform UK’s Arron Banks to be elected the metro mayor for the combined authority in May of this year.

In the run up to the mayoral election, backbench North Somerset councillor Thomas Daw (Wrington, Green) had suggested that North Somerset may not want to join WECA if an “awful person” won the election. Although he did not mention anyone by name, his comment came just a few days after Mr Banks was selected as the Reform UK candidate.

Since Cllr Godwin became mayor, representatives of North Somerset Council have joined representatives of WECA’s member councils and the mayor at the meetings of the WECA committee — although they have no vote on combined authority business.

Despite not joining WECA when it was created, North Somerset Council has worked with the combined authority on a number of issues such as their “bus service improvement plan” and the reopening of the Portishead Railway. The report said that the primary reason to reconsider joining WECA now was “the renewed government focus on regional partnerships” and the need to access funding.

It added that recent government funding, such as the £750-million in transport funding for WECA over the next five years, was being given to WECA and not North Somerset or relied on WECA’s agreement for North Somerset to access it.

It said: “The council and North Somerset area would expect to benefit from significant additional capital and revenue funding in certain key areas as a result of WECA engagement and membership.”

A year ago on September 17, 2024, North Somerset Council agreed to write to the government to express interest in joining WECA.