Shake-up of county's councils prompts service delivery fears

Debate discusses number and impact of potential new authorities

- BY PAUL FAULKNER Local democracy reporter

PARK maintenance, leisure centres and regular bin collections could be put at risk by the financial pressures created by a shake-up of Lancashire's councils including in Hyndburn.

That was the warning from two leading politicians during a debate ahead of next month's Lancashire County Council elections.

Under government plans, the authority along with Lancashire's 14 other councils will be scrapped within the next three years and replaced with a handful of new ones.

The move will end the two-tier split that exists across most of Lancashire between the county council - which is responsible for major services like the roads, social care and schools across the wider area and the dozen more local district councils which look after doorstep issues in their own smaller patches.

Reform UK's Stephen Atkinson and Green Party county group leader Gina Dowding said the so-called 'discretionary' work done by those authorities in Rossendale, Preston, South Ribble, Chorley, West Lancashire, Fylde, Wyre, Lancaster, Ribble Valley, Burnley, Hyndburn and Pendle could be lost.

The standalone councils to be formed under the new system would each be responsible for all services in their respective areas.

Cllr Atkinson, the outgoing leader of Ribble Valley Borough Council, said: "Social care adult and children's is about 65 percent of the county council's budget, growing every year.

All that will happen when you join [all services] together...[is] you'll start to lose your parks and...your weekly bin collection [which] only we do in Ribble Valley."

He added that the geographical footprint of the districts gave them a local knowledge that larger authorities lacked, which had proved vital for the distribution of government support schemes during the cost-of-living crisis and emergency help for businesses at the height of the pandemic.