Town hall merger is best for Valley not a county takeover
IS Lancashire finally on the way to having a directly-elected mayor? If the first time, it seems the answer could well be yes.
For several years now, local council leaders in Lancashire have been trying to agree on a way to get more powers for local authorities in the county.
It might sound dull, but it’s really important.
Areas like Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Teesside and South Yorkshire have all been given extra funding and additional powers, such as over transport, and as a result, are better-placed to shape their own futures.
Lancashire can have such powers, the Government says, but only if it forms a combined authority - essentially one body that sits on top of local councils, and run by a directly-elected mayor.
To avoid this essentially becoming a third tier of local government in Lancashire, the government also expects a reorganisation of existing councils so that each part of the county are served by just one council.
At the moment in Rossendale, our bins are emptied by Rossendale Council, but the tips are run by the county council.
Rossendale Council runs the bus station, but Lancashire County Council decides which buses to subsidise.
It’s messy and pointless.
In Blackburn with Darwen, for example, they’ve had unitary council for more than 20 years now, as has Blackpool.
It reduces red tape and makes councillors more accountable for the actions of their authority:
No more blaming ‘oh, the other council.’
The breakthrough last week was news that all 15 council leaders in Lancashire have backed the principle of a new combined authority which would come with an elected mayor.
That’s major progress for a group of councillors who have not even managed to get this far before.
Next step is to get each council to formally support the proposal.
This is where turkeys may find themselves voting for Christmas - because it will mean fewer councils, and as such, fewer councillors as a result.
The best result for Rossendale would be for the borough council to merge with neighbouring authorities, such as Hyndburn, Blackburn with Darwen or Burnley, and create a larger unitary authority.
It would be big enough to be efficient, but small enough and local enough to be in tune with what local people wanted, and perhaps more importantly, what they needed.
The risk, of course, is that Lancashire County Council begins lobbying to be the super-council itself, sucking up the responsibilities of borough councils in the process.
This would be a bad result for Rossendale, an area you could sometimes be forgiven the county council has forgotten exists.
The real problem with LCC is the size of Lancashire.
It is just too big for a one-size-fits-all authority.
This was most recently demonstrated when the county council decided it wasn’t going to issue guidance on whether schools should re-open in June, and instead let heads decide.
Then, days before some schools were due to re-open, it suddenly decided it could offer pan-county advice and asked schools to remain shut.
Chaos, stress, hassle and confusion could all have been avoided - compare LCC to Blackburn with Darwen, which was able to come up with a firm set of proposals which worked across a smaller geographical area, and then was able to change them quickly as Covid-19 evidence evolved locally.
There’s still an awfully long way to go before a combined authority is even confirmed, and the proposal will live or die based on the readiness of councillors to do what it is right for their communities ahead of preserving their existing authorities.
It needs to happen, though.