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Directly-elected mayors

Directly-elected mayors in England and Wales were introduced by the Local Government Act 2000. Local authorities in England and Wales were able to introduce elected mayors between 2001 and 2025. The alternative political management arrangements for local authorities were the leader and cabinet system, the committee system, and ‘alternative arrangements’ agreed by the Secretary of State.

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 prevents any further local authority mayors from being created in England. The 13 local authorities that have directly-elected mayors as of May 2026 can retain them. Those authorities can choose to abolish their mayoralties in the future.

New local authorities created in 2027-28, as a result of local government reorganisation, will not be permitted to establish directly-elected mayors. Some of the remaining 13 mayoral authorities may cease to exist as a result of reorganisation.

Initially, an elected mayor could only be created following a referendum in favour in the relevant local authority. From 2007, local authorities were also able to create an elected mayor via a resolution in full council. Elected mayors do not have powers over and above those available to non-mayoral local authorities.

The majority of referendums on creating elected mayors resulted in ‘no’ votes (see Appendix 3). As of May 2026, 13 local authorities have elected mayors (see Appendix 1). This figure does not include the Mayor of London and strategic authority mayors elsewhere in England, which are created via separate legislation and have different powers from those of local authority mayors.

There have never been powers to introduce directly-elected mayors in Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Information on the Mayor of London is available in the briefing paper The Greater London Authority. Further details about strategic authorities are available in the Library briefing paper English devolution: mayoral strategic authorities.