by Hayley Robinson

Only 13 out of 127,000 residents responded to a public consultation about whether the borough should have a directly-elected mayor.

And of these, only nine were in support of the move.

For the council to consider changing its structure it would have taken more than 4,000 people to respond to the consultation.

Council leader, Cllr Andrew Bowles, said: “I’m surprised we got 13 responses to be honest.”

Currently the council has an annually selected leader – Cllr Bowles, leader of the Tory group which has the most seats on the council – and an executive committee made up of councillors.

But under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, the council has to change its arrangements to one of two options, a new style leader and cabinet executive or an elected mayor and cabinet executive.

At a full council meeting on August 11 councillors voted in support of the leader and cabinet model, which is most similar to the current structure.

Cllr Bowles said: “It cost one borough with an electorate half the size of Swale £40,000 for an elected mayor so for Swale you would talking about £80,000 out of the budget.

“Swale is still not a total entity; Faversham people see themselves as part of east Kent and Sheppey as north Kent and so does Sittingbourne so if we had an elected mayor from Faversham I’m not sure people on Sheppey or in Sittingbourne would like the idea of it being run by one person with no links to their end of the borough.

“But the biggest thing to my mind is the government is going to bring out a localism white paper this autumn which we are told will include options in terms of future governments.

“I don’t want all the disruption it would cause to this building to change and then change 18 months later, it’s ploughing more and more costs on top at a time when [we’re] reducing borough services and members of my staff find their jobs under threat.”

The system:

Under the leader and cabinet system, an appointed councillor would serve a four-year term.

The leader would appoint a deputy and can choose up to eight other councillors to serve in the cabinet.

Although appointed for four years, the leader can be removed by a vote of no confidence.

In contrast, the directly-elected mayor, who would be elected by voters for a four-year term, would not be a councillor and could not be removed from the role by the council.

A deputy mayor, who would be a serving councillor, would have to be appointed along with up to eight councillors to serve on the cabinet.

The outcome of the consultation was reported to the council’s executive on Wednesday night .

The executive will now recommend the proposal to full council who will then adopt the arrangements in December. The revised arrangements will come into operation in May 2011.