Croydon Council has been told by the Government to hold a referendum for a directly-elected mayor in May.

The council previously announced that it would hold the vote on changing the way the authority is run this autumn.

But yesterday (Tuesday, January 19) Luke Hall, minister for regional growth and local government, wrote to council leader Hamida Ali saying the referendum can be held on May 6 – the same date as the London Mayor and GLA elections.

In the letter, Mr Hall writes: “This will avoid the referendum being held as a free-standing poll at a later date with the additional costs that would arise for your council and with the risk of a low turnout.

“I would expect Croydon to take this opportunity to hold the referendum on May 6, if the petition is valid, with the cost savings that will have for your authority.”

But Councillor Sean Fitzsimons took to Twitter to say that the autumn date was chosen so that if an elected mayor system was chosen – a new mayor could be elected six months later in the council elections in May 2022.

He added: “How are people to campaign in a referendum, either for or against, if door knocking or street stalls are not allowed. Will it be a social media referendum only. Poorer people will be excluded from the debate as restricted access to the internet.”

Last year 20,000 people signed a petition calling for the council leader to be replaced with a democratically elected mayor.

Currently the Croydon uses the leader and cabinet model – this means the council leader is chosen by members of the ruling party.

The elected mayor model would mean the mayor would replace the council leader and be chosen by Croydon voters.

This will be one of the options on the ballot paper and over the coming months it will be decided what the second option will be.