A FIRM proposal to ditch the Cheshire East mayoralty will be put on the table today, October 17.

In a motion which will be considered at Cheshire East Council’s meeting in Sandbach, Labour Cllr James Barber is calling for the role to be scrapped from the next municipal year, beginning in May 2020.

He told the Guardian: “In times of financial restrictions being placed on the council, we don’t need to be spending £100,000 on the mayoralty.

Northwich Guardian:

“Residents want value for their money. They don’t want us spending public money on a Bentley and the pomp of the role.

“They want to see their money spent on fixing their roads, collecting their bins, funding our schools – issues that affect their everyday lives.”

The constitution committee would consider steps for ditching the role, and Cllr Barber wants to see work begin as soon as possible before CEC needs to take on a new lease for a mayoral car, with the current Bentley lease coming to an end.

Labour proposed scrapping the role in its manifesto for May’s election before the party took office alongside the Independent Group, while it also proposed it in February as the budget for 2019-20 was considered.

The party wants town mayors to be prioritised instead.

At a constitution committee meeting last month, Cllr Janet Clowes, leader of CEC’s Conservative opposition, suggested that having a mayor to ‘bind the borough together’ is important.

She said: “If we just get rid of the mayor – and you’ve got a Macclesfield mayor, a Crewe mayor, a mayor over here, there – you are never going to join up.

“We’re never going to have that continuity and coherence across the borough that is so important.

“And if we actually want to sell the borough, we know just how important the Cheshire East mayor has been by the things that they do.”

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Cllr Steven Edgar, Conservative member for Haslington, is CEC’s deputy mayor and is expected to be named mayor next May as it stands.

Cllr Barber’s motion will either be debated today or passed onto a relevant CEC committee for consideration.