Mayor Appointed In Oldham Council Meeting

On 15 June the impasse at Oldham council was broken and a mayor was elected, but the council failed to elect a leader or cabinet members.

The Annual Meeting on 20 May 2026 was adjourned because the Council was unable to elect a mayor. The mayor is also the chair of the Council and under the Local Government Act 1972 it is a statutory requirement that the election of the mayor is the first item on the agenda of the annual meeting since a council cannot legally proceed without appointing someone to the role.

And so came the nominations which were voted on as amendments as soon as each was proposed.

First came the amendment proposing Max Woodvine which failed to obtain the requisite number of votes.

Then, Brian Hobin, the Deputy Mayor for 2025/2026 was nominated who by tradition should have stepped into the role of mayor. This was not to be the case, and the vote overturned the practice that had been in place since the formation of the metropolitan borough council in the mid-1970s.

Labour then proposed Councillor Ken Rustidge for the prestigious role and that was met with the same response from the chamber and Oldham remained without a mayor.

In yesterday’s meeting, Councillor Pam Byrne proposed herself and cited her many years in the Council Chamber. Her proposal was backed by the Reform UK councillor, Mark Wilkinson of Failsworth and within the first half hour of the meeting, Oldham had a new mayor.

Effectively, that is where the business of the Council ended since the meeting failed to elect a leader, cabinet members and all the other senior political roles with each one having the debate adjourned.

Councillor Lewis Quigg, leader of the Reform UK group in Oldham, proposed that his party form a minority government administration with him as leader, but that proposal did not meet with support from the other groups.

The end result is that Oldham has no political leadership, and all those positions are to be discussed at the next reconvened Annual Meeting. The next full council meeting is scheduled for 15 July by which time there may or may not be political leadership in place in Oldham.