LABOUR’S preference for dealing with regional mayors could leave Dorset with the financial crumbs on the table – according to Dorset Council leader Nick Ireland.

The view is supported by former Conservative council leader, Spencer Flower, who describes the Mayoral model as “anti-democratic.”

Both acknowledge there is no local appetite for a regional mayor, which may leave Dorset Council having to work closer with neighbouring councils to bid for pots of Government money – although that is also fraught with difficulties, many of the neighbouring councils effectively already rejecting Dorset as a suitor, including Devon and Somerset.

The only likely match is thought to be Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole where the former council leader, Vikki Slade, now the mid-Dorset MP, had said in May that there was a desire for closer working between the two unitary authorities.

Cllr Ireland said what was needed was a basic overhaul of funding for local government, not a switch to favouring mayors or what are known as ‘devolution’ deals with neighbouring councils.

“It doesn’t really work with our geography… do we really want a Mayor of Wessex?” he told the July council meeting.

Sherborne rural councillor Robin Legg (Lib Dem), the current mayor of Sherborne, described the mayoral model as “a negation of democracy… don’t give in to a mayoral system,” he said.

One of the council’s only two Labour member, Portland’s Paul Kimber, said he agreed that Dorset Council had suffered long-term under-funding and suggested lobbying new South Dorset Labour MP, Lloyd Hatton, to see what he could do to help.