Labour’s Tom Hunt has been elected as the new leader of the Sheffield City Council, after his predecessor was forced to stand down.
On Wednesday, Cllr Hunt was voted in at the second round of the authority’s AGM, securing 38 votes in support and 28 against.
There were a total of 14 abstentions.
He will succeed the former leader Terry Fox, who stood down on 5 May following pressure to resign after the council’s handling of the controversial tree felling scandal.
Who is Tom Hunt?
Cllr Hunt became the leader of the Sheffield City Council despite only having a year’s experience.
He previously worked at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Sheffield.
He has said his aims as council leader are to focus on the cost of living crisis, public transport, securing new investment in the city and tackling the climate emergency.
How is the city council structured?
The council has 84 councillors, elected to represent 28 wards, each with three councillors.
It is currently under ‘No Overall Control’ meaning no party holds a majority.
Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party each hold chair positions in a proportionate number of committees, with Labour chairing four Committees, the Liberal Democrats with three and the Green Party with two.
How is the city council leader elected?
The leader of the council is elected by the council members.
They nominate candidates for the leader position then vote for the candidate they want to be leader. The candidate with the most votes gets elected.
What caused Terry Fox to resign?
There was pressure for Cllr Fox to resign after reports were released about the council’s tree felling plans, which sparked many protests from 2014 after the public’s anger from removing thousands of healthy trees as part of their £2.2bn street improvement project ‘Streets Ahead’.
The protests resulted in many arrests across the city along with threats of legal action against Sheffield City Council.
Why did a lot of councillors abstain from the vote?
A total of 14 councillors abstained from the vote.
Prof Charles Pattie from the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield said that abstentions at local elections are normally high because they’re not seen as important as national ones.
He said: “In a way, people are right on this, as although local government affects lots of really important services, local government room for manoeuvre is actually very limited, because of constraints on what they are allowed to do.
“They have tightly-prescribed legal responsibilities, and little scope to stray beyond those, and because austerity has meant local government funding is so limited that most local authorities can increasingly supply only the basics.”