By Vivienne Russell | 17 April 2012
Mayoral powers should not be limited by a city’s boundaries but should cover an entire economic area, according to an academic commission.
The University of Warwick’s Elected Mayors and City Leadership Commission, which published its findings yesterday, said ‘metro mayors’ were needed. ‘Mayors are more likely to be effective, both in supporting the economy and making effective decisions for local citizens, if they are responsible for functioning economic areas,’ its report said.
There is ‘no point’ in the mayors running anything less than a boundary-spanning region that can foster economic growth, the commission said.
‘Government should return to considering extending to city region/metro mayors where this is appropriate for local areas at the earliest opportunity,’ it added.
It also warned against a one-size-fits-all mayoral model, called for more clarity on powers, predicted that the issue of mayoral pay could quickly become a political minefield and recommended a recall process that would allow dysfunctional mayors to be removed from office.
The commission, which was established last year, interviewed 42 mayors, staff and senior council figures in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US.
Professor Keith Grint, research director at the commission, said: ‘Ultimately, directly elected mayors may be a way of answering the most important question at the heart of governance: what is the purpose of politics? If politics is about how we mediate our individual and collective conflicts then we had better pay some attention to reinvigorating the body-politic: politics is too important to be left to politicians.’
Residents of ten English cities – Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham and Coventry – will vote on whether to adopt directly elected mayors in referendums being held on May 3. Liverpool has already decided to go with a mayoral system and will elect its first mayor that day.
