Working to make government more effective

Report

Making the Most of Mayors: Lessons learnt from the existing mayoral local authorities

Recommendations to help elected mayors be effective in their role.

Sam Sims

Making the Most of Mayors recommends that:

  • Mayors should concentrate on developing relationships that will help them to make the most of their "soft" powers, including influencing investment decisions and education and training
  • They should have a veto over the appointment of the chief executive of the council
  • The role of councillors should change so that they are more focused on improving the quality of outcomes for local people when scrutinising policy
  • The government should commission an independent review to assess the optimum number of councillors in areas that have switched to the mayoral model.
Publisher
Institute for Government

Related content

02 MAY 2024 Project

Local and mayoral elections 2024

On Thursday 2 May, voters across England and Wales headed to the polls in a major set of mayoral and local elections.

02 MAY 2024 Explainer

Local elections 2024: Mayor of London

Sadiq Khan is standing for mayor of London for the third time. Who are the other mayoral candidates? How does devolution to London work?