South Ribble to mull over merger with Chorley and West Lancashire - and why Preston has been frozen out

The district had been set to discuss the issue at a meeting of the full council last week, but the item was pulled from the agenda so that members could have a private briefing on the subject, before thrashing it out in public at a later date.

It comes just weeks after neighbouring Chorley Council voted in favour of pursuing a merger with South Ribble and West Lancashire.

That was the same proposed configuration that was going to be debated at South Ribble, before the authority’s leader, Jacky Alty, deferred the matter until after members had been given a presentation on the plans.

All of Lancashire’s 15 councils are currently on manoeuvres over the future shape of local government in the county after they learned they would each be scrapped under a ministerial overhaul designed to streamline the current ‘two-tier’ arrangements.

It means districts like South Ribble and Chorley are trying to identify preferred partners with which to band together to form enlarged councils covering much wider areas and deliver all of the services in their new patches – including those currently the responsibility of Lancashire County Council.

Even before the changes were formally set in train by the government, Cllr Alty and Chorley leader Alistair Bradley are understood to have signed a letter to the government late last year setting out their preference for a merger between their respective authorities and West Lancashire Borough Council.

Chorley Council ratified that position at a meeting just over a month ago – pending public consultation – while South Ribble is now set to debate it in the coming weeks.

South Ribble’s Conservative opposition group leader Karen Walton expressed concern that councillors were being “silenced” – and sought reassurance that a full public discussion would still take place.

Labour’s Cllr Alty confirmed that there would be an opportunity “in the near future to debate the issues”.

In a statement after the meeting, Chris Sinnott, the chief executive of both South Ribble and Chorley councils, said: “The decision making in relation to the local government reorganisation is vitally important and our councillors want to ensure that any decision made is in the best interests of the residents of South Ribble.

"Before they have a debate in the formal setting of full council, councillors will be working together to look at the criteria set by government to understand the implications and potential best model for the borough.”

The push for a tie-up between Chorley, South Ribble and West Lancashire – which the latter authority has not formally expressed a view upon – has forced Preston to look towards Lancaster and Ribble Valley for its future local government arrangements, rather than its Central Lancashire neighbours.

At Chorley’s most recent full council meeting, Labour leader Alistair Bradley explained why he believed Preston was not a good fit for the proposed new council area.

“Preston is a city and…is different [to] the other three boroughs in the fact that it is…not mix of rural and urban [parts] like the rest of us are” he said.

On the rationale for a new ‘South Lancashire’ council, Cllr Bradley added: “[The three authorities] are like each other – our demographics are generally similar.

“South Ribble is one of the most similar councils to us and we are doing lots of joint work with them now. Over half our staff and our services are jointly run.

“West Lancs is [also] demographically similar. There are parts of [it] that are very deprived – [around] Skelmersdale – but even those areas…are moving more to be more like the rest of West Lancs than they are like Liverpool, as time moves on.”

Cllr Bradley said that West Lancashire recognised it was “tied by [its] geography” to Chorley and South Ribble, because the government had ruled out allowing it to move into the Liverpool City Region, as it previously wanted to do.

He also said Chorley Council’s good reputation within Lancashire meant it was “not short” of authorities interested in joining up with it – while South Ribble had benefited from the increase in shared services between the pair.

Chorley’s Conservative opposition group leader Alan Platt said that while he was content with proposed merger with South Ribble and West Lancashire, the borough’s residents should be consulted in a referendum “to let the people speak”.

However, Cllr Bradley said consultation on the issue of reorganisation would have to be done in a “co-ordinated” way across Lancashire – and committed to bringing further detail back to the council on the subject during the course of the year, a pledge which the Tories accepted.

A Chorley/South Ribble/West Lancashire council area – which would serve around 353,000 residents – would result in at least four new authorities being created across Lancashire.

The government has set 500,000 as its ideal minimum population size for new standalone ‘unitary’ authorities – but has said it is willing to be flexible on an area-by-area basis.

The leaders of both Chorley and South Ribble joined their counterparts across Lancashire in signing a joint letter last month answering a government request to set out an “interim plan” for how they would make the ministerial vision for a streamlined council set up a reality in Lancashire.

It acknowledged a lack of consensus on the subject across the county and so merely mused on the possible total number of new councils – ranging from one to five – without being explicit about geography, so as to keep all corners of the county on board.

Lancashire – along with 20 other parts across the county affected by the government-imposed overhaul – now has until 28th November to try to come up with what ministers have said they would like to be a single blueprint for a new local authority landscape.

TWO-TIER TEARS

Deputy Chorley Council leader Peter Wilson said that in 25 years of observing the current two-tier system in Lancashire, he has “never been convinced [it] serves the public interest the best”.

The arrangement involves district authorities like Chorley and South Ribble being responsible for things like planning applications, parks and waste collection in their own areas, while more costly services like social care, highways and schools are provided across most of Lancashire by the county council.

Cllr Wilson told the latest full council meeting that while changing the present set-up would likely be time-consuming and expensive, it was necessary to absorb “short-term pain” in order to achieve something “better”.

His Labour colleague Alan Whittaker – a veteran of both the district and county council – said trying to get things done at the latter, higher-tier authority was “a bit like punching fog”.

“It goes into a black hole and…comes back about three-and-a-half weeks later and it says, ‘Sorry, we can’t do that.’”

However, he did stress the need to maintain “democratic involvement” under a reformed system by ensuring a sufficient number of councillors on the new authorities.

The changes are likely to see the almost 700 councillors that sit on the dozen district councils, Lancashire County County Council, Blackpool Council and Blackburn with Darwen Council slashed by more than half.

MAKING THE NUMBERS ADD UP

Councils must share an adjoining border in order to merge – and the government says it wants to see the enlarged bodies cover populations of at least 500,000 people. However, ministers have indicated that that is not a hard-and-fast rule – and several Lancashire leaders are hoping they can successfully pitch plans for new councils serving around 350,000 residents.

Lancashire’s population: 1.57m

Blackburn with Darwen - 157,503

Blackpool - 142,708

Burnley - 96,435

Chorley - 119,352

Fylde - 83,846

Hyndburn - 84,261

Lancaster - 145,559

Pendle - 97,039

Preston - 156,411

Ribble Valley - 64,469

Rossendale - 71,541

South Ribble - 113,552

West Lancashire - 120,703

Wyre - 116,994

Source: Office National Statistics mid-year population estimates 2023