Parish councils key to ensuring voices are heard
IT seems likely in the not too distant future, we’ll see a shake-up of local councils which will result in just one council serving a large part of East Lancashire, including Rossendale.
Regular readers of this column will know it’s an idea which this columnist, at least, supports because it brings more decision making about big issues - schools, public health, roads, social services - closer to us than is the case at the moment.
But a council which spans Blackburn, Rossendale, Hyndburn, Pendle and Burnley does come with challenges, not least the fact that some decisions - planning, leisure services, development of our town centres, emptying the bins - does move further away.
Throughout the 2000s, government grants to local councils were very much determined based on which areas were deemed to be most deprived.
Often that meant many millions for Blackburn, Accrington, Burnley and Pendle but Rossendale was often overlooked, because, in comparison, it didn’t have challenges as big.
So ensuring that somewhere like Rossendale doesn’t get overlooked by more ‘pressing’ priorities by this new super council is a major challenge.
It’s one of the reasons why, in many ways, LCC doesn’t work.
Preston will always be more attractive for economic development than, say, Rawtenstall - largely because more people are already working there.
What a super council would likely mean is that we’d have fewer councillors representing us.
In any given ward of Bacup, you might have three borough councillors representing a small community, with a county councillor also serving a wider area.
It seems fair to assume that if all the boroughs of East Lancashire merge, the number of councillors serving any one area will tumble.
That poses a challenge for an area which so often gets overlooked, both by the county council and indeed by the Government.
An obvious solution here would be to insist on the creation of parish and town councils right across the new super council area.
If scrapping one tier of local government only to create another sounds a bit crackers, bear with me!
Parish and town councils are not councils as we know them.
They maybe employ a handful of people, at most, and provide a limited number of services.
But there is no doubt that areas with a parish or town council have a more powerful voice with the police, the council, the NHS and other services than areas without.
Whitworth has one - and describes itself as a pressure group upholding the rights of the town, a place to be a sounding board for local opinion; an organisation which helps to retain the town’s historical identity and a body which reviews all planning applications and new bye laws.
The representatives of many parish councils don’t even have political affiliation - they are just people who stand for election to try and make their area a better place (as indeed is the case with most councillors).
In somewhere like Rossendale, it seems crackers that we don’t have more parish and town councils.
Would Rossendale Council really have done what it did with Haslingden Baths had there been a vocal town council for Haslingden?
Would the council have taken a more collaborative approach around the Spinning Point development had Rawtenstall had a town council?
The cost of such a voice for your community? About £25 a year for a typical Band D house in council tax. For an area with so many different communities, parish councils are a must if we are to keep our voice.