ABOUT 6,500 residents of the Wigan area - including Leigh, Atherton and Tyldesley - have responded to a consultation on the council's future.

The level of interest compares with around 2,000 responses in Bolton, although Wigan with 310,000 inhabitants has a greater population than Bolton's 262,000.

Electors are being asked to decide between an elected mayor with his or her own hand-picked cabinet, an elected mayor working closely with a powerful council manager and a party leader with cabinet. Even in Bolton council officers professed themselves delighted with a response rate said to comfortably exceed that of some Greater Manchester boroughs.