SURVEY: Council will be run by leader and cabinet after poll results

And a local government expert described the series of six surveys carried out by the council to see how local people wanted to be governed as "solid."

Six separate surveys were carried out, including one by the Lancashire Evening Telegraph.

An average of the polls shows 48 per cent of those responding want a leader and cabinet governing the local authority -- the preferred option of council leaders.

A further 31 per cent voted in favour of an elected mayor with a cabinet of councillors to take the reins of the council, and 11 per cent favoured an elected mayor and a council manager. Ten per cent of people responding had no opinion.

But despite 48 per cent backing the council's plans, that represents less than one per cent of people in the borough.

Jo Dungey of the Local Government Information Unit said: "The surveys are the kind of things other councils have done, although others have had public meetings too. But this certainly seems to meet the requirements."

She said the variations in responses on the different surveys was probably a result of the low response. She said: "It's very difficult when you have a small response rate. It's hard to say why there might be a difference, but it certainly doesn't suggest it's been carried out badly." The survey is part of the council's response to new laws requiring almost every local authority in England to adopt one of the new structures in a bid to make them easier to understand and more streamlined. The old system of dozens of different committees was thrown out, to be replaced with:

A directly-elected mayor and a cabinet made up of councillors, or

A council leader, elected by councillors, and a cabinet chosen by him/her, or

A directly-elected mayor who would delegate day-to-day decision-making to an unelected council manager.

The elected mayor would have a political role similar to Ken Livingstone in London, rather than the civic function the current mayor has.