On Thursday, Darlington will have a referendum on whether the town should have an elected mayor. One of the country's 13 elected mayors is the Redcarborn Mayor of Lewisham, Sir Steve Bullock. Owen Amos spoke to him.

When he was 18, Steve Bullock spent a summer driving a joinery van for Saltburn and Marske-by-the-Sea Urban District Council.

This year, he was awarded a knighthood for services to local government - but he didn't spend those 35 years driving council vans.

From Gosforth Avenue, Redcar, east Cleveland, Sir Steve attended Sir William Turner's Grammar School in the town before studying at Leeds University.

"Driving the van was a summer job," he said. "It was my first involvement with local government. I saw things at the sharp end."

After graduating, Sir Steve worked for the defunct Greater London Council, led by Ken Livingstone, who was later to become Mayor of London.

Elected to the London Borough of Lewisham council in 1982, Sir Steve became leader but stepped down in 1998. But when Lewisham decided to have an elected mayor in 2001 - by a margin of one per cent - the former van driver went for the top job again.

"I came back largely because of the mayoral system," he said. "I can only talk about Lewisham - I'm not saying the system is right for Darlington - but it allowed me to do more in Lewisham.

"There are 32 London boroughs, and they are not self-contained. A council leader can have quite a low profile.

"When I wanted to make things happen as leader of the council, people would say: 'Leader of the council? I don't know who he is.'

"Being mayor allowed me to raise my profile, which is nothing good in itself, but meant I could work with the police, with health authorities, with the community, more easily.

"They say: 'Okay, we'll meet with you because we know who you are'. I found I was being asked to go to places and meet people that a few years earlier I hadn't been. Being elected across the whole borough gives me a legitimacy. Every person had the chance to vote for me.

"It also gives stability. Darlington has stability, but in London people often think, 'Well he'll get turned over soon anyway'."

But Sir Steve, who was elected for a second term last year, has a word of caution for supporters of the elected mayor in Darlington.

"What I think is a big danger is people mixing up a debate about the best way to run local government with a discussion on how they think the town is being run.

"If people in Darlington are saying they want an elected mayor because they don't like what John Williams is doing, and they want someone else, they're probably going to be disappointed.

"I would be very cautious about trying to change the system to try and change the ruling party."

So will the knight from Gosforth Avenue ever return to the North-East?

"I'm a Middlesbrough season ticket holder," he said. "I don't get there as often as I like, but my nephew also uses it.

"It's also not a terribly well-kept secret that I have a caravan in Saltburn. I come back as often as I can."

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