YOUR columnist in Peter Grant in Granty's Inferno alerts us to the forthcoming election of a Metro Mayor.

It is some weeks since we received the election address of the Labour candidate, currently an MP for Wigan.

We have as yet received nothing from other parties.

We wrote to our local councillor hoping for some information about the role which the successful candidate would be expected to exercise.

We asked:

  • Whether the salary of the new Mayor will be comparable to that of an MP 
  • How will the costs of his / her support staff be funded?
  • Will they have a set of offices? Are these ready for use?
  • There will need to be economies to pay for this new tier of local government.
  • Will these be imposed on Wirral Council?
  • Which functions of WBC are to be transferred to the office of the regional Mayor?
  • Will officers of WBC be transferred to the staff of the new Mayor?
  • Are we to expect something akin to the London Assembly as a logical development of local government?

We received no answer to these questions.

One must assume that such a radical change in the nature of local government involved legislation in Westminster in which our local MPs would have participated.

Might one of them be prepared to write an explanatory article for the Globe?

Patrick Dowling by email