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(Redirected from Elected Mayors in the United Kingdom)
'Directly-elected mayors' (elected by the general electorate as opposed to by borough councils) were introduced into England in the 1990s and 2000s.

Contents

London

Mayors of local authorities

Opposition to directly elected Mayors

Powers of local authority mayors

List of directly-elected mayors

Mayoral referendums

Wales and Scotland

External links

London

The Greater London Authority Act 1999 first introduced the principle of a directly elected London Mayor under universal suffrage into England. The first election was in 2000, and former leader of the abolished Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone, won as an independent. However, the position is a strategic regional one, and quite different to that of local authority Mayors.

Mayors of local authorities

Most Mayors in the UK are ceremonial figures whose only real power is to chair sessions of their Councils. In 2000 the Labour government led by Tony Blair passed the Local Government Act 2000 which introduced the option of directly elected mayors for local authorities in England and Wales.
The Act ended the previous committee-based system, where functions were exercised by committees of the council, and produced three distinct methods of local authority administration (and the opportunity for the Government to define more by secondary legislation). All three separated the decision-making Executive function from backbench councillors and created opportunities for overview and scrutiny processes.
The title Lord Mayor of London refers only to the City of London within the greater city, while within Stoke-on-Trent the title Lord Mayor refers to the chair of Council and is a separate post to that of Elected Mayor. It may be, however, that if other cities whose mayor has the right to bear the title Lord Mayor adopted an Elected Mayoral model of governance, they would grant the tite of Lord Mayor to their Elected Mayor.
Several districts in England now have directly-elected mayors with real powers and an advisory cabinet to assist them. The changes were encouraged by the central government but usually required local request and ratification by referendum.
This system had been considered by the previous government, and former Environment Secretary Michael Heseltine had been a proponent of it. [1]
Twelve districts now have directly-elected mayors. Some of the mayoral elections were initially won by independents, notably in Hartlepool where the election was won by a man in a monkey suit on a campaign of free bananas for schools, Stuart Drummond; and in Middlesbrough, where it was won by former police officer Ray Mallon who left the local Police Force to stand for election. Having receded somewhat as an issue after 2002 it has now moved up the political agenda, following positive reports of mayors' performance under the new system and recent Labour gains in several mayoralties. In February 2006, the Labour-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research published a report calling for elected mayors in Birmingham and Manchester, which was positively received by the government though not in the two city councils concerned.
In October 2005, Torbay elected their first elected mayor, , who is the only Conservative directly-elected mayor in the country at the moment.
In October 2006, the DCLG white paper ''Strong and prosperous communities'' proposed that in future the requirement for a referendum to approve the creation of an elected mayor for a council area be dropped in favour of a simple resolution of the council following community consultation. It also proposed the direct election of council cabinets where requested and that the mayor and council manager system in Stoke-on-Trent be reformed into a conventional mayor and cabinet system, it having being the only English council to adopt that system [2].

Opposition to directly elected Mayors

There has been some public backlash about perceived excessive power of directly elected mayors. Campaigns are now under way in four of the twelve local authorities with directly elected mayors (Doncaster, Hartlepool, Lewisham and Stoke-on-Trent) to hold referendums to abolish the posts. [3]
In Doncaster, in March 2007, "Fair Deal" campaigners presented an 11,000 signature petition to the council calling for a new referendum. The council voted 31-27 in favour of a new referendum which is likely to be held in Oct 2007. [4]
In Lewisham, the Bring Back Democracy campaign is calling for a new referendum citing poor turnout and a very close result in the 2001 referendum. In April 2007, Lewisham Council voted 28-24 against a motion calling for a consultation over the issue [5] with a Labour party spokeman describing the call for a new referendum as "a juvenile political stunt" [6].

Powers of local authority mayors

A local authority elected mayor has similar powers to the Executive Committee in a Leader and Cabinet model local authority. These can be described as 'exclusive' powers and as 'codecision' powers and are defined in the Local Government (Functions and Responsibilities) (England) Regulations 2000.
Codecision powers are those which the Mayor shares with the Council and consist of the power to make the local authority's Annual Budget and its Policy Framework Documents. These are: Annual Library Plan; Best Value Performance Plan; Children's Services Plan; Community Care Plan; Community Strategy; Crime and Disorder Reduction Strategy; Early Years Development Plan; Education Development Plan; Local Development Framework; and the Youth Justice Plan.
In order to amend or reject a Mayor's proposals for any of the Budget and Policy Framework Documents, their Council must resolve to do so by a two-thirds majority. This is again from secondary legislation, in this case the Local Government (Standing Orders) (England) Regulations 2001.
Exclusive powers are less easy to define, because they consist of all the powers which are granted to a local authority by Act of Parliament except those defined as codecision powers or as 'not to be the responsibility of an authority's Executive'. This latter is a highly limited list (including quasi-judicial decisions on planning and licensing, and certain ceremonial, employment and legal decisions).
An Elected Mayor (in a Mayor and Cabinet system) also has the power to appoint up to 9 Councillors as members of a cabinet and to delegate powers to them as individuals, to the Mayor and Cabinet committee, or to subcommittees of the Mayor and Cabinet committee. In practice, the Mayor remains personally accountable, so most Mayors have chosen to delegate to a very limited extent - if at all.
Protecting the British tradition of independent civil service has led to the interesting situation where the apparent introduction of separation of powers has led only from the transfer of powers from one elected branch (the Council) to another (the Mayor).
Local authorities in Britain remain administered by a permanent staff of Chief Officers led by a Chief Executive, who are politically neutral bureaucrats whose powers remain unaffected by the introduction of an Elected Mayor (though obviously the policies they are required to implement may change). Senior Officers continue to be appointed by a politically representative committee of Councillors (and more junior Officers by the Senior Officers) and the Mayor may not attempt to influence the decision as to who is appointed (except within the committee as a member of the committee).
In order to maintain the professional and political independence of the staff, the Mayor (or any other member of the Council) may not personally direct any member of staff. Changing the direction of an authority may only be made through a formal decision making process and then only on the basis of official Reports put together by Officers.
Accordingly, an Elected Mayor cannot really be accurately characterised as an Executive Mayor as exists in parts of the US and certain other countries, but more as a semi-Executive.

