'Changing the cast list now would be a bad idea,' Labour-run Chorley Council leader Alistair Bradley

Labour-run Chorley Council will call for the cancellation of its local elections in 2026 after concluding that holding polls across Lancashire next year would risk destabilising the forthcoming revamp of local government across the county.

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Chorley leader Alistair Bradley told a meeting of the authority that the timing of the elections "would throw a huge spanner" into an already complex process - because they would come just weeks before the government is set to decide on the authorities that should be established to replace those set to be axed.

He said that while it was not mathematically possible for Chorley Council to change political hands at what would be the authority's last ever elections next May - because of the strength of Labour's majority - that was not the case in the other six authorities also due to hold polls, meaning the way could be paved for upheaval in the midst of the overhaul.

"If you change the entire cast list a month before you are going to be having a conversation with the government, that just doesn't make any kind of sense - because the people coming in would quite rightly say, [that they] did not agree to any of this.