Civic leader says current Cardiff system is failing

THE head of Cardiff’s civic society has joined the debate over whether the city should have a directly-elected mayor, saying: “The current system is failing.”

Peter Cox who as chairman has helped turn the civic society into one of the most prominent voices on issues affecting Cardiff, said the leadership of the city needed to become more accountable to its residents.

He said: “I am more concerned about the current failures of the system than I have a strong view about how it should be put right.

“I have never been involved with a local authority that is so disengaged with the people that have elected it.”

He said his interest was not to champion the idea of a directly-elected mayor but to achieve change that could help the city’s residents become more involved in key decisions about Cardiff.

“We have to do something quite critical. I think Cardiff has to make some very serious decisions about how it wants to be represented,” he said.

“Why are people so disengaged from civic life? Would a mayor solve the problem? I would support it if the post would attract the right people to create that kind of engagement.”

The call by Cardiff North AM Jonathan Morgan for Cardiff to have a powerful mayor directly elected by the city’s residents has polarised opinion.

Critics of the post, including Canton Labour councillor Cerys Furlong, have argued that just because there are problems in Cardiff is not a reason to bring in a new layer of government.

“The failure of an administration to be effective should not be used as an excuse to bring in another layer of government,” she wrote on the Cardiff East blog, run by Keith Jones.

Any bid to change the system of local government in Cardiff and create a powerful mayor’s post is likely to have to start with a petition of residents.

If more than 10% of the city’s 260,000 voters called for a referendum, it would force the council to hold a vote in which all of the city’s residents would be asked to decide whether a directly-elected mayor should be created.

Mr Cox said he believed that obtaining 26,000 signatures would be possible if the idea caught the public’s imagination.

He said: “We obtained 5,000 signatures for the Bute Park petition, so it would be possible.”