With 12 English cities set to vote in May on whether to adopt directly elected mayors, the potential of mayors to deliver enhanced leadership for cities and local authorities is squarely back on the national agenda. Advocates for mayors argue that they make for stable, higher profile leadership, and this in turn contributes to more accountable and effective government. We might debate the second claim but a look at London’s mayors certainly bears out the first.

The position of Mayor of London, created in 2000, remains a resounding success. From transport improvements and the congestion charge, to representing London globally, having a recognisable and increasingly powerful executive Mayor for Greater London has served the capital well. Over 95 per cent of Londoners are in favour of retaining the position.

But City Hall’s Mayor is not the only Mayor in London. While most of the city’s 32 boroughs are led by a traditional cabinet with an internally-selected leader, four of them are headed up by a stronger executive Mayor directly elected by constituents. Like the Mayor of London, these positions are a consequence of the national reforms to local government in 2000, which offered local authorities across the country the chance to adopt Mayors by referendum. Three of the boroughs — Hackney, Newham and Lewisham — have had a Mayor since 2002. The fourth, Tower Hamlets, joined in 2010.

An upcoming paper by Centre for London Director Ben Rogers, published by the Institute for Government, examines the extent to which these mayors have delivered enhanced results for their boroughs. It’s hard to draw conclusive insights from such a small sample, but a picture does emerge. Mayors have presided over strong improvements in service quality and council performance. They have proved able to turn around troubled councils, lead new initiatives and coordinate the reorganisation of services.

 

Stability

Borough mayors have also achieved high levels of name recognition—over 80 per cent for Jules Pipe in Hackney, compared to around 10-20 per cent for typical council leaders. The approval ratings of the borough Mayors have, by and large, been high.

Most strikingly, all three of the original elected mayors remain in office a decade later. While some comparable boroughs — such as Greenwich — have had similarly consistent leadership and achieved substantial results with a normal council model, this level of stability is unusual.

We collected the number of leaders each of London’s boroughs has had since the local government reforms of the year 2000, shown in the table below.

 

Number of Council Leaders since 2000

Barking & Dagenham	2
Barnet	6
Bexley	4
Brent	2
Bromley	3
Camden	5
Croydon	3
Ealing	4
Enfield	2
Greenwich	1
Hammersmith & Fulham	1
Haringey	3
Harrow	5
Havering	3
Hillingdon	1
Hounslow	5
Islington	4
Kingston Upon Thames	4
Lambeth	4
Merton	4
Redbridge	7
Richmond Upon Thames	5
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea	1
Southwark	4
Sutton	2
Waltham Forest	3
Wandsworth	2

 

The Citywide average is 2.9 leaders since 2000. Among the comparable boroughs that neighbour the East and South London mayoral constituencies, the average is higher, at 3.8. But Southwark and Islington have both had four leaders, while Redbridge has had 7. Only one sixth of boroughs had the same level of political stability as the Mayoral boroughs, and only half had less than three leaders in the same period.

While the particular advantages of a Mayor over a stable leader with a party majority are open to debate, the record in London does suggest that the mayoral model tends to provide continuity of leadership than the alternative system of indirectly elected leaders.

Looking back to the level of Greater London, this pattern also holds true. Whether it’s Boris or Ken who wins the forthcoming election, assuming that they serve out their term, the average length in office of the Mayor of London will be eight years.

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