The inaugural Liverpool City Region mayoral election was held on 4 May 2017 to elect the

Liverpool City Region Combined Authority The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA) is the combined authority of the Liverpool City Region. The Liverpool City Region includes the City of Liverpool local authority area plus the Metropolitan Boroughs of Knowsley, St Helens, ...

and won by

Steve Rotheram Steven Philip Rotheram (born 4 November 1961) is a British Labour Party politician who is the Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region. He previously served as the MP for Liverpool Walton from 2010 to 2017. Rotheram was born in Liverpool an ...

. Subsequent elections were planned for May 2020 but were postponed until May 2021 due to the covid pandemic with subsequent elections due every four years. The metro mayor will have control over the whole Liverpool City Region combined authority area which consists of the following local authorities: * Halton * Knowsley *

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

* St Helens * Sefton * Wirral The mayor will work with existing city and borough leaders to take forward the mayor's strategic plan. The metro mayor will have a budget of £900 million over 30 years with powers on education & skills, planning and housing, transport, health and social care.

Background

Combined authorities were introduced in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

outside Greater London by the

Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 The Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The legislation places a duty on local authorities to promote understanding of the functions and democratic arrangements of th ...

to cover areas larger than the existing local authorities but smaller than the regions. Combined authorities are created voluntarily and allow a group of local authorities to pool appropriate responsibility and receive certain delegated functions from central government in order to deliver transport and economic policy more effectively over a wider area. There are currently six such authorities, with the

Greater Manchester Combined Authority The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) is a combined authority for Greater Manchester, England. It was established on 1 April 2011 and consists of 11 members; 10 indirectly elected members, each a directly elected councillor from one ...

established on 1 April 2011,

and three others established in April 2014, and a sixth in April 2016. If only two candidates stand, then the election is conducted under the

first past the post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast thei ...

(FPTP) voting system, where the candidate with the most votes is elected. If there are three or more candidates, as in 2017, the outcome will be determined by the

supplementary vote system The contingent vote is an electoral system used to elect a single representative in which a candidate requires a majority of votes to win. It is a variation of instant-runoff voting (IRV). Under the contingent vote, the voter ranks the cand ...

(SV). Voters make both a first and second choice, with any candidate securing more than half of the first-preference vote being elected. If no candidate reaches this threshold, then all candidates except those in first and second place are eliminated. Second-preference votes from these candidates are transferred over, and whoever has the most votes is elected.

Candidates

;Conservative Party Conservative candidate Tony Caldeira is a businessman and was candidate for

Mayor of Liverpool The mayor of Liverpool is the executive mayor of the city of Liverpool in England. The incumbent mayor is Joanne Anderson, who was elected in May 2021. The mayor of Liverpool was previously branded 'the most powerful politician in England outs ...

in 2012 and 2016. Caldeira's key policies were to: * Improve transport networks * Reduce planning processes * Deliver faster economic growth * Increase jobs and skills * Prioritise

brownfield In urban planning, brownfield land is any previously developed land that is not currently in use. It may be potentially contaminated, but this is not required for the area to be considered brownfield. The term is also used to describe land prev ...

sites over greenspace for the building of new homes and workplaces ;Get The Coppers Off The Jury Candidate Paul Breen previously ran as an Independent in the

2007 Liverpool City Council election Elections to Liverpool City Council were held on 3 May 2007. One third of the council was up for election and the Liberal Democrat party kept overall control of the council. Overall turnout was 27.5% After the election, the composition of th ...

s for

Norris Green Norris Green is a suburb and ward of Liverpool, England, in the east of the city. At the 2001 Census it had a population of 17,784, which had fallen to 15,047 at the 2011 Census. History Historically a part of Lancashire, Norris Green's develo ...

. No manifesto has been published with Breen stating that the party's name speaks for itself. ;Green Party of England and Wales

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation f ...

candidate

Tom Crone Tom Crone is a British barrister, last working for News International as Legal Affairs manager, before he resigned during the News International phone hacking scandal in 2011. Career Crone qualified as a barrister, and after five years of privat ...

