Lord Whitby said he was proud to have served 17 years as councillor for Harborne and vowed to carry on fighting for Birmingham in the House of Lords after an emotional farewell to Birmingham City Council.

Political rivals also paid tribute to the man who led the council for eight years and was instrumental in pushing the redevelopment of New Street Station and the new Library of Birmingham.

After being handed his peerage last summer, Lord Whitby of Harborne decided to stand down from the council ending his direct association with local government.

Speaking at his last Cabinet meeting this week he said that “it seems like only yesterday” that he was first elected.

Lord Whitby added: “It has been a truly rewarding experience. It’s a great city. We have so much potential here.”

He admitted it had been tiring at times, “but you pick yourself up and get on.”

“Although I am ending my time with the city council, I will be back in another form, continuing to battle for Birmingham in the House of Lords whichever party is running the city council and whichever party is in government.

“Whether it is to push for the equitable distribution of funding, the recognition of what this city can do to complement the nation’s growth agenda and project the harmony we have with the cultural diversity in this city – which is second to none and something we can all be proud of.”

He said that a key aim is to lobby government and ensure that devolution of power and funding from Whitehall to Birmingham not only continues, but is stepped up.

“I remember the long, drawn out tortuous route we had to go through to get the development of New Street Station. That is simply not the way to do things,” he added.

Council leader Sir Albert Bore thanked Lord Whitby for his service to Birmingham and added: “We will value his interests in maintaining Birmingham’s position in the House of Lords.”

Lord Whitby’s political career has been somewhat remarkable. He was first elected councillor for Harborne in a by-election in 1997. This was during the year of a national Labour landslide as John Major’s tired Tories were swept away by Tony Blair’s New Labour.

His timing was impeccable as he became leader of the Tory group in 2003 just as the electoral tide, particularly in Birmingham, turned against the Labour Party in the wake of the Iraq invasion. The animosity between inner-city Lib Dems and Labour campaigners over Iraq and vote fraud helped push the Lib Dems into coalition with the Tories – a ruling coalition which Mike Whitby and Paul Tilsley maintained for eight years.

The Tory-Lib Dem leadership turned around the under performing housing and adult social services, but a black mark hung around Children’s Social Services and those failures persist to this day.

Business transformation, which has modernised the previously stuck-in-the-past council, but at huge cost has also proved controversial.

Lord Whitby is most associated with the Library of Birmingham, a project which he drove through amid opposition from all sides, including members of his own group who thought the scheme a little too socialist for their liking.

He also highlighted the Big City Plan, New Street Station development and the airport runway extension as major successes.

By 2012 with the national tide again turning against the Tory-Lib Dems in government, Coun Whitby found himself leader of opposition, since when he has taken a back seat, most visibly with deputy Robert Alden taking the lead in this years budget debate.

Privately he claimed this was because he was aware of his impending elevation to the House of Lords and had pledged to play a more considered role, removing himself from the party political dog-fighting.