Bristol has made a decision and voted for an elected mayor. We respect that decision. The result is:

41,032 votes for an elected mayor

35,880 against an elected mayor

That was 53% in favour and 47% opposed. Turnout was 24%.

The decision has been made. Now the promises must be delivered on. We call on the Government to live up to the £100s millions of extra funding that has been promised and all the additional powers that have been raised.

Our campaign is now over but the campaign to put Bristol first and keep improving our great city goes on.

Good bye Bristol – you remain unique!

If anything in this referendum is clear it is that the forces that are backing an elected mayor have completely failed to communicate a coherent and good reason why the people of Bristol should risk their city on this expensive change.

The message is clear – if you don’t know then vote NO! Simply vote against this proposed change to an elected mayor and support the system of a Council Leader accountable to you via your 70 elected councillors.

Those opposing this change have made it clear that it would cost us more, would make our politicians less accountable and put too much power into the hands of just one individual. Rather than increase our influence with neighbouring authorities it would set it back.

On the other-side of the argument the pro-mayor camp have made grandiose claims yet have failed to back any of this up with facts or cast iron promises – all talk of jam tomorrow with nothing to back it up.

We have seen their campaign run and dominated by Westminster Conservative politicians – one could ask why is it that they are so keen on this change? What is in it for them?

We are proud of our city and its performance. We also believe that we should expect more from our council. We do not though believe putting one over paid politician in charge answerable to Tories in Westminster rather than us the people is a step forward.

We also believe that those proposing change have totally failed to demonstrate their case or communicate that to the wider electorate. We believe the case for voting against this proposal is clear.

Ultimately though this decision is now yours, the people of Bristol. Whatever decision you make this campaign will respect it. We thank you for your time and wish you all the best.

The night before Bristol decides our cousins in Doncaster have a letter of warning about elected mayors, one we should not ignore. Here is what one Doncaster resident has seen:

Doncaster was one of the first places that changed to having a directly elected mayor. In the wake of the Donnygate scandal and years of inertia, the idea of directly electing someone new in charge rather than having a discredited group of councillors choose was obviously tempting. The turnout was very poor but the public voted 2:1 for the change.

At first there was no real change as the new leader of the Council, Martin Winter became the first elected mayor for the Labour Party. Things carried on as if nothing had happened. However, the new mayor started to raise eyebrows with some of his activities and his close relationship with the town’s leading property developer. He soon became target number one of Private Eye in the Rotten Boroughs column.

It was not a great surprise when Labour lost their majority on the council for the first time anyone could remember as Independents, Lib Dems and Conservatives all made gains. However, as elected mayor, Mr Winter carried on regardless with an all Labour cabinet. A movement took shape to call for a second referendum to abolish the position and soon gained 11,000 signatures.

A lot of people thought Mr Winter would lose his re-election bid in 2005 to the leading Independent candidate, but he was saved partly through the higher turnout as it was held alongside the General Election and the Labour vote was higher than other years, and also by the Supplementary vote system that meant 2nd choice votes went all over the place to candidates who could not use them.

In his second term, things got worse. Winter was subject to five standards inquiries and various projects fell apart. Also the controversy over Doncaster’s Child Services started. He fell out with his Labour colleagues, calling them “maggots” in the press and went independent in the final year with a small cabinet of one independent and 3 individuals who left Labour or Lib Dems to support him. The whole of the rest of the council voted no confidence in him and he ignored them.

The 2009 vote was a lesson to anyone watching the problems with elected mayors. Most thought it would be a fight between the new Labour candidate and the same independent who came second in 2005. In fact, turnout was very low and the vote spread fairly evenly across the top 5 of the 7 candidates (including the BNP). Mick Maye, the independent, topped the poll and Peter Davies, a little known retired teacher from the almost completely unknown English Democrats, came second. Davies had just 22% of the vote (8% of the electorate). He caught up and overtook Maye by 200 votes on second vote transfers as he gained most of the BNP votes and a fair few Tories. Labour votes largely went nowhere and others split with not enough going to Maye.

