Middlesbrough Council’s elected mayor receives a lower allowance than nearly all of his local government counterparts. Labour Mayor Chris Cooke has an annual mayoral allowance of £55,952, in addition to being entitled to the basic sum of £7,608, that all 46 councillors in the town can receive.
Council allowance proposal schemes
The details were set out as part of the members’ scheme of allowances proposals, as councillors are set to debate an independent recommendation to increase the cash they take home at a full council meeting on Wednesday November 26. After deferring on the decision back in September, another deferral is expected as Mayor Cooke recently said: “The entire scheme needs looking at again.”
In 2019, it was reported that the mayor’s allowance took a near £10K hit. This figure has not increased in the six years since, remaining just shy of £56,000. When asked if he was looking for a pay rise, Mayor Cooke confirmed he wasn’t, pointing out that the Independent Panel on Members’ Remuneration had also recommended to not increase his allowance. This is the same panel that is recommending councillors to give themselves an extra £1,400 a year.
It should be noted that these local mayors are in a different category to regional/metro mayors, such as Tees Valley Conservative Mayor Ben Houchen, who has different responsibilities to Mayor Cooke, and a much larger geographical area to cover. Mayor Houchen and his combined authority counterparts are not considered as part of this local mayor metric.
Middlesbrough unique governance style
Middlesbrough is a bit of an outlier of a council, compared to its neighbours in Redcar and Stockton. In Middlesbrough, residents vote for councillor(s) within their ward as well as having the opportunity to vote for a borough-wide mayor who then heads up an executive of his choosing. The executive fulfils the same role as a local government cabinet.
More common, not just in Teesside, but across the country, is the leader and cabinet model, which sees residents vote for their local councillor(s) and then once all the councillors have been elected, they select a leader amongst themselves. It was reported in June that the government is planning to bin the “committee system” used by some councils.
The government does however plan to accept the continuation of 13 legacy directly elected council mayors (as is in place in Middlesbrough), but measures are to be introduced to not allow the creation of any new ones; greater consistency is the aim.
The documents that are being considered by the full council as part of the debate around councillor allowances list 12 of the 13 local government mayors and their special responsibility allowance for being the elected mayor in their respective areas. The missing figure is Croydon’s mayor – the most recent local mayor addition, established in 2022, and in receipt of more than £80,000 (this includes a basic allowance), according to Croydon Council documents dated 2024/25.
Exploring the differences in salary
The only mayor to earn less than Mayor Cooke is the mayor of Mansfield. Mansfield is a lower tier, district council, so comes with less responsibility than being the mayor of a unitary. The highest earner of the local mayors, according to the report going to council, is unsurprisingly London based. The mayor of Hackney has a mayoral allowance of £95K (but does not receive a basic allowance), with other London boroughs not lagging far behind.
A lot of the difference in allowances can be explained with the usual rationale: mayors based in the south, especially London, have higher pay packets and Doncaster and North Tyneside’s mayors could both argue that their larger remuneration comes as a result of having greater populations than Middlesbrough.
However, there are still some inconsistencies that can’t be explained by either of these well-rehearsed arguments. Additionally, the independent panel believed that “regardless of the population or the size of an authority, the time, commitment, and responsibilities of an elected mayor are comparable”, yet the panel still went on to not recommend a remuneration rise for the Middlesbrough mayor.
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