CAMPAIGNERS who want to see an elected mayor remain confident despite a poor response to a public consultation.

The district council has run a survey asking residents if they would like to see their own version of Boris Johnson at the head of the council and most said they would.

But the survey had a poor response, with just over 100 people responding, and the council has said it will not do anything more towards changing the system until it has to.

The leader of the English Democrat party, Robin Tilbrook, who lives in Willingale, near Ongar, is collecting signatures on a petition for a referendum on the subject.

He said that he and his band of campaigners had received a positive response to nearly everyone they had spoken to on the subject.

“Once people have it explained to them, they can’t see why we would have it any other way.

“Most of these so-called consultations are being done by councils across the country in the most minimal way possible.”

He said electing a mayor was a more democratic way of picking a leader for the council because they would be directly accountable to voters, but councils across the country were not usually in favour of them.

“With the strong leader model (where councillors vote for a leader), they still have the choice as to who the strong leader is,” he added. “With a directly elected mayor, the councillors’ role is restricted.”

If his petition gains 5,000 or more signatures, the council will have to hold a referendum on electing a mayor by law.

He has gathered about 1,500 signatures so far and said he expected to get the rest within the next nine months.

“It’s not that we have encountered any resistance,” he said. “It’s simply that we’re just volunteers and we’re gradually working our way around the borough.”

A council spokesman said: “We had to run a consultation under the previous Government’s rules.

“We wouldn’t go in for any kind of vote on this unless we had to.”