The reason why Davies won I think largely came down to the power of his mayoral leaflet. Doncaster residents were now sick of their local government after Donnygate and then Martin Winter. Davies had by far the most radical and hard-hitting manifesto. He made several rash pledges that had appeal while other candidates were fairly circumspect. In particular he promised to halve his salary – an insignificant saving on the budget, but one that struck a chord and nobody else matched. Nearly all his other promises were never kept. His promise to scrap the Waterdale development was dropped within 2 weeks after he realised what all the other candidates knew – it could not be done without leaving Doncaster with a £5m bill for nothing! He found he could not cut two thirds of the councillors, even if they agreed as it was not in his power and he then went on to change his mind over a referendum on the mayor, and blamed the Labour party when they forced him into what he had promised in the first place.

Davies was a total novice who had no idea what being an elected mayor with such executive power over such a huge budget actually meant. He antagonised councillors from day one and took a long time to learn the ropes. In the mean time, almost the first action from Pickles when he took over as Communities Secretary was to put Doncaster under special measures and send in Commissioners to effectively run the place. After 7 children died in the care of Children’s services and the council was damned by the Auditors report, action had to be taken. The problems went back decades, but the Winter period and start of Davies’ time had made things no better. Davies was singled out in many sections for his failure to work with the councillors. Leadership was regarded as very weak.

Now after 10 years has elapsed since the first referendum and the council has voted again to support a referendum, we have one tomorrow. I think among those that pay attention to local politics, a clear majority will want the job to go.  Davies has achieved nothing since halving his salary and losing the mayoral car in the first couple of days and has embarrassed us with his comments about Taliban Family Values and the idea that Child Poverty does not exist. His party nationally has been taken over by former BNP members and his local party has declined.
I know elected mayors can do a good job, but there is nothing intrinsic to the job that makes that happen. Some authorities can be well run by a mayor, or they can be run as well or better by a leader of Council. Unfortunately, the job attracts mavericks, extremists and chancers with a few populist with gimmicky promises they cant achieve (50% Council tax cut in Salford?!). Once there a mayor can be no-confidence every week but they cant be removed unless they die or go to prison. A poor council leader can be ditched straight away by their party or coalition – or the voters can get rid of them within a year or two – instead of four.

This is our lesson from Doncaster we leave it to Bristol to decide which way it wants to go.

Centre for Cities data on levels of youth unemployment – percentage of youth workforce claiming Job Seekers Allowance March 2012

10 cities due to have mayor referenda (coloured blue, except Bristol = Green)

4 cities that already have Mayors (coloured red)

Centre for Cities data on levels of unemployment – percentage of workforce claiming Job Seekers Allowance March 2012

10 cities due to have mayor referenda (coloured blue, except Bristol = Green)

4 cities that already have Mayors (coloured red)

Centre for Cities data on levels of multiple deprivation – the higher the score, the higher the levels of deprivation.

10 cities due to have mayor referenda (coloured blue, except Bristol = Green)

4 cities that already have Mayors (coloured red)

Leader and Cabinet or Elected Mayor?

Some background information as to how Bristol City Council is currently run and the options facing voters at the referendum:

Bristol is divided into 35 electoral wards, which are used to elect 70 local councillors (two per ward), representing over 400,000 people. This will remain the same irrespective of the result of the referendum.

The present system: Leader and Cabinet

Bristol City Council is not run by a Leader, but by a Leader and Cabinet. The Leader usually comes from the party with the largest number of councillors (and might be from the majority party in a coalition) and is chosen by councillors from that party. Although the full council must ratify their election, in reality this is a formality. By law, the Leader then has the power to appoint their own Cabinet, although some political parties allow their councillors to elect the Cabinet.

The Cabinet makes most day-to-day decisions. However, those covering annual budgets, strategic policies, the local development framework, as well as various other plans, go before the full council, where they are approved, amended or rejected by a simple majority vote. In practice councillors tend to vote along party lines but the option is there for them to vote against their Leader or Cabinet. Councillors can also hold a vote of No Confidence in a Leader and, if carried, thereby remove them from office.

