Councillors vote against scrapping city mayor role

Sir Peter Soulsby has held the position of city mayor for as long as it has existed

Councillors in Leicester have voted against scrapping the role of directly-elected city mayor.

Conservative and Green opposition members called for the position, currently held by Labour's Sir Peter Soulsby, to be abolished at a full Leicester City Council meeting on Thursday.

A motion put to the council said ending the mayoral system, in place since 2011, was needed to "restore public trust" in the authority following "continued and serious failings" across core services, including in housing and adult social care.

However, the motion to support a return to the leader and cabinet model to run the authority was voted down by a Labour majority of councillors in the chamber.

Leicester Conservatives leader Hemant Rae Bhatia told the meeting: "The question is simple. Who should hold the power and shape Leicester's future? One individual or elected representatives [on the council].

"When the directly elected mayoral system was introduced, it was sold to Leicester as a way to provide strong political leadership.

"It started with a big bang and it went well but over a decade-and-a-half later we see the experiment has failed and it has not kept its promises.

"The mayoral model concentrates power in a single pair of hands and backbench councillors find themselves sidelined."

Liberal Democrat councillor Zuffar Haq said: "The city mayor has done some good work. No-one would deny that but in reality the system doesn't work anymore, and residents are struggling."

'Let's move on'

Soulsby, who has been elected mayor four times in a row, told the meeting the issues raised in the motion were not connected to the mayoral system.

He said similar patterns could be found in neighbouring authorities, run by other political parties, where regulators like the Care Quality Commission and Ofsted had identified problems with services.

He added that the motion was "premature" and that the mayoral office might be scrapped by the government in any case as part of an upcoming shake-up of council boundaries.

Ministers want the political restructure, known as local government reorganisation (LGR), to simplify how councils work by ending the two-tier council system and replacing district and borough authorities with larger unitary organisations.

As part of that, Soulsby is pushing for the city boundary to be expanded to cover surrounding towns in the neighbouring urban area, but the government has said such a new council would be run by a leader and cabinet.

He said: "I have already given the commitment we either have to change [governance] due to local government reorganisation - or the council will have an opportunity to fully debate it at least a year before the next local elections in 2027."

Green councillor Patrick Kitterick said he had supported setting up the mayoral system in 2011 but added: "When I voted for [it] I got it wrong - and it embarrasses me sometimes that I did.

"If we don't vote to move this forward tonight, the government will come and move us forward but I would far rather that decision be taken here in Leicester than in a minister's office in London.

"The system was an experiment. The experiment has failed. Let's move on."