Metro mayor Dan Norris will formally relinquish claims he made about his power to veto decisions – insisting "no one follows the rules more than me".

Labour's Mr Norris, who is in charge of the West of England Combined Authority (Weca) – comprising Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Bath & North East Somerset councils – says it is "dead easy" for him to agree to a report confirming he has no veto power at Weca's joint committee, which is made up of the three authorities plus North Somerset Council.

But at the same meeting this Friday (December 17) that he is due to make that admission, the region's four council leaders, who Mr Norris has clashed with publicly since September, are launching a bid that could see them seize control of funding decisions outside the authority's remit. The move has been branded "bad timing" by Weca's top officer.

The veto controversy began with legal advice the metro mayor received shortly before a meeting in September, which said he could block motions tabled by the local authority leaders at joint committee.

This was challenged by the four councils, which obtained different guidance from another barrister refuting the veto power. Mr Norris has since accepted this after the leaders boycotted the October meeting in protest, and this Friday everyone is set to agree this is the official position.

The metro mayor told Weca overview and scrutiny committee on Monday, December 13, that he always voted according to his conscience and followed the rules "to the letter".

"So whatever my lawyer tells me I can do in terms of votes, that's what I do. If they tell me subsequently that I can't then I don't. That's what happens," said Mr Norris, whose veto at Weca committee – decisions not involving North Somerset – is not in dispute.

"The paper that's asking me to stick to the rules is dead easy for me to agree to because that's what I've been doing all along, what I have always done and always will do.

"It just happens that on the combined authority we have a voting system that gives a certain prominence to the metro mayor's vote.

"That is not my choice. I don't worry about that, I'm not a lawyer, I just vote for what I believe in and the rest follows from that.

"It appears like a veto but it's not a veto, it's me following my conscience on every single issue, which I will continue to do.

"No one follows the rules more than me, not least because I spent 13 years making the rules as a Member of Parliament."

A report to Friday's joint committee says voting is by a simple majority of the metro mayor and the four leaders.

It said the lawyer who advised the four councils had more time to consider the matter subsequently than Weca's barrister had immediately before the September meeting, so "future meetings should proceed on the basis that the mayor can exercise a right of veto at the combined authority committee but that this right does not extend to the joint committee".

The papers said no decisions at that meeting were affected because one motion, opposing Bristol Airport's expansion, was agreed unanimously and the other items were either withdrawn or would come back to committee.

Another report going to Friday's meeting, submitted unusually by the four councils, not Weca, calls for a governance review of the joint committee, including Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) recommendations and funding streams not bound by Weca.

It would commission the chief executives and monitoring officers of the unitary authorities only to "review the administrative arrangements for joint committee's investment sources" which are currently managed by the combined authority and include hundreds of millions of pounds from business rates.

The report said: "Due to concerns regarding how the governance of the joint committee has been implemented, especially with regards to voting arrangements and the content of reports, a review of the joint committee's governance arrangements is now necessary."

But Weca chief executive Patricia Greer told scrutiny councillors at Bath Guildhall that the Government's plans for LEPs should be announced next month in the 'Levelling Up' White Paper following a long-running review.

"What I'm hearing informally is LEPs most likely will be integrated more closely with combined authorities, which is the model we have," she said at Monday's (December 13) meeting.

"It seems a bit odd at this time, when we are expecting the outcome of the government review, to take a decision locally about where you might put the LEP. It feels like bad timing."

The review would not include the combined authority's main £900million, 30-year Investment Fund because those decisions are made by Weca committee.