The Council originally received a petition seeking a Referendum on whether it should be run in a different way by an Elected Mayor on 18 May 2015.

Following validation, the petition was declared invalid as it failed to reach the 5,012 signatures (5% of the electorate in the borough) needed to trigger a referendum.

The petition organisers then had the opportunity, as per statutory requirements, to collect and submit further signatures in a new petition. A new petition can then be amalgamated with the original one.

We received a new petition on Thursday 11 February 2016. We are currently validating each entry to make sure that all of the new signatories are on the borough’s electoral register. This validation must be completed by Thursday 10 March 2016.

The role of a directly elected Mayor is different from the current ceremonial Mayor of Guildford. A directly elected Mayor would have wide ranging decision-making powers.

Published on 18 February 2016