Councillor for Alwoodley, Dan Cohen, has been announced as the next Lord Mayor of Leeds.
At a full meeting of Leeds City Council on 15th January 2025, it was announced that Cllr Dan Cohen, Councillor for the Alwoodley Ward and JLife columnist, will be proposed as the next Lord Mayor of Leeds, at the Council’s Annual General Meeting on 22nd May, for the year May 2025 – May 2026.
He will be joined in the Mayoral year by his wife Mrs Elayna Cohen who will be the Lady Mayoress for the year.
Born and bred in Alwoodley and elected as its Leeds City Councillor for Alwoodley in May 2011, Cllr Dan Cohen attended Deborah Taylor Nursery, Richmond House School, and Leeds Grammar School before going on to read Law at Northumbria University, graduating in 1992; followed by a training contract with a then leading Leeds law firm.
A solicitor by profession, Dan spent most of his working career as the Managing Director and Head of In-House Legal at Madison Hosiery, a leading Leeds SME, importing and distributing hosiery to the country’s major retailers, a family business started by his father Henry in the 1960s. On the council, Dan is honoured to chair the Children and Families Scrutiny Board. Over 14 years he has built a reputation as a highly effective and dynamic ward councillor, where his Facebook group he updates regularly on local matters now has nearly 10,000 members.
Alongside his role on council, Dan is currently the Head of In-House Legal at The Cohen Foundation, he is the Chair of Governors at Leeds Jewish Free School (a school he helped to found in 2013) and a Governor at Brodetsky Primary School, Highfield Primary School and Allerton High School.
On the announcement Dan said: “I am honoured and hugely humbled to have been proposed as the 131st Lord Mayor of Leeds, as a Leeds boy born and bred, it literally means the world to be able to service my city in this way – now we just need Leeds United to be promoted and all will be on the way to being perfect.
“Leeds is an amazing, vibrant, diverse, and dynamic City and its citizens reflect all of those qualities in bucketfuls. For Elayna and I to have the opportunity to work for all of our city’s residents means the world.”
Dan is a passionate supporter of education and the right of every young person, particularly those who are vulnerable learners, to receive the best, most rounded education possible and to ensure every young person has the chance to grow into the very best version of themselves. This will certainly be a key theme of Elayna and Dan’s planned Mayoral year.
The current Lord Mayor of Leeds is Cllr Abigail Marshall Katung, Councillor for Little London and Woodhouse Ward, who will continue her tenure until Leeds City Council’s AGM on 22nd May.
