Martin Tod (Liberal Democrats) and Donna Jones (Conservative Party)

Political parties have started to announce their candidates running for Mayor of Hampshire and the Solent.  

So far, there are four candidates running for the new role.  

Donna Jones, the Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner and Conservative candidate, said: “The biggest challenge at the moment is the fact the public don’t understand what a new regional government level of mayor will do.”

The new mayor will sit at a strategic, regional level and will make decisions on wider-area issues, but local councils will still run day-to-day services in their constituency. 

The new role has been introduced as part of the government’s Devolution Priority Programme to transfer powers from central government to local areas – enabling decisions surrounding things like housing and transport to be made more locally.

The programme aims to both improve public services and boost regional economic growth. 

Lib Dem candidate and current leader of Winchester City Council, Martin Tod, says it “became clear” we needed a regional mayor after announcements of “billions of pounds being spent in northern mayoral authorities on transport and infrastructure”. 

He says that “some of the problems we need to tackle go across the borders of council areas” and therefore a wider view is needed to agree on a plan that suits the whole area.

An example he gave was issues surrounding trains traveling between Portsmouth and Southampton, which can’t be dealt with by one of the city councils alone and would therefore benefit from having a regional mayor in place.

Councils across Hampshire came together earlier this year to request to be a part of the programme and gain their own regional mayor.

In March, the government gave out £15.7bn to the 12 existing mayoral authorities. 

Donna Jones estimates that (had Hampshire and the Solent already been appointed a regional mayor) our share of that pot would have been around 2.5 billion pounds to spend on roads, infrastructure and improvements.  

She says that if our mayor “did nothing else over the next four years” but secure this share then that would be “amazing”. 

The newly devolved region is made up of Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight and the election for Mayor of Hampshire and the Solent will take place in May 2026.

The Green Party’s candidate is Anna Collar – an archaeologist and associate professor at the University of Southampton, and the Labour party have most recently announced their candidate as Lorna Fielker – former leader of Southampton City Council. 

Reform UK are also expected to put a candidate forward.

The official candidate list will be published next year.