• CORNWALL council leader Linda Taylor and chief executive Kate Kennally have won cross-party condemnation for a failed attempt to impose an elected mayor on the unitary authority. There was widespread opposition to their attempts to bulldoze through a devolution deal that hinged on the creation of a mayor.
The pair are now accused of a cover-up for withholding all but 17 pages of documents out of 1,700 initially identified in a freedom of information request from county councillors hoping to shed light on the fiasco. Had the plan gone ahead, objectors maintain that the new mayor would have had almost unparalleled power. A two-thirds majority of councillors would have been required to overrule mayoral decisions and, with no district councils to stand in their way any more, democracy in the Duchy would effectively have been ended.