List of directly-elected mayors

Currently there are thirteen directly elected Mayors in England (including the Mayor of London).

District	Type	Mayor	Party
Bedford	non-metropolitan district	Frank Branston	independent
Doncaster	metropolitan borough	Martin Winter	Labour
London	Region of England	Ken Livingstone	Labour, first elected as independent
Hackney	London borough	Jules Pipe	Labour
Hartlepool	unitary authority	Stuart Drummond	independent
Lewisham	London borough	Steve Bullock	Labour
Mansfield	non-metropolitan district	Tony Egginton	independent
Middlesbrough	unitary authority	Ray Mallon	independent
Newham	London borough	Robin Wales	Labour
North Tyneside	metropolitan borough	John Harrison	Labour
Stoke-on-Trent	unitary authority	Mark Meredith	Labour
Torbay	unitary authority	Nicholas Bye	Conservative
Watford	non-metropolitan district	Dorothy Thornhill	Liberal Democrats

Ex-mayors are:

★ Linda Arkley, North Tyneside (2003-2005).

★ Chris Morgan North Tyneside (May 2002-April 2003).

★ Mike Wolfe, Stoke-on-Trent (October 2002-May 2005).

Mayoral referendums

To date there have been 34 referendums on whether to establish an elected Mayor in English local authorities. 12 have been passed and 22 rejected by the voters.
To cause a referendum, the normal procedure is for the Council to request it, which has happened in 22 cases. In 12, the voters themselves have requested a referendum by petition and in one (Southwark) central Government forced the holding of a referendum.
The majority of these were held between June 2001 and May 2002 - a further seven have been held since.
''"Yes" majority shown in green, "No" majority shown in red.''
''Source: Electoral Commission; Ceredigion County Council''

Local authority	Date	Yes Votes	Yes Vote %	No Votes	No Vote %	Turnout %
Berwick-upon-Tweed	7 June 2001	3,617	26	10,212	74	64
Cheltenham	28 June 2001	8,083	33	16,602	67	32
Gloucester	28 June 2001	7,731	32	16,317	68	31
Watford	12 July 2001	7,636	52	7,140	48	25
Doncaster	20 September 2001	35,453	65	19,398	35	25
Kirklees	4 October 2001	10,169	27	27,977	73	13
Sunderland	11 October 2001	9,375	43	12,209	57	10
Brighton & Hove	18 October 2001	22,724	38	37,214	62	32
Hartlepool	18 October 2001	10,667	51	10,294	49	34
Lewisham	18 October 2001	16,822	51	15,914	49	18
Middlesbrough	18 October 2001	29,067	84	5,422	16	34
North Tyneside	18 October 2001	30,262	58	22,296	42	36
Sedgefield	18 October 2001	10,628	47	11,869	53	33
Redditch	8 November 2001	7,250	44	9,198	56	28
Durham	20 November 2001	8,327	41	11,974	59	29
Harrow	6 December 2001	17,502	43	23,554	57	26
Plymouth	24 January 2002	29,559	41	42,811	59	40
Harlow	24 January 2002	5,296	25	15,490	75	25
Newham	31 January 2002	27,263	68	12,687	32	26
Southwark	31 January 2002	6,054	31	13,217	69	11
West Devon	31 January 2002	3,555	23	12,190	77	42
Shepway	31 January 2002	11,357	44	14,438	56	36
Bedford	21 February 2002	11,316	67	5,537	33	16
Hackney	2 May 2002	24,697	59	10,547	41	32
Mansfield	2 May 2002	8,973	55	7,350	45	21
Newcastle-under-Lyme	2 May 2002	12,912	44	16,468	56	31.5
Oxford	2 May 2002	14,692	44	18,686	56	34
Stoke on Trent	2 May 2002	28,601	58	20,578	42	27
Corby	1 October 2002	5,351	46	6239	54	31
Ealing	12 December 2002	9,454	45	11,655	55	10
Ceredigion	20 May 2004	5,308	27	14,013	73	36
Isle of Wight	5 May 2005	28,786	43.7	37,097	56.3	60.4
Fenland	14 July 2005	5,509	24.2	17,296	75.8	33.6
Torbay	14 July 2005	18,074	55.2	14,682	44.8	32.1
Crewe and Nantwich	4 May 2006	11,808	38.2	18,768	60.8	35.3

Wales and Scotland

Although Wales is included in the legislation, only one Welsh authority, Ceredigion, has gone down this route and the proposal was rejected in a referendum.
The Act does not apply in Scotland and the Scottish Parliament has chosen to reform local government instead by introducing the Single Transferrable Vote electoral system.

External links

★ NLGN mayoral pages (inc. FAQ)

★ Arguments for elected mayors

★ Arguments against elected mayors