Getting ready for mayors
More people know about metro mayors than you might think
Public awareness of new mayors is surprisingly high given that the campaigns haven't begun in earnest.
Public awareness of new mayors is surprisingly high given that the campaigns haven't begun in earnest.
Detractors of the Government’s devolution agenda have consistently criticised the lack of public awareness of the introduction of metro mayors and combined authorities due in 2017 – often linking this lack of engagement to arguments regarding the legitimacy of the reforms themselves.
But Centre for Cities polling of the five biggest city regions receiving a devolution deal shows that public awareness of the changes is actually surprisingly high:
The results of the survey – conducted across the local authorities included within the five biggest proposed mayoral combined authorities in late April and early May – show that in actual fact, nearly half of residents in the Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester know of plans to introduce a metro mayor, while that figure is over a third in the North East and West Midlands. Only in the Sheffield City Region did less than a third of residents say they were familiar with the plans.
There are a number of reasons to be encouraged by these figures. Although news of the deals has featured regularly within local media in recent months, opportunities for the general public to engage directly with the mayoral devolution deals has been limited to date. The majority of the negotiations on devolution have been done in private between local authority leaders and ministers, and at the time of polling, very few official candidates had come forward and even less explicit campaigning had taken place.
All of which means that so far, debates on devolution have necessarily focused on structures and governance, rather than personalities and policies – hardly areas likely to generate huge amounts of interest from the general public.
Of course more can and should be done in the months ahead to build public awareness in devolution – that’s why it is encouraging to see that all city regions and county regions that have secured draft agreements have launched consultation programmes in their local areas, hosting public meeting and subjecting the terms of deals to scrutiny through established council processes.
As the attention shifts from questions of whether or not to introduce a mayor, to how city regions can maximise the benefits of having one, these polling results show that places have a solid base to build from in the coming months.
Centre for Cities is hosting a series of events over the summer to discuss the top priorities for the new city region mayors. Details below:
Tuesday 14th June – in Middlesbrough with Cllr Sue Jeffrey to discuss the Tees Valley mayor
Register your place here
Tuesday 21st June – in Liverpool with Mayor Joe Anderson to discuss the Liverpool City Region mayor
Register your place here
Monday 11th July – in Manchester with Andy Burnham MP to discuss the Greater Manchester mayor
Register your place here
Thursday 14th July – In Sheffield with Lord David Blunkett to discuss the Sheffield City Region mayor
Register your place here
Thursday 21st July – in Birmingham with Gisela Stuart MP to discuss the West Midlands mayor
Register your place here
Leave a comment
Ben Harrison
Thanks for your comment Vicky. We understand that there are many who feel they haven’t been adequately consulted regarding the introduction of metro mayors, but there are a number of reasons that we think the reforms do have democratic credibility – not least the fact that their introduction was in the Government’s manifesto, and the deals introducing them have been negotiated between elected politicians at the local and national level.
It’s also important to note that the comparison with the mayoral referenda of the last Parliament is not accurate – those posts came with no additional powers, and were confined to local authorities only.
In addition, my view is because power is so concentrated within central government, the terms of devolution will inherently be set by those in the centre. So while talk of a purely “bottom up” form of devolution might sound appealing, in reality it’s very hard to imagine how this could be delivered, or whether it would achieve the kind of economic and social benefits that the devolution agenda should be aiming to secure.
Vicky Seddon
These mayors are being imposed on us. Centre for Cities seems to have no concern for the lack of democratic credibility of these structures or the fact that “pwrsonalitypolitics” like this can throw up all kinds of issues. Where there are solid majorities of obe party or another, it will be the party’s nomination process that will determine who the mayor will be with the public election then being an effective “coronation”
These figures above show that no where is there a majority of the population feeling knowleadgeable about the proposed structure. Clarke puts a positive spin on it – in line with C for C’s position on it, in my opinion undeservedly.
All these meetings you are hosting shows you are really wanting to move the arguments away from “do we want mayors” to “who will be mayor?” But that will not aid the credibility of the posts. We the people in the cities have not been consulted on whether or not we want mayors like this. When we were consulted about having more local mayors, we roundly opposed them. Ignoring this won’t make it go away