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Preston may after today be on course for its most dramatic political shake-up in a generation.
While County Hall and Town Hall may remain in name, it’s likely the shape of power and the figures within them will change.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is poised to fire the starting gun on the biggest shake-up to who governs Preston and Lancashire in decades.
Read more: Redrawing Lancashire’s map risks causing ‘confusion’ in devolution push
Dubbed as ‘Devolution by default’ the government’s white paper is understood to take aim at the current two-tier set ups across the country. That’s what we have here in Lancashire. Education, transport, health and social care operate at a county level with Lancashire County Council, while bins and other local services are at district level such as Preston City Council. And then there’s parish councils in some places and unitary authorities (who run all services) in Blackpool and Blackburn.
There’s been much posturing and arguing in the past few weeks (well, decades let’s be honest) – set against the back-drop of Lancashire County Council frantically trying to push forward its current Devolution settlement (and interestingly supported by the government to do so).
It would appear Lancashire MPs, of the Labour variety, have got their way in some shape or form with proposals for ‘super councils’. But which version of the map of those councils is not clear yet.
South Ribble, Chorley and West Lancs want to unite, Blackpool and Lancaster have said no way to becoming friends, Preston wants everyone to be bolted on and there’s already two unitary authorities in the county which could expand their power bases, and East Lancashire could be enormous geographically. For most people though, it’ll be a change to the logo on the bins. We are likely to find some rather odd dividing lines though – the River Ribble may stay as a very hard and fast boundary between Preston and South Ribble for example.
What all this means for next year’s county council elections remains unclear, will we have a council to actually elect people to? And would Labour miss a chance to grab back power in County Hall – even if only for a brief moment before the authority itself is scrapped.
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