The Council also has several statutory committees. These include: Overview and Scrutiny, Planning and Licensing.

The proposed Mayoral system:

The Mayor is elected by a direct vote in which the entire electorate of the city may participate, just as with a President. Mayors may not necessarily be from the largest political party, and they may be from none (i.e. an independent).

The Mayor has responsibility for council decisions made during their four-year term of office.

They are responsible for the same types of decisions that are currently taken by the Leader and Cabinet. The Mayor must appoint a Cabinet (sometimes called an Executive), consisting of between two and nine members, from amongst the elected councillors. They may also appoint two deputies. As with the current system, the Mayor may delegate decisions to the Cabinet, but in practice, because Mayors are directly accountable to the electorate, and can’t be voted from office in between mayoral elections, they often choose to retain more powers for themselves.

Annual budgets, strategic policies, the local development framework, as well as various other plans have to be approved by at least one-third of the full council, rather than a majority, as under the Leader and Cabinet system. Conversely, to amend or reject the Mayor’s policy plans requires at least two-thirds of the full council to vote against.

In addition to the council’s normal powers being transferred to a Mayor, central Government says that they will grant Mayors extra powers. What these are will only be determined after both the referendum and any subsequent mayoral election has taken place. At that point these additional powers will be negotiated between individual cities and central Government, in what are termed ‘city deals.’

Neither councillors nor the electorate have the power of recall over the Mayor and the Mayor does not have to resign, even if they lose a confidence vote.

The same range of statutory committees that exist under the Leader and Cabinet system are retained under the mayoral system (i.e. Planning, Licensing, Overview and Scrutiny).

However, while councillors’ overview and scrutiny rôle remains theoretically the same, their reduced ability to remove the Mayor or amend mayoral policies is likely to affect how empowered they both are, and feel, vis-à-vis scrutiny.

The Referendum process:

On May 3rd voters in 10 English cities, including Bristol, will be asked to decide in a referendum whether or not they wish their city to be run by an elected Mayor or a Leader and Cabinet. Local Government and Communities Minister Greg Clark recently stated that: “Cities need to take charge of their own destinies; change must come from within, not without.”

There is no minimum turnout required for the referendum to be valid. If the electorate vote in favour of having a Mayor, an Act of Parliament would be required to reverse their decision. A mayoral election would be held on November 15th 2012, using the Supplementary Vote system (a form of second preference, transferable voting).

Further alternatives to the mayoral system:

Other changes to how the Council is run are possible under the Localism Act 2011.  These could be ways of widening democratic accountability within the city. The Localism Act permits councils with a Leader and Cabinet system to return to the Committee system (which provided local councillors with more input into the decision-making process than either the Leader and Cabinet or mayoral systems). This option is not available to cities that vote to have Mayors.

In summary:

The information provided above is largely that produced by Localise West Midlands and The Birmingham Press for their referendum.

With expectations that only Birmingham will join Liverpool and Leicester in adopting elected mayors, Greg Clark looks likely to join an increasing line of Ministerial failures as the Government realises that its Cabinet of Mayors will become a mockery. Desperation led to a David Cameron visit today which has resulted in a backlash from Bristolians to the pro-elected mayor campaign.

Pig in a poke - David Cameron on elected mayors

The Financial Times has reported that Conservative strategists have privately warned that the government’s much touted “Cabinet of Mayors” will have plenty of empty seats as ministers now anticipate that only Birmingham will vote Yes, with Leeds and Bristol at best being maybes.  Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, Nottingham, Coventry, Bradford and Wakefield are all expected to vote No.

Alex Jones from the previously pro-mayor Centre for Cities has now suggested that “Ministers could convert the Cabinet for Mayors into a Cabinet for Cities? That could be an interesting way to get city issues on the Whitehall agenda, even if they don’t have a mayor”

In an effort at damage limitation, the Conservatives will be ramping up pressure for a Yes vote in Birmingham, Bristol and Leeds by wheeling out the Tory big guns to the three cities in which they still retain hopes of a Yes result.

