Overhaul could abolish council
Proposal to scrap Rossendale and Lancashire authorities
APLAN is being drawn up to scrap every local authority in Lancashire - including Rossendale - and carve the county into three, as part of controversial moves to redraw the council map in the region.
The Free Press understands that members of the ruling Conservative group at Lancashire County Council (LCC) backed the suggested shake-up at a meeting last weekend.
The authority’s chief executive has now been tasked with putting together a more detailed proposal for government approval, possibly as soon as the beginning of September.
A majority of county councillors would also have to support the changes before they could be pitched to ministers.
Under the plan, the 131-year-old county council would itself be abolished, along with all 12 district authorities - including Rossendale council - and the two standalone councils in Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen.
In their place would come three so-called “unitary” councils covering central and southern parts of the county, a broad western and northern area, and the east (Rossendale, Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Hyndburn and Pendle).
In response, Rossendale council leader Alyson Barnes said that two-tier local government had “had its day”.
“It’s a very expensive option for residents, offering poor value for money and poor services. In terms of what comes next, it needs to offer the best option for Rossendale residents,” she said.
The move comes a little more than a month after Lancashire’s 15 council leaders tentatively agreed to take the next steps along the county’s four-year long journey towards striking a devolution deal with the government to gain additional powers and cash for the county.
They made an in-principle commitment to the creation of a combined authority and elected mayor – and agreed to ask experts from the Local Government Association (LGA) to help draft plans to reorganise the county’s complex council structure.
That was in response to recent insistence from the government that any deal must be accompanied by a reduction in the number of councils operating in Lancashire, in order to make a combined authority – whose membership would be drawn from the council base – more workable.
However, the LGA declined the invitation to assist in reshaping Lancashire’s local authority setup, because of likely disunity in the county over the issue. Their assessment may yet prove prescient, with the county council’s proposal now being drafted without any consultation with the district authorities – some of which favour the status quo.
Crucially, the government does not require unanimous agreement among councils for any proposed changes. Under a convoluted arrangement, each authority is free to ask the government to be invited to put forward its own proposal for ministers to consider.
If the overtures to the government – either from the county council or any other Lancashire authority – have the desired effect, and Whitehall considers that it is in meaningful discussions over reshaping the local authority landscape in Lancashire, it is likely that next year’s county elections will be cancelled.
It is believed that ministers would like to see any new unitary councils in place by May 2022, when elections to the freshly-created authorities would take place.
That would mean extending the four-year term of the current crop of county councillors for a further 12 months.
LCC’s Conservative leader Councillor Geoff Driver has previously said the county would have to accept the requirements for an elected mayor and council reorganisation if it wanted to be part of the ”levelling up agenda” to rebalance the economy, as promoted by the Prime Minister following last year’s general election
Coun Driver said: “For far too long Lancashire has missed out on the benefits of devolution because of internal squabbles about how our structures are organised. It’s time to set aside petty politicking and break that logjam.
“These bold and ambitious proposals represent a once- in- a- generation change that will transform Lancashire and benefit everyone who lives in this great county.”
However, opposition leaders at County Hall have condemned the timing of the reorganisation proposal. Labour group leader Councillor Azhar Ali said Lancashire was being “sold down the river”.
“I would have thought that this was the time for all councillors to work together to lobby government for more money, after over half a billion pounds of cuts to the county over the last ten years – and not a reorganisation where you end up putting money into sacking people without actually knowing what you’re going to get in return from devolution,” he said.
“Last week, Transport for the North received £600m of funding – and not a penny of it came to Lancashire.
“I’m shocked that while the country is in a crisis, the only thing the Lancashire Conservatives can think about is reorganising the deckchairs on the Titanic to save their own jobs,” he added.
At a full council meeting earlier this month, the Labour group said that it would reluctantly support a combined authority and elected mayor as part of efforts to secure a devolution deal.
However, the Liberal Democrats at County Hall are opposed to both reorganisation and the proposed new mayor.
Group leader Councillor David Whipp said it was “not the right thing and not the right time”.
He said: “It is beyond belief that while we are dealing with a public health emergency, the people who ought to be working their socks off to help keep people alive are instead staring at their naval,” he said.
“Energy and effort will now be diverted into these endless discussions, which will only end up with local residents losing control. Power must be available at the most local level, so that people are able to influence decisions – to lose that would be a tragedy.”
At this early stage, there are no details on the impact of any new local government structure in Lancashire on the number of local authority jobs in the region.
However, the union Unison said it was “keeping a close eye on developments” over reorganisation.
THE biggest change in local government here in Lancashire since the early 1970s seems to be becoming more likely.
Reports this week suggest that Lancashire County Council’s Conservative leadership is ready to put forward proposals which would essentially see turkeys voting for Christmas.
They have asked the authority’s chief executive to put together a detailed proposal for Government which would involve all of Lancashire’s councils being abolished and replaced by three councils
Here in Rossendale, and indeed across most of Lancashire, that would mean scrapping the local district council and the county council and replacing it with an authority which covered the area of several district councils.
For East Lancashire, that would see Rossendale covered by a council which also looked after Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle, and Blackburn with Darwen. The latter is already a unitary authority - one which controls all the services in an area, rather than the two-tier approach we have in Rossendale.
LCC has been spurred into action after the government made it very clear that there was no way the county would get the devolved powers Greater Manchester enjoys without the creation of a regional mayor and combined authority, and that meant local government reorganisation as well.
Any firm proposal is still a long way off actually happening - but the fact the ruling party at LCC is even considering the plan is a massive step toward such a move.
The challenge, however, is that there are 15 councils in Lancashire. All have finally signed up, in principle, to a combined authority so the county can get the extra powers - and associated money - for the county.
But will all 15 councils sign up to essentially abolish themselves? The odds of that still seem long. Only last week, Burnley councillors voted to say they supported the idea of a combined authority, but didn’t like the idea of merging with other councils in the area. In other words, they want the Christmas presents, but don’t want to pay at the checkout on the way out of the shops.
Hyndburn previously has been reluctant to sign up to any plans which would see it merging with neighbouring authorities which it sees as being less prudent with cash than they are, while the Ribble Valley had rejected the idea of being part of an East Lancashire-wide authority, muttering about the other councils being too urban.
As it happens, under the new plans, Ribble Valley would be at the edge of an authority which also included Lancaster, Fylde, Wyre and Blackpool. Whether that’s any more acceptable to the councillors of Clitheroe remains to be seen.
All things told, any changes still seem a long way off. The government has shown reluctance to enforce changes on councils, instead making it clear councillors are rejecting the chance to own more power locally.
After a decade of budget cuts forced through by Government, local councils can ill-afford to miss the chance for more money, and the efficiency cost savings which would come with it. At the moment, your bins are emptied by Rossendale Council, but your local tip is run by Lancashire
County Council, and the two often seem to be working against each other. It needs to happen, though. For us here in Rossendale, the idea of big decisions being taken more locally is a good thing.
Whether it will happen, I guess only time will tell.