Liverpool City Council’s ruling Labour group is expected to ignore a consultation and impose a leader-cabinet model to replace its tainted elected mayor’s post.
The council, which remains under intervention by Government-appointed commissioners, launched a consultation on its future governance following the 2020 arrest of the city’s powerful former directly-elected mayor Joe Anderson.
Liverpool’s consultation was blighted by a poor response rate, with just 4% of the city’s population voting.
Lib Dem group leader Richard Kemp said: ‘The process was so flawed there were only 11,519 valid responses out of the 330,000 electors.’
Some 41% of respondents favoured continuing with the mayoral system, 33% opted for the committee system and the least popular option was the leader-cabinet model (24%) used across Liverpool before 2012.
Despite this, a memo from the Labour group indicated it could plough ahead with its preferred option of restoring the leader-cabinet model.
The memo read: ‘We are committed to change, and want to see a leader and cabinet model introduced.
'This consultation was advisory but, given the response rate was equivalent to just 4% of the city’s population, we do not believe it offers a representative view of public opinion across the whole of Liverpool.’
Liverpool’s full council will vote on future governance arrangements later this month.
Separately, a senior source on Merseyside said they expected the Government to respond to the latest commissioner’s report on Liverpool by appointing further commissioners to oversee improvement.