Prime Minister David Cameron in Bristol today desperately promoted a Yes vote but there has been a backlash with the Evening Post website dominated with anti-mayor comments and even YES campaigners condemning the visit and the Tory take over of the pro-mayor campaign.

Cameron’s appearance follows the wheeling out of Lord Heseltine for the local BBC – a tactic that backfired when, despite claims that Elected Mayors have higher profiles , Heseltine was unable to recognise a single existing Elected Mayor outside London.

The Tory bandwagon continues with the Chancellor George Osborne due to visit the Bristol area later in the week, whilst Conservative Bristol North West MP Charlotte Leslie has been told to ramp up her appearances in the local media to promote the Yes vote.  Local Conservative and likely Mayor candidate Peter Abraham is also believed to have asked for greater support from his fellow Tory councillors in the Council Chamber.

Meanwhile Labour candidate for London Mayor Ken Livingstone has criticised the Tory initiative saying that, even after two terms in office, he is still “not convinced” by the mayoral system, saying “it concentrates a lot of power in one person’s hands”. Instead, he says the government should focus on returning powers to the existing structure of local government, which has been “totally eviscerated”.

Ironically much of this evisceration took place under the Thatcher government that contained Lord Heseltine as a minister.  The reduction of local government capability was done for political reasons, and the promotion of Elected Mayors is similarly seen by many as being politically motivated rather than driven by any real desire to return local decision making to the cities.

Hartcliffe councillor Mark Brain said “The fact that David Cameron was forced to come to Bristol today to shore up the ailing and divided ‘Yes’ campaign demonstrates that an elected mayor for Bristol is not the inevitability that some people would have us believe. The people of Bristol have the power to put a stop to this expensive madness by voting ‘No’ on May 3^rd.”

There seems to be some confusion as to whether, if Bristol chooses to have an elected mayor, it will be able to revert back to the cabinet and leader system if Bristolians decide that the mayoral system isn’t working.

The matter has been debated in Parliament and the situation confirmed on a number of occasions but perhaps most clearly in the debate on Tuesday, 31st January 2012 as this extract from Hansard demonstrates;

John Healey (the Labour MP for Wentworth and Dearne) asked;

“I do not want to delay the Committee, but I think I just heard the Minister mention an important point, which I do not want to skirt around. It seems that this process is a one-way street. Can the Minister confirm that my understanding of what he has just said is correct? If a referendum result was in favour of changing to a mayoral system and that change was made, and if that system did not work for an area or it proved to be a disaster, there would be no way of reversing that position and returning to a different form of governance unless the House passed fresh primary legislation. Is that exactly what the Minister said?”

Responding on behalf of the Government was Andrew Stunell, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government;

“The right hon. Gentleman said it in a longer form, but that is what I said.”

Does the Yes campaign only believe the government when it suits them?

In previous posts, we have fact-checked Bristol City Council (passed), the local Yes campaign (failed) and Greg Clark the Minister for Decentralisation and Cities (failed his own test abysmally). In this post we are going to fact-check ourselves.

When we launched our campaign on the 4th April, our campaign leader and former Lord Mayor, Alderman Bill Martin stated;

“an elected mayor will just be one more politician, a very expensive politician, getting up to the same old politics and will not have any magic wand. At a cost of over £1 million to local tax payers this is one political fat cat we could do without.”

The reference to costs of £1m appears to have upset some in the Yes camp – with one pro-Mayor supporter describing it as “a barefaced lie”

So how accurate is our claim that an Elected Mayor will cost Bristol £1m?

We are not surprised that the Yes campaign are so upset about the £1m cost as they recognise how damaging it is to their case. They have previously complained when the council stated (correctly) that a mayoral election would cost £360,000, claiming instead that the correct figure is the £173,000 estimate produced by the DCLG. But it is the same DCLG, in the same document, who provide the information that leads to the £1m costs.

