The historic civic office of Lord Mayor of York could be replaced with a publicly-elected mayor under radical Government plans.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has unveiled plans to allow voters the chance to elect their own mayor.

Councils will be made to pick one of three options to change the way they are run, these are:

A CABINET with a mayor elected by the public

A CABINET with a leader elected by councillors

A MAYOR elected by local people with a manager appointed by the council. If a council wants an elected mayor, it will have to win the backing of local people in a referendum. Or if local people want an elected mayor, they can insist that the council holds a referendum.

However, Labour City of York councillor Janet Looker says the changes are unlikely to affect the office of Lord Mayor of York - which dates from 1392.

She says councillors and the public cherish the traditions of the city's Lord Mayor and would be unwilling to give it up.

She said: "We are very proud in York of our present Lord Mayor. It is the second oldest in the country, and I don't think we on the council want to see anything that gets in the way of the traditional role of the Lord Mayor of York."

She said the Lord Mayor, while an elected councillor, was non-political during his or her year of office and came off all council committees to play a more civic role.

Under the Government's proposals, the elected mayor would be a political animal, running the council.

Coun Looker said there might be a case for reform of the council, in terms of its leadership, as long as the traditional Lord Mayor's office remained untouched.

She said: "I can see a role for having a cabinet and executive, but I think we want to get away from calling him mayor."

A spokesman for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions said it was up to the public to decide what type of reforms they wanted.

He said: "There is going to be change, but it need not abolish the old mayor. People could vote for an indirectly-elected leader with a cabinet."

Lib Dem city councillor Peter Vaughan said his party did not wish to see changes to the Lord Mayoralty in York, but welcomed any moves to make local councils more accountable and effective and encourage more people to vote in elections.

He said he was disappointed that Mr Prescott's reforms did not propose to change the electoral system to one of proportional representation.

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