Liverpool council has voted to scrap the role of city mayor, ending the city’s confusing three-mayor system.
From May 2023, the council will return to a leader and cabinet model after councilors voted 51 to 18 to scrap the elected post, which sat alongside the role of lord mayor and metro mayor for the region of the city of Liverpool.
Liverpool’s current mayor, Joanne Anderson, who was elected last year, had campaigned on whether Liverpool needed the role and pledged to hold a referendum if she was elected to replace Joe Anderson, who resigned amid a fraud investigation.
Instead, the council chose to run a less expensive public consultation, which had a response rate of just 4% of the city’s population.
Labor councilors were criticized for appearing to go against the public, with 40.9% voting to keep the mayor’s position, 32.9% opting for a commission model and 23 .6% preferred to have a head of council.
Steve Radford, the Liberal leader of the council, told Labour: “You’re saying we’re going to vote for the least popular option and after asking people in the city, we don’t care what they think.”
Councilor Paul Brant argued that it was not a binding vote and that 56.5% of people did not vote for the mayoral system.
He told the town hall: “This was not a first-round vote, we went out to find the opinion of the general public. I can count the number of times there have been governance issues and this debate was raised with me at the door.
“The reality is that the consultation was not clear, the results were ambiguous, it would not pass the test that would be imposed by a reputable polling organization to be a representative sample of opinion across the city.”
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He said the wealthiest wards had a 14% turnout, while the most deprived wards had a 3% response rate.
He added: “We don’t have a representative portion of the population of the city of Liverpool with this process, so we have to do the best we can with the material we have. The options we are faced with today, we have to do the as best we can”.
The decision comes after government-appointed inspectors came forward in March last year to partially oversee the council after a damning inspection report found allegations of bullying, “dubious” deals and “jobs for boys”.