Zoo visit has positive conservation impact Citizens’ jury to help allocate arts funding Turnout down for mayoral elections

ANDY BURNHAM and his mayoral Labour counterparts in West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and Liverpool City Region were re-elected with thumping majorities last week and used their platforms to hammer under-fire Rishi Sunak.

On Merseyside, incumbent Steve Rotheram received 68% of the vote, then urged the Prime Minister to call a General Election, saying “we are ready when you are”.

Labour’s Oliver Coppard retained his job as South Yorkshire mayor with just over 50% of the vote and said he will “join millions of people across the North in calling out this Government for their failure to level up our country”.

And Tracy Brabin also retained her job as West Yorkshire mayor after winning more than half of the votes.

But while the metro mayors received a commanding share of the vote, turnout was disappointingly low – and a blow to the argument that the more people see of metro mayors the more they like them.

In the Tees Valley, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region turnout was lower in 2024 than in 2021 – in the latter down to just 24%. Only in South Yorkshire did (slightly) more people turn out to vote than two years earlier.

South Yorkshire mayor Oliver Coppard – whose patch was one of the few where turnout actually rose – has suggested a higher turnout may actually be a sign of people being “really disappointed or frustrated with metro mayors”.

He said the well-documented problems with transparency and accountability in Ben

Houchen’s Tees Valley patch “does huge disservice to mayors more broadly” but that he wanted to help younger voters understand how his authority impacted on their lives.

The Labour mayor added: “But this is a process. It’s not a moment. And the elections themselves are a vehicle. They are not the destination, the destination is helping people. It is putting people at the heart of what we do.

“That’s what we’re trying to do here in South Yorkshire. And I think over time as people see the influence that we’re having on their lives, the difference that we’re making to create a bigger and better economy, give everyone that opportunity, I think that turnout will go up.”

● Meanwhile, it turns out Durham-born Dominic Cummings – who served as chief advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson for 18 months – is also behind the idea of handing power to the regions from central government.

He told Jordan Tyldesley of the ‘i’ newspaper it was “complete madness” that decisions about Bolton and Birmingham were “decided by some 27-year-old PPE idiot in the Treasury”.

But as a number of people on Twitter pointed out, wasn’t a young Dominic Cummings the architect of the successful 2004 campaign to stop the North East getting more powers through a regional assembly?

GREATER MANCHESTER MORE than £500,000 has been spent painting buses yellow for the region’s Bee Network rebrand, a freedom of information (FOI) request has revealed. Following the second phase launch of the ‘London-style’ integrated transport network in March, yellow buses can now be seen buzzing around almost all Greater Manchester. The rebrand came at a cost of £558,408, according to the FOI submitted by a local democracy reporter. This covered materials and contractor fees for painting 93 buses, and works out at £6k to £7k per bus, which is industry standard, said Transport for Greater Manchester. CHESHIRE VISITING zoos and aquariums can influence positive behavioural changes and attitudes, a new study has found. Led by researchers at the University of Sheffield in collaboration with Chester Zoo,it showed that, on average, people know more about conservation, feel more positive about conservation and are more likely to take action after visiting zoos and aquariums. Behavioural changes included things such as checking to see if the products they buy in supermarkets contain sustainable palm oil. Graeme Bandeira - www.graemebandeira.co.uk

■ Mayor of South Yorkshire Oliver Coppard believes the more influence his office has, the greater positive impact on voter turnout