Liverpool Council has voted to abolish the role of the city’s mayor, ending the city’s confusing three-mayor system.
From May 2023, the council will revert to a leader and cabinet model after councilors voted 51 to 18 to scrap the elected position, which held the role of Lord Mayor and Metro Mayor in the Liverpool City Region.
Liverpool’s current mayor Joan Anderson, who was elected last year, campaigned on whether Liverpool needed the role and promised to hold a referendum if she was chosen to replace Jo Anderson, who resigned amid a fraud investigation.
Instead, the council chose to run a cheaper public consultation, which had a response rate of just 4% of the city’s population.
Labor councilors were criticized for appearing anti-public, with 40.9% voting to retain the role of mayor, 32.9% opting for a committee model and 23.6% preferring to have a council leader.
Steve Radford, the Liberal leader of the council, told Labour: “You say 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 Brandt said the vote was non-binding and 56.5% of people did not vote for the mayoral system.
He told the council: “This was not a selective vote, we went out to seek the opinion of a wider range of citizens. I can count on my fingers the number of times management issues have been raised with me on the doorstep.
“The reality is that the consultation was vague, its 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 wealthier wards had a turnout of 14 per cent, while poorer wards had a response rate of 3 per cent.
He added: “We don’t have a representative part 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 face today, we have to do the best we can.”
The decision comes after government-appointed inspectors were brought in last March to partially oversee the council after a damning inspection report found allegations of bullying, “dubious” deals and “jobs for the boys”.
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