A confident prediction: We are only weeks away from Birmingham, Black Country, Coventry and Solihull speaking with a singe voice on priorities for transport, employment and skills and maybe more. There will then be a deal with done with Government which will be legally-binding before April 2016. This will deliver local control over budgets worth many billions of pounds.

It is estimated that the West Midlands consumes around £8 billion more in taxation than we generate. The deal with government must demonstrate how this local deficit will reduce. It needs to work like this: the deal needs to deliver growth over that which we would have produced anyway.

The additional growth will then reduce the benefits bill (because more people will be in work) and generate additional tax receipts for Treasury (because companies will be more profitable and a greater number of individuals will be paying more tax.

Beautiful in its simplicity with a rationale that goes right to the heart of the devolution argument. Unless local areas can use public spending more effectively than government, there is no point in bothering to get local control. All partners in the region believe we can – now we will find out.

So we should salute our local politicians for moving so rapidly after years of doubt. We should also thank the Local Enterprise Partnerships for sharpening up considerably the depth of our understanding about the economic geography.

There is no doubt that the contents of the eventual deal will draw heavily on the pipeline of projects that LEP's have been developing for the last four years.

The deal partners are almost certain to include the important Districts of Southern Staffordshire, North Worcestershire and North Warwickshire – in other words, the existing LEP partners. Whilst this exercise will not seek to take on the Herculean task of local government reorganisation, the writing is on the wall. It can only be a matter of time before local government boundaries are rewritten to acknowledge the newly devolved economic geography.

To complement this is the GBSLEP-led work that is seeking to understand what are the ingredients of a "Birmingham Region"? What assets can we bring together so that the region can tell a compelling story in global markets? This work is currently in a public consultation phase ("Birminghamregion.co.uk") – go and have a look and have your say. Give your examples of what is special about our part of the world.

Once this work completes, we should have another example along side the Combined Authority work of the local team getting our act together.

One final hope. The deal will be a lot bigger if the Combined Authority team supports the creation of a directly-elected mayor. It's the Chancellor's policy. Mayors are no guarantee of sunny uplands. But they can be great cheerleaders and catalysts. Just look at New York and London.

The last time Birmingham Chamber members voted on the idea, they were in favour of a mayor for Birmingham, provided the role brought additional powers. We haven't asked them about a metro-mayor yet but my guess is that if the deal is right, they'd go for it. Like has happened already in Greater Manchester. So local authorities, whilst you are on a roll, see what additional deal you can do by including a mayor.

This is my last column before I step down from the Chamber at the end of the month. A quick look back in my (chaotic) files indicates I started writing this in 2007. You have suffered enough.

Do give a warm welcome to my successor Paul Faulkner – he's a great catch for not just for Birmingham but for the region as well.

Jerry Blackett is the (outgoing) chief executive of the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce