New mayor’s salary will be doubled to £110,000
GREATER Manchester’s new mayor will be paid £110,000, the M.E.N. can reveal.
The region’s new figurehead – who will be chosen on Thursday – will pick up the six-figure sum after an independent panel decided it was the most appropriate pay for the size of the job.
It is nearly double the payment recommended last year – £56,000 – as the most appropriate figure for interim mayor Tony Lloyd.
The allowance is also significantly more than those agreed by other areas about to elect mayors.
Teeside is planning to pay its figurehead just £35,000, while mayors in Liverpool and Birmingham will get £85,000.
However, a report which went before council leaders points out that in Greater Manchester, unlike other regions, the mayor will also take on the responsibilities of police commissioner and the chair of the fire authority, who currently receive a combined payment of £130,000.
While serving as interim mayor over the last year, Mr Lloyd has collected his £100,000 police commissioner’s salary rather than the £56,000 earmarked for his parallel role of interim mayor.
The panel considered a range of factors in assessing a final figure, including the extent of the Greater Manchester mayor’s powers over transport, policing, fire, economic development, waste and health.
It concluded that those powers were ‘significant’ and ‘distinctive,’ in that they are greater than those in other parts of the country.
The committee – which comprised chamber of commerce boss Clive Memmott, former lecturer Dr Declan Hall and Kevin Lucas, regional director of the union Unison – also looked at the London mayor’s salary of £145,000, but decided that was too much and that the role was not directly comparable given the size of the capital.
It concluded that £110,000 was a ‘robust’ and ‘justifiable’ figure.
The allowance will not be pensionable or index-linked and will be reviewed again in 2020.
The recommendation went before leaders at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) meeting on Friday.