Copeland Mayoral Election

At a meeting this evening in Gosforth I was selected by Conservative members in Copeland as our candidate in the first election for a directly-elected mayor for Copeland.

The position of directly-elected mayor will replace that of Leader of the Council, and the Mayor, with the Executive (council cabinet) that he or she appoints, will have similar (but slightly greater) powers to the existing executive.

The main difference is that the mayor will be directly accountable to, and can be hired and fired by, the whole electorate of Copeland, in contrast to the current position of leader which is indirectly elected, with the Leader of the Council emerging from a caucus of whichever party has a majority on the council.

The full council will continue to be involved in setting the budget, agreed between mayor and council under a procedure which is designed to require the agreement of both: the full council will also retain a scrutiny role, and can over-ride mayoral decisions by a two-thirds majority. Planning and Licensing decisions will continue to be decided by the relevant panels and committees of the full council, although setting planning policy will become a matter for the Mayor and cabinet.

The civic role of acting as "First Citizen," supporting local organisations and charities, and chairing council meetings will remain with the Chairman of the Council, who currently has the title of Mayor.

This is not and cannot be the same job as the directly elected mayor, who will have to take difficult and controversial decisions, and cannot stand aside from the messy business of hard political choices in the way that it is rightly traditional for the "First Citizen" to do. There will probably be some confusion at first because we will have to get used to using the word "Mayor" to mean something quite different.

The directly elected mayor will be the head of a large organising employing several hundred people and with a turnover of millions of pounds. This is not a job for someone who has never run anything in his or her life and there were some shrewd and intelligent questions at the selection meeting this evening about the skills and experience I would bring to the post. So let me give you a quick summary of some of that experience.

I have been a manager in the Telecommunications industry for nearly thirty years, mostly in BT, which is one of the largest companies in Britain or indeed the world. The responsibilities I have held in that time included

·       chairing the committee whose approval was required to set up, close down, or increase the capacity of any voice communication link between BT and the other major international telephone companies.

·       I ran a project to identify and remove excess capacity on international routes, which resulted in hundreds of expensive items of equipment being recovered and re-used, saving about £2 million in capital expenditure and facilitating new business opportunities which generated in excess of £12 million in annual revenue and £800k in annual contribution to profits

 

·       I know what a business case looks like: at various stages of my career I have been responsible for both writing them and approving them.

 

·       I have put together business plans and budgets involving thousands of employees, millions of pounds, and thousands of millions of tasks or telephone calls.

 

·       I have commissioned computer systems from both external consultants and internal experts and acted as client for the development of significant software projects.

I have also been involved in running council and public sector services: I have been a member of the Finance Committee of Bristol University, a Health Authority member (that would be NHS Trust Board member today) and I served as Portfolio Holder for Planning and Heritage on St Albans council for three years. During that time I had responsibility for a busy planning department (employing fifty officers, and dealing with 2,200 planning applications) and put in place a several major reforms to improve service to the public.

So what should the Mayor's priorities be?

Working to secure the future of Copeland

 

Labour have made Copeland one of the three worst run councils in England in the eyes of its’ own residents. We need a better Copeland which delivers more effective services for local residents

 

•       I will streamline council top brass and focus resources on front line services.

•       I will also streamline the council executive

•       We need more shared services, co-operating with other councils and public services 

•       I will reintroduce weekly bin collections

•       I will work with local charities and trusts to help the people of Copeland, not sabotage them

•       We need a planning system which listens more to residents and business

•       Copeland Borough Council should do more to support local firms and attract tourism

 

A Campaigning Mayor

 

If elected Mayor I will campaign for

 

•       New nuclear build with linked improvements in infrastructure

•       Keeping services at WCH and Millom hospitals, and I will campaign for hospital services in a positive and constructive manner

 

Much more to cover over the next 72 days until the election, but that will do for a start!