Proposals to merge Lancashire councils

A Lancashire MP has suggested merging councils in the county, with one option being Preston and Fylde ending up in the same authority as Pendle.

urnley MP Oliver Ryan released a document last week containing a raft of ideas about how to slash the overall number of councils from the current 15 to just three or four.

His blueprint emerged before – and is separate to – a letter sent to the government in which a majority of Lancashire’s Labour MPs called for a radical redrawing of the local authority map as part of a push to beef up the county’s current devolution deal.

Mr. Ryan alighted upon similar themes in his document, but went further than the letter to local government minister Jim McMahon by proposing which parts of the county could be bound together to form new standalone – so-called ‘unitary’ – authorities.

Under his preferred option, new councils would be created out of the areas currently covered by:

• Preston Chorley, South Ribble and West Lancashire;

• Blackpool, Fylde, Wyre and Lancaster; and

• Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Ribble Valley, Pendle, Rossendale and Hyndburn.

Such a set-up would create authorities with between 503,000 and 556,000 residents.

However, the Labour MP also suggested an alternative four-council option, which would generate population sizes of between 353,000 and 420,000 per authority.   In that scenario, the areas that would join up would be:

• Preston, Fylde, Ribble Valley and Pendle;

• Blackpool, Lancaster and Wyre;

• Chorley, South Ribble and West Lancashire;  and

• Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Rossendale and Hyndburn.

In the document setting out his vision for the “rationalisation” of Lancashire’s councils, Mr. Ryan acknowledges that the geography of some of the alternative options is “interesting”, but stresses the financial stability of all the suggestions as a result of separating out the larger population centres of Preston, Blackburn and Preston into different council areas.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service about his ideas, he said he was sure people would have suggestions of their own – but that his aim was simply to spark “a conversation about the effectiveness of public services”.