Telford council rejects idea of an elected mayor
Friday 26th November 2010, 4:32PM GMT.
Telford & Wrekin Council has voted against having a London-style elected mayor in charge of the borough. But its senior management structure will change.
Due to a requirement of the previous Labour government, the council had to vote on whether to have a Boris Johnson-style mayor at last night’s full council meeting. Members rejected the proposal.
However, a change has to be made to the top management structure of the council and that will come into force from May next year.
From then, the council will be run by a leader and cabinet, as it is at the moment, but with a stronger role for the leader.
Councils have been given the option of either choosing the leader and cabinet model, which Telford & Wrekin has opted for, or to have an elected mayor in charge. An elected mayor is not a councillor but is directly elected by members of the public.
A report to last night’s meeting said the two options went out to consultation but the response was poor.
Only four parish councils responded and among those only members of Rodington Parish Council wanted an elected mayor.
The public was asked to have its say online but only three people in the whole borough did so, two of them voting for the leader and cabinet model.
Jonathan Eatough, the council’s head of governance, who wrote the report, said: “The limited response to the consultation may indicate that there is relatively little public interest in the issue.”
He said there would be “marginal costs” in making the changes to the current structure which the council had agreed. The change to an elected mayor would have cost substantially more.
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That’s a shame, I like the idea of an eected mayor.
God help us all though with more power to the current leader
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…of course they have, that would make their boss directly accountable to the electorate. Like asking Turkeys to vote for Christmas.
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