Are the Yes campaign, having insisted that the DCLG in London knows best, now performing a U-turn, and saying their figures can’t be trusted?

How the £1 million totals up

If Bristol votes Yes in the referendum on May 3rd, it will commit Bristol to holding an election every four years in perpetuity. Unlike Stoke or Doncaster, who held their referenda on whether to have a Mayor under legislation introduced under Labour, Bristol will not have the option to hold a referendum to revert back to a leader and cabinet system because the Tory-led government behind the new legislation has removed this option in order to stop cities getting rid of their mayors.

Bristol City Council have estimated that the cost every four years of holding the mayoral election will be £400,000 as a standalone election or £360,000 if the election runs alongside another election. These figures are based on experience of running similar elections here in Bristol.

We have explained elsewhere, why we think this figure is accurate. The Yes campaign, on the other hand, refuse to believe this figure and instead prefer to use the figures provided by the DCLG, based on the experience of Tower Hamlets Borough Council running elections in London. This provides a figure of £608,000 for a standalone election or £173,000 if the election runs alongside another election.

We do not know why the Yes campaign think London knows better than Bristol what the costs of running elections in Bristol are, but as they apparently prefer to believe the DCLG rather than Bristol City Council, we will only use information provided by the DCLG in identifying the costs of an Elected Mayor.

Once again, we refer to the DCLG produced document known as; “Localism Bill: creating executive mayors in the 12 largest English cities – Impact assessment” – signed off by Greg Clark but, it increasingly appears, not read by him, as he too claimed the £1m figure was “nonsense”.

In this document the DCLG state that in those cities that already have an Elected Mayor, the Elected Mayor’s salary is, on average, 2.7 times the allowance paid to the leader of the council in comparable authorities.

However for the larger cities like Bristol covered by the new legislation the DCLG say “our estimate of the additional salary costs of elected mayors assumes that mayors in the specified 12 authorities would be paid roughly twice the value of the current leader’s allowance”.

In Bristol, the existing Leader of the Council is paid £51,889 per annum made up of a £11,416 allowance paid to all councillors, and a Special Responsibility Allowance (SRA) of £40,473.

Using the formula provided by DCLG, an elected mayor in Bristol is likely to be paid £103,778 per annum. In addition to this DCLG say, local authorities need to take into account “National Insurance and pensions costs for which councils would become liable since mayors would be local authority employees”. Using the ONS standard uprate of 30% as used in the DCLG, this takes the Elected Mayor salary costs up to £134,911 which over the four year term of an Elected Mayor would be £539,646 less the savings made by no longer having to pay the Council Leader’s SRA, producing a figure for additional salary costs of £377, 754.

The DCLG also expects that an Elected Mayor would need to employ at least one Mayoral Assistant and estimates salary costs of £45,981 per annum for this post. This adds another £183,924 to the costs of an Elected Mayor.

The DCLG also notes that positions like that of an Elected Mayor “are likely to incur overhead costs, which are not accounted for in the table. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests overhead costs may be in the region of 80 per cent of salary costs.”

Including these costs adds another £449,342 to the bill for an Elected Mayor.

So to summarise, based on the information provided by the DCLG, the additional costs of a Directly Elected Mayor can be broken down as;

* Election costs £173k or £608k

* Additional Salary costs of Elected Mayor £378k

* Salary costs of Mayor’s Assistant £184k

* Additional Overhead costs £449k

Total: £1.1m or £1.6m (based entirely on data provided by the DCLG) = A million pound Mayor.

We look forward to the Yes campaign explaining how the DCLG have got their figures wrong – although they previously used some of the same figures from the same document to claim that Bristol City Council got their figures wrong.

They may also claim that we are only looking at the costs, and fail to take into account the extra money that an Elected Mayor will bring in. In which case, we ask the Yes Campaign to provide factual information on how a Bristol Elected Mayor will bring in this extra money.

In the meantime we remind them that if you buy a lottery ticket, you still have to pay the cost of the lottery ticket, win or, more likely, lose.