Voters in Bristol have decided to abolish the city’s directly elected mayor following a referendum.

The city was given the choice of a mayor or a committee system in which decisions are made by groups of councillors.

On a 29 per cent turnout 56,113 voted to scrap the post of elected Mayor, currently held by Labour’s Marvin Rees.

Rees will continue in post for two years, however, before the position is finally abolished.

Earlier this year Rees teamed up with local anti-landlord activists to look at how to introduce local rent controls in the city, holding a so-called summit on the issue in early March.

At the time he said: “The national housing crisis poses big challenges for our city and tackling it remains one of the council’s top priorities.

“As well as accelerating the building of affordable housing across Bristol, we are currently strengthening our powers to tackle rogue landlords, and we have invested £42m in improving the energy efficiency of our council homes.

“I made a manifesto commitment to campaign for the power to introduce rent controls to make Bristol an affordable living city, and we are calling on government to give us the power to regulate rents.

“Piloting rent control in Bristol will allow us to take a step towards tackling our local renting crisis and will help us develop learnings and that can inform wider positive change for the rest of the city.”

Rees claimed that there were over 134,000 people currently renting privately in Bristol, representing almost one-third of the population. 

He added that over the last decade, private rents in Bristol had increased by 52 per cent, while wages had only risen by 24 per cent, and on average Bristol residents now needed to spend almost nine times their annual salary to buy a house.