Lib Dems Call Time on Costly Mersey Bosses

Presently, residents of Liverpool have three Mayors plus a Crime Commissioner. In Southport, we have one fewer mayor as the political patronage is in the hands of Bootle Labour Council Ian Maher. We have a Maher, not a Mayor! The cost of all these people to local council tax payers, even before you take into account expenses and appointment of political aids as deputies and Cabinet Members, is phenomenal. In Greater London, they have just one person, London Mayor Sadiq Khan elected to carry out all these responsibilties.

The Lib Dems are bidding to cut numerous council posts and bureaucracies. Their candidate for Liverpool City elected mayor in the elections in May wants to scrap the title ‘Mayor’ “within 24 hours” of being elected and to put the liberated cash into local services.

In that same time, Lib Dems says they would halve the army of bureaucrats servicing the ‘Mayor’. Liverpool has even more high paid top aids than Sefton which has recently agreed record salaries for its cadre of top council posts.

Further, any successful Lib Dem Mayor would also immediately start discussions with central government to scrap the post of ‘Elected Police Commissioner’ and combine the police responsibilities into the work of the single City Region Mayor as they have in London.

Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson has been reselected by Labour to stand for election again in May whereas Jane Kennedy has abandoned the Labour Party because of antisemitism concerns and is leaving politics.

Lib Dems say they want to  “. . . cut out the waste and duplication and associated bureaucracy and spend money on front line services and not politicians and bureaucrats.”