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Mayors in England

Public office in England

Mayors in England
Summary

Public office in England

Painting of John Frederick Winnicott, mayor of [[Plymouth]] in the early 20th century, in mayoral regalia

In England, the offices of mayor and lord mayor have long been ceremonial posts, with few or no duties attached to them. In recent years, they have doubled as more influential political roles while retaining the ceremonial functions. A mayor's term of office denotes the municipal year.

Traditionally mayors and provosts have been elected by town, borough and city councils. Since 2000, several districts now have directly elected mayors with extensive powers. The role of the chair of a district council is exactly the same as the mayor of a borough council; they have the same status as first citizen, after the Sovereign, in their district, but they are not addressed as mayor. There are also devolved regional metro Mayors responsible for combined authorities over larger regional-based geographic areas, which are completely different and more powerful.

Election

In England, where a borough or a city is a local government district or a civil parish, the mayor is elected annually by the council from their number and chairs meetings with a casting vote. Where the mayoralty used to be associated with a local government district, but that district has been abolished, charter trustees can be established to provide continuity until a parish council may be set up. Where a parish council (whether the successor of a former borough or not) has resolved to style itself a town council, then its chair is entitled to the designation of town mayor, though in practice, the word "town" is often dropped.

Lord mayors

Main article: List of lord mayoralties and lord provostships in the United Kingdom

The right to appoint a lord mayor is a rare honour, even less frequently bestowed than city status.

Currently, 23 cities in England have lord mayors:

  • Birmingham
  • Bradford
  • Bristol
  • Canterbury
  • Chester
  • Coventry
  • Exeter
  • Kingston upon Hull
  • Leeds
  • Leicester
  • Liverpool
  • London
  • Manchester
  • Newcastle upon Tyne
  • Norwich
  • Nottingham
  • Oxford
  • Plymouth
  • Portsmouth
  • Sheffield
  • Stoke-on-Trent
  • City of Westminster
  • York

In May 2022, Southampton was added to the list.

Honorifics

The Lord Mayors of London and York are styled The Right Honourable. All other Lord Mayors, as well as the Mayors of cities and the original Cinque Ports (Sandwich, Hythe, Dover, Romney and Hastings), are styled The Right Worshipful. (Bristol styles its lord mayor "Right Honourable" instead, but this usage is without official sanction). All other Mayors are styled The Worshipful, though this is in practice rarely used for a Town Mayor. These honorific styles are used only before the Mayoral title and not before the name, and are not retained after the term of office.

A mayor can also be styled Mr Mayor and usually appoints a consort, typically a spouse, other family member or fellow councillor. In England (and the Commonwealth), the designated female consort of a mayor is usually styled Mayoress or occasionally Mrs Mayor and accompanies the mayor to civic functions. A female mayor is also called mayor, not, as sometimes erroneously called, "Lady Mayoress". A mayoress or Lady Mayoress is a female consort of a mayor or Lord Mayor; a male consort of a mayor or Lord Mayor is a Mayor's Consort or Lord Mayor's Consort.

References

References

  1. The Title of Lord Mayor – Use of the Prefix "Right Honourable", ''The Times'', 7 July 1932, p.16
  2. "Lord Mayor of Bristol". Bristol City Council.
  3. "How to address the Mayor". Borough Council of King's Lynn & West Norfolk.
  4. (6 December 2012). "It's not easy being Ipswich's first lady". The Queensland Times.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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