Mayor

The role of the mayor

The role of the mayor is to work alongside local leaders. Together they will create a long-term vision and secure more investment into the region. The mayor is not a serving councillor, and they will not replace the leaders of existing the councils. Mayors chair the combined authority. They bring together the leaders of all councils in the Combined Authority area.

The directly elected mayor will provide a number of services to the Combined Authority. These include -

  • providing overall vision and leadership
  • seeking the best value for taxpayers’ money
  • being directly accountable to the area’s electorate
  • receiving new powers on transport, housing and skills

Responsibilities

The mayor and other Combined Authority members will work together. The elected mayor will provide overall leadership. They will chair the combined authority meetings.

As a part of the mayor's responsibilities, they may choose to delegate functions to members of the Combined Authority. In this case, the member that is given a specific mayoral function will exercise the function on behalf of the mayor. All members of the Combined Authority will be able to support and advise the mayor in exercising mayoral functions.

The mayor will have responsibility over -

  • functional power of competence
  • housing and planning with the power to -
    • designate a Mayoral Development Area and set up a Mayoral Development Corporation
    • use housing and land acquisition powers to support housing regeneration, development, wellbeing and growth
  • finance. The mayor can set a precept on council tax to fund mayoral functions. They have the power to charge business rate supplement. This charge is subject to ballot
  • transport, with a local transport plan and strategies. The mayor will be responsible for a multi-year consolidated transport for the combined authority

No constituent council functions are removed from the councils. This is other than with transport functions. Existing functions and resources already held by the constituent authorities will be shared with the mayor and combined authority. These must be agreed by the constituent councils.