, Leader of the Green Group on Liverpool City Council and 2016 Liverpool mayoral candidate winning 11% of the vote. Crone's key policies were to: * Protect greenspaces by promoting development on brownfield sites * Invest in training and education for jobs in the low carbon industry * Priortise a move to a

low-carbon economy A low-carbon economy (LCE) or decarbonised economy is an economy based on energy sources that produce low levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GHG emissions due to human activity are the dominant cause of observed climate change since the mi ...

by supporting low carbon businesses and initiatives * Tackle air pollution * Invest in green energy and oppose fracking * Invest in public transport, walking and cycling to reduce reliance upon cars * Promote a move to non-diesel private and public transport * Make more public land available to community-led housing projects * Introduction of citizen forums * Creation of an elected assembly to scrutinise the City Region mayor * Commitment to gender, age and BAME balance in regional authority staffing ;Labour Party Labour candidate

had been MP for

Liverpool Walton Liverpool, Walton is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2017 by Dan Carden of the Labour Party. Carden won the highest percentage share of the vote in June 2017 of 650 constituencies, 85.7%. It is t ...

since 2010, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition since 2015, and former Lord Mayor of Liverpool. Rotheram's key policies are to: * Improve education * Make

sites more attractive to developers * Cut the cost of Merseytravel's ''Fast Tag'' electronic pre-payment system ;Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrat candidate Councillor Carl Cashman is leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on

Knowsley Council Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council is the local authority of the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley in Merseyside, England. It is a metropolitan district council, one of five in Merseyside and one of 36 in the metropolitan counties of England, a ...

having been elected in 2016. At 25 years old he is the youngest of the candidates. Cashman's key policies were to: * Open a

Liverpool City Region The Liverpool City Region is a combined authority region of England, centred on Liverpool, incorporating the local authority district boroughs of Halton, Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens, and Wirral. The region is in the historic counties of ...

representative office A representative office is an office established by a company or a legal entity to conduct marketing and other non-transactional operations, generally in a foreign country where a branch office or subsidiary is not warranted. Representative office ...

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

. * A Referendum on the terms the UK leaves the European Union, with the option to remain a member of the EU * Make Merseytravel's Walrus card a reflection of London's

Oyster card The Oyster card is a payment method for public transport in London (and certain areas around it) in England, United Kingdom. A standard Oyster card is a blue credit-card-sized stored-value contactless smart card. It is promoted by Transport ...

* Remove tunnel tolls * Protect greenspace * Create a

co-operative ;Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) TUSC candidate Roger Bannister is a member the

UNISON In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or per ...

public services union, is secretary of a local

Branch and a member of UNISON’s National Executive Council. He previous ran for mayor of Liverpool in the 2016 Liverpool mayoral elections receiving 5% of the votes. Bannister's key policies were to: * Oppose austerity * Oppose cuts in public expenditure * Adopt policies to revive the

* Support the rail guards * Keep Liverpool Women’s Hospital open * Reverse approval for new driver-only

Merseyrail Merseyrail is a Urban rail in the United Kingdom, commuter rail network serving the Liverpool City Region and adjacent areas of Cheshire and Lancashire. Merseyrail operates 66 railway stations across two lines – the Northern Line (Merseyrail ...

trains ;UK Independence Party (UKIP)

UKIP The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest p ...

candidate Paula Walters is a civil servant and chairwoman of UKIP Wirral. With no previous business experience she has previously campaigned against

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

and tunnel tolls. Walters' key policies were to: * Remove on

and tunnel tolls namely Runcorn Bridge, Queensway Tunnel and

Kingsway Tunnel The Kingsway Tunnel (or Wallasey Tunnel) is a toll road tunnel under the River Mersey between Liverpool and Wallasey. The tunnel carries the A59. It was built because the Queensway Tunnel – which was built in the 1930s to carry vehicles ...

* Ensure money is spent wisely * Distribute money across the region fairly * Listen to local residents * Support small businesses * Support young people ;Women's Equality Party The

Women's Equality Party The Women's Equality Party (WEP) is a feminist political party set up in the United Kingdom in 2015. The idea was conceived by Catherine Mayer and Sandi Toksvig at the Women of the World Festival, when they concluded that there was a need ...

candidate Tabitha Morton is Head of Integration at lock manufacturer

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

. Morton's key policies were to: * Reduce domestic violence against women and girls * Make sure women have a voice in important decisions * Support women lead businesses to reduce the gender pay gap * Set aside funds to train women in sectors where women are underrepresented

Results

Overall election result

Results by local authority

Halton

Knowsley

Liverpool

Sefton

St Helens

Wirral

References

External links

Centre for Cities
{{United Kingdom local elections, 2017 2017 English local elections Elections in Merseyside Mayoral elections in England May 2017 events in the United Kingdom 2010s in Merseyside