New Middlesbrough Mayor: "it's been a whirlwind"
Labour's Chris Cooke beat former Mayor Andy Preston in last month's elections.
As the new Mayor of Middlesbrough, Chris Cooke, enters his second month on the job he spoke to us about where his priorities for the town lie and how he is settling in.
How have you found your first month in the role?
"It's been a whirlwind! I haven't really stopped since and it's very difficult to balance everything at the minute because I'm trying to get an overview of what's happened previously, but also start working on the plans for the future.
"Then there's a wealth of people who want come and speak to me and I find it really difficult to saying no to people and so at the minute I'm meeting with so many people and I think I've not got a spare spot in my diary for months! But it's good because I like to hear from people."
What are your core priorities for Middlesbrough?
"My biggest priority is shaping how the Council is as an organisation and making it more community focused, making it so that it prioritises different areas of the town rather than just the town centre of endlessly - and I feel like we're starting to move that way.
"It's about making sure that people can come to us. We might not have all the solutions, we might not be able to fix every problem and but we are a good start and we're an organisation that is meant to be for all people. It's not meant to be a developer. It's not meant to be anything other than a service for the people of Middlesbrough.
But I think we've listened to people's needs, like around the lack of single person accommodation, we are wanting to start building Council housing again and there's a real lack of people being able to get decent housing in Middlesbrough.