FIRST came the monkeying about - now it is business for the region's new mayors.

Stuart Drummond, alias H'Angus The Monkey, will find himself in charge of an authority in Hartlepool with a £105m annual budget and 4,000 staff.

In Middlesbrough, Ray Mallon has a £165m budget with 8,000 staff, directly or indirectly under his command.

For both, the first job will be to appoint a cabinet of between two and nine councillors of any political persuasion.

The mayor will decide on their portfolios and responsibilities for council services such as social services, schools, roads and housing.

He has full discretion over how decisions are made, whether on his own, together with his cabinet, or by individual cabinet members.

Cabinet members can be overruled or sacked by the mayor if they disagree.

Hartlepool's mayor can forget spending the council's millions on bananas.

Although the mayor and the cabinet prepare the council's annual budget, it still has to be approved by full council.

If a majority of councillors reject the budget, it has to be reviewed and redrafted.

To give an example of how a spending decision is implemented, the full council could approve £500,000 to be spent on traffic-calming schemes.

The mayor and the cabinet would then decide which schemes would take priority and where improvements would be made.

This combination is also responsible for preparing key policy documents such as library and transport plans, which again need full council approval.

In other areas, such as planning and licensing matters, there is no influence from the mayor directly, with the old style system of councillors sitting on committees remaining in place.

Stuart Drummond and Ray Mallon can expect to serve as mayors for between three and four years.

At the next round of elections, the public will be asked to judge them on their performance.

But they will have to stick with the elected mayoral system for at least two terms - even if it proves a disaster.