The role of the Mayor
The Mayor is directly elected by voters to champion and advocate for Newham residents, provide political and community leadership for Newham, and has a mandate from voters to carry out the manifesto promises they are elected to Newham Council on. Elections take place every four years.
Newham has developed a unique set of arrangements known as the “Newham model” for decision making. The current Mayor gave a commitment to voters to involve residents more in Council decisions and established an independent Democracy Commission to make recommendations after engaging and listening with public. This led to the Council being the first and only Council in the UK to establish permanent Citizen Assembly to advise the Council on resident priorities.
Most Council’s do not have an elected Mayor and have a committee-style leadership system. The current Mayor has made a manifesto commitment in 2018 to allow residents to decide whether they wanted to continue with an elected Mayor. Residents voted in May 2021 to keep a directly elected Mayor in a referendum.
How the Council works
The Mayor leads the council in setting and delivering its vision for Newham, currently represented in Towards a Better Newham.
The Mayor appoints Councillors to the Cabinet who meet in public to discuss and vote on key decisions of the Council.
Councillors meet as part of full Council to make statutory decisions such as setting the Council budget statutory decisions regarding licencing and planning through committees.
Find out more about how we make decisions