Lord mayor is a title of a mayor of what is usually a major city in a Commonwealth realm, with special recognition bestowed by the sovereign. However, qualified forms of mayoral titles are also present in other countries, including forms such as "high mayor". Aldermen usually elect the lord mayor from their ranks.
Niagara-on-the-Lake is a town in Ontario, Canada. It is located on the Niagara Peninsula at the point where the Niagara River meets Lake Ontario, across the river from New York, United States. Niagara-on-the-Lake is in the Niagara Region of Ontario and is the only town in Canada that has a lord mayor. It had a population of 19,088 as of the 2021 Canadian census.
Niagara-on-the-Lake is important in the history of Canada: it served as the first capital of the province of Upper Canada, the predecessor of Ontario. It was called Newark from 1792 to 1797. During the War of 1812, the town, the two former villages of St. David's and Queenston, and Fort George were the sites of numerous battles following the American invasion of Upper Canada, and the town was razed. Niagara-on-the-Lake is home to the oldest Catholic church, the second-oldest Anglican church in Ontario, and the oldest surviving golf course in North America.
Local government is the third level of government in Australia, administered with limited autonomy under the states and territories, and in turn beneath the federal government. Local government is not mentioned in the Constitution of Australia, and two referendums in 1974 and 1988 to alter the Constitution relating to local government were unsuccessful. Every state and territory government recognises local government in its own respective constitution. Unlike the two-tier local government system in Canada or the United States, there is (largely) only one tier of local government in each Australian state/territory, with no distinction between counties and cities.
Local government in Australia is generally run by an elected council, and the area it administers is referred to by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as a local government area or LGA, each of which encompasses multiple suburbs and/or localities (roughly equivalent to neighbourhoods), often of different postcodes. LGAs are variously styled using terms such as "city", "town", "district", "municipality", "borough", "region" or "shire". These usually have geographic or historical significance, and there is rarely any legal distinction between them. For instance, cities and municipalities tend to apply to councils in urban and metropolitan areas, whereas districts and shires are found primarily in rural and regional areas. A local government area is also commonly known as a "city council", "local council", or simply a "council". Council members are generally known as councillors, and the head of a council is called the mayor, chairman or shire president. Some of Australia’s largest cities, such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, use the historical title of lord mayor. Councillors are usually elected from single-member districts known as divisions or wards, whilst the mayor or president is directly elected by all the voters within that council area. However, the mayor is often entitled to style themselves as a councillor, and is considered an ex officio member of the council. As of August 2016, there were 547 local councils in Australia.
In England, the offices of mayor and lord mayor have long been ceremonial posts, with few or no duties attached to them. In recent years, they have doubled as more influential political roles while retaining the ceremonial functions. A mayor's term of office denotes the municipal year.
Traditionally mayors and provosts have been elected by town, borough and city councils. Since 2000, several districts now have directly elected mayors with extensive powers. The role of the chair of a district council is exactly the same as the mayor of a borough council; they have the same status as first citizen, after the Sovereign, in their district, but they are not addressed as mayor. There are also devolved regional metro Mayors responsible for combined authorities over larger regional-based geographic areas, which are completely different and more powerful.
A lord provost (Scottish Gaelic: Àrd-Phrobhaist) is the convenor of the local authority, the civic head and the lord-lieutenant of one of the principal cities of Scotland. The office is similar to that of a lord mayor. Only the cities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Stirling and Glasgow have a lord provost; other Scottish local authorities have provosts or convenors, which are similar offices to that of a mayor (as a presiding officer of the local council, not as a chief executive of a local authority). Perth (as a city) previously termed its civil leader a "lord provost", but from the Second World War onwards has preferred the simple term Provost of Perth.
A lord provost has a higher status than a lord mayor in other parts of the United Kingdom. They are ex officio the lord-lieutenant for that city, in accordance with section 1 of the Lieutenancies Act 1997, which allows the city council to choose its own representative for the monarch.
This is a list of lord mayoralties and lord provostships in the United Kingdom. The dignity of having a lord mayor as civic head is granted to 28 of the 68 districts enjoying city status in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. In Scotland the similar office of lord provost is reserved for the convener of the four largest of the eight Scottish cities. Four of the lord mayors and two of the lord provosts have the right to the style The Right Honourable.
Before 1863, only York, the City of London, and Dublin had lord mayors, and only Edinburgh and Glasgow had lord provosts. The first four were styled The Right Honourable.