Very eventful, very rewarding and quite demanding.

Those are the first reflections from Cllr Dave Shields on his year as the Lord Mayor of Southampton.

While any term in the role is busy and fulfilling, Cllr Shields experienced some more unique occasions.

The 802nd Mayor of Southampton and third Lord Mayor of the city was involved in commemorative events for the 80th anniversaries of both D-Day and VE Day.

He also announced the outcome of July’s General Election results for Southampton’s two constituencies.

An historic moment as Satvir Kaur became the first woman and first person of colour to be an MP for the city.

It was a series of events, rather than a single moment, that also made Cllr Shields’s personal highlights in the form of citizenship ceremonies.

Speaking in the week before his time as Lord Mayor comes to an end, Cllr Shields told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “I will probably have awarded a thousand people their citizenship certificates where people have chosen to make this country their home and they have come from probably almost 100 different birth nationalities, including from the Anglosphere, and I think that is great.

“I feel proud that they want to make Southampton their home and I feel Southampton is a good home for them.

“It is about what we are as a city, not just about we’re kind, it is actually about what promotes our prosperity.

“Often people look at immigration and the negatives, they don’t look at the positive aspects.”

Cllr Shields said these events gave a counter balance to some of the “uglier things” that took place nationally last summer.

He explained: “At the time when there was all those riots going on there was fear dwelling over Southampton.

“I was away but I couldn’t relax because I kept checking my phone to see updates.

“It didn’t surprise me that things didn’t kick off in Southampton because it is the sort of city that we are.

“There are 2,000 years of being a port, a trading city, where we get on with our neighbours and friends and visitors.

“A long tradition of providing sanctuary whether it’s Huguenots, whether it’s Basque children and in more modern times Hong Kong, Syria, Ukraine.

“This is the city we are and I’m very pleased to have been part of that.”

A proud Saints fan, Cllr Shields admitted he may have secured the somewhat unfortunate record of being the first Lord Mayor in the country to see their team promoted to the Premier League during their mayoral year, only for relegation the following season to be confirmed before his time in the role concluded.

The long-serving Freemantle ward member said one of his key takeaways from being Lord Mayor was the opportunity it gave to experience all of the positive civic society activity in Southampton.

He said his understanding and appreciation for various groups, underpinned by volunteers, had been “enriched”.

Cllr Shields added: “I’m not a religious person but I have religiously played an active part with the Council of Faiths and gone to their friendship meetings.

“It was important to me because we need to make sure that the different faiths can come together and they do.

“I want to pay credit to the outgoing chair David Vane for bringing these different communities together so we can work for a better Southampton – that was important for me as well.

“I was made to feel welcome even though I don’t belong to a faith group.”

On the day he became Lord Mayor, Cllr Shields told the LDRS he was aiming to rekindle engagement in local democracy.

Discussing if he felt he had achieved this 12 months on, he said: “I didn’t go as far as I would have liked.

“The concerns that I have haven’t gone away, which is the large scale public disillusionment with the political process.

“The political parties haven’t made it any more acceptable.

“We have now got a situation where we have got a lot of parties competing and people choosing not necessarily based on who they like the most but who they dislike the most and with poor turnout and with inadequate voting systems.

“I haven’t been able to get more engagement in one sense around what to do about that and it is something I might need to return to when I shake off this mantle.”

He tried to promote what being Lord Mayor involved and what steps people had to take to get the opportunity of one day taking on the role themselves.

Asked what being Lord Mayor had meant to him, Cllr Shields said: “It was a nice thing to put down on your things achieved, but the big driver and the clincher for why I decided to take on this role was because I knew it would make my mother happy.

“I see her most days and I tell her what I’ve been up to and she gets a lot of pleasure out of that and I get a lot of pleasure sharing that with her.

“She’s probably more on the ceremony and pomp than I am. I am a man of the people type but I think that was really important.

“She will have many fond memories even if it is cuttings from the newspaper and showing everyone.”

Cllr James Baillie, who has served as the city’s Sheriff for the past 12 months, is set to be confirmed as Cllr Shields’s successor during Southampton’s Mayor Making ceremony at the Guildhall on Wednesday, May 14.

The ceremony, which is free to attend, starts at 11am and guests are requested to be seated by 10.45am.