Elections on 2 May 2024

There were local elections in England & Wales on 2 May 2024 including 10 metro mayors and 37 Police & Crime Commissioners. See the results.

The election of mayor for Tees Valley is of particular interest given the allegations of corruption around the operation of Teesworks Joint Venture which resulted in an independent review commissioned by the Secretary of State Michael Gove. The review report found no evidence of corruption but criticised the lack of transparency and concluded that "the governance and financial management arrangements are not of themselves sufficiently robust or transparent to evidence value for money".

The Mayor, Ben Houchen (Conservative), wrote in reply "my team and I are already working to review the recommendations to improve our processes and procedures in line with the report’s findings". However TVCA continues to be the only authority to insist on publishing its spend and procurement data as image PDFs rather than the recommended use of CSV or spreadsheet files as provided by all the other combined authority websites. The use of image PDFs means that it is extremely difficult to analyse the expenditure transactions with any accuracy.

The lack of transparency in Tees Valley was obviously not something that concerned the voters - Ben Houchen was the only Conservative mayor to be re-elected while Labour won all the other 9 metro mayors.


News/Information re May elections: