‘Put the city first’: Leader’s message to new councillors

CORRIDOR OF POWER: Councillor Mike Ross, who has been re-elected as leader of Hull City Council

By Simon Bristow, Co-Editor

The leader of Hull City Council has urged all new members of the authority to put service to the city and its residents “above any other agendas they may have”.

The bulk of the new faces in the council chamber are members of Reform UK after the party won ten of the 19 seats contested at last month’s Local Elections, their first in the city.

The results pushed the council, which has been run by the Liberal Democrats since 2022, into no overall control, although the Lib Dems remain the largest party with 26 of the 57 seats available. Labour has 16 and there are five unaligned independents.

At the first full meeting of the authority since the elections, on May 21, Councillor Mike Ross was re-elected as leader of the council, allowing him to pick its Cabinet and for the Lib Dems to run the authority as a minority administration.

Speaking to The Hull Story about the new make-up of the council, Coun Ross said: “My message to all councillors, particularly new councillors, is being elected to be a councillor is about service; service to the city, service to the residents, and I would hope that people put that above any other agendas they may have.”

Coun Ross said he was reassured by the post-election approach of the opposition Labour group, led by Councillor Daren Hale, that it would seek “stability” over the year ahead.

“Daren himself has said that they’ve taken a pragmatic view of wanting to see stability at the council rather than it descend into chaos,” he said. “They have taken that view, we welcome that, I think it’s the right decision for the council.

“There’s no talk around coalitions or working together in that sense and I don’t think we would be looking for that and nor would they.”

He added: “In many ways it will be business as usual at the council with the Liberal Democrat leadership. I’m not going to deny the dynamics haven’t changed by having a NOC [no overall control] situation with different groups on the council, and we’ll be mindful of that, but essentially this is a Liberal Democrat administration delivering a Liberal Democrat agenda for this city.

“I think the priorities of this administration are to carry on as we were before; in the broad, thematic sense that’s very much around having a council that is putting the priorities of local residents first, one that listens to the concerns and views of local residents and works with them, and an organisation that works very much in a partnership approach with other groups and parts of the public sector, the private sector, the third sector.”