Douglas Council has a new mayor for the 2022/23 year.

Councillor Janet Thommeny was selected during a special meeting of the council last week.

She will accept the position – ending May 9, 2023 – at the annual council meeting on May 11, 2022.

Councillor Thommeny trained as a nurse in Fife and spent much of her early career in the mental health profession in Dunfermline before moving to take up a new career opportunity in the Isle of Man.

After retiring from nursing, she was first elected to the council in 2016 and re-elected last summer where she topped the poll in north ward.

She will be taking over from Raina Chatel, who held the role for the 2021 to 2022 year, who she was deputy mayor to.

Mrs Chatel previously held the office of Mayor in 1994-95 and in 2016 became the first woman on whom the Honorary Freedom of the Borough of Douglas was conferred.

The function of a town’s mayor is to chair council meetings and the role is often more ceremonial, often welcoming visiting dignitaries to opening new facilities, but it does bring with it political influence.

But the holder is not like Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, who has real political power.

The first mayor of Douglas was Alderman Thomas Keig JP, a cabinet maker and amateur astronomer who helped pioneer photography in the Island. Since then 86 men and women have served the borough as mayor.

In 1891, the Douglas Municipal Corporation Act of 1895 provided for the election of 18 councillors for the town’s six wards with six aldermen elected by the councillors.