A CRUCIAL vote on the landmark North of Tyne devolution deal will be held next month.

The date was set at a meeting of the existing North East Combined Authority’s (NECA) leadership board this week, after being postponed to allow the region’s leaders more time to consider the plans.

If council leaders back the plans, Newcastle, North Tyneside, and Northumberland councils will break away from NECA and set up their own devolved authority.

The three councils agreed a deal worth £600m with the Government last year to create the North of Tyne combined authority, which will have its own elected mayor and a raft of new powers.

Gateshead, Sunderland, South Tyneside, and Durham would be left as the four remaining members of NECA, after previous proposals for a North East-wide devolution deal were scrapped in 2016.

The vote to be held at a NECA meeting on April 17 and will ratify altering the existing NECA boundaries, setting up the North of Tyne body, and creating a joint transport committee linking the two authorities.

Norma Redfearn CBE, elected mayor of North Tyneside, told the NECA meeting in South Shields that it had been a "long journey" to reach this stage in the devolution process.

She said: “The attitude has been to get everyone where they have wanted to be. It has been difficult, but we have managed to keep going.”

She added that she was confident that councils on either side of the Tyne will continue to work together after NECA is split up.

Coun Henry Trueman, leader of Sunderland City Council, said that he believed "everyone should be satisfied" with the outcome of the long-running discussions.