The Lord Mayor Selection Committee has recommended the new Lord Mayor Designate for 2025/2026 as Councillor Kathy Watkin.
The recommendation will be put forward at the next Full Council meeting on 17 March before it is fully agreed.
Cllr Watkin trained and worked as a speech and language therapist before training as a solicitor. Kathy visited Plymouth as a young child when her parents lived in Cornwall and on subsequent family holidays. She was delighted when she was able to pursue her legal career with two well-known solicitors’ firms in Plymouth and for a number of years prior to retirement set up and ran her own solicitors’ practice.
Cllr Watkin has served on various committees including Licencing, Corporate Parenting, Budget Scrutiny, and the Mount Edgcumbe Joint Committee.
Kathy was the vice chair for the Planning Committee in 2022 to 2023, and is the vice-chair for the Health and Wellbeing Board, and the Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Panel this year.
In 2023 Kathy was elected as Deputy Lord Mayor.
She says “It is a huge honour to be selected as Lord Mayor Designate of this great city and I am looking forward to my year in office.
“Since I settled in Plymouth 50 years ago, I have enjoyed meeting and engaging with residents and local businesses and charities and I am looking forward to meeting and engaging with more over the 2025 to 2026 civic year.”
Current Lord Mayor, Councillor Tina Tuohy, said: “I am delighted that Kathy has been chosen to be the new Lord Mayor Designate.
“She will make a fantastic contribution to the communities of our city. It is very well deserved. I have enjoyed every minute of being Plymouth’s Lord Mayor the past year.”