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Preston should merge with Lancaster and Ribble Valley as part of a forthcoming shake-up of local government, the city’s councillors are set to argue.
All three political groups on Preston City Council are united in their support for the creation of the new authority.
A government-ordered overhaul will see each of the 15 councils that currently exist across Lancashire scrapped and replaced with a handful of new ones covering larger areas.
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Ministers have asked local leaders to work together to come up with a plan for the entire county, but agreement has so far proved elusive.
However, within Preston, a cross-party consensus has quickly emerged – meaning councillors of all political colours will now push for the same outcome.
If ultimately given the green light by the government, the merger would marry up Lancashire’s only two cities – Preston and Lancaster – with its most rural district, in the form of Ribble Valley.
Preston City Council’s Labour leader, Matthew Brown, acknowledged that a tie-up with South Ribble, Chorley and West Lancashire might be the more “obvious” option, but said he believes merging with Lancaster and Ribble Valley is the “most positive choice” for Prestonians.
The creation of a Central Lancashire council appears to be a non-starter after Chorley Council formally backed a configuration that included only South Ribble and West Lancashire. South Ribble has yet to debate the matter, but the borough’s leader, Jacky Alty, indicated her support for that suggestion late last year.
Cllr Brown says he is confident merging Preston, Lancaster and Ribble Valley would create a “powerhouse” area, whose constituent parts would complement each other to the benefit of all three. He pointed, in particular, to the Samlesbury Enterprise Zone, which straddles the existing Ribble Valley and South Ribble local authority borders.
“The new [National Cyber Force headquarters]…is going to [create] thousands of new jobs and [have a] knock-on effect through the local supply chain. We would also have British Aerospace, which brings a lot of other well-paid employment within the area.
“We’d have three universities [the University of Central Lancashire, Lancaster University and Cumbria University’s Lancaster campus] within the new local authority area, [as well as] two hospitals – and even two castles.
“We have really positive rail links and transport links and…in terms of the cultural offer that we could have across that area, I think it would be amazing. We’d get the whole Forest of Bowland, which is an area of outstanding natural beauty…[and] also the Eden Project North, which will be brilliant,” Cllr Brown said.
Regardless of the geographical make-up of the new councils created across Lancashire, they will all be so-called “unitary” authorities – meaning they will be responsible for delivering all of the services in their patch, ending the current ‘two-tier’ split between Lancashire County Council and districts like Preston.
The new bodies will therefore have to include big-spending departments like social care, highways and schools – which are currently structured at a county-wide level under the present system, except in Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen.
Government guidance on local authority reorganisation states that suggested footprints should be based on “sensible economic areas, with an appropriate tax base which does not create an undue advantage or disadvantage for one part of the area”.
According to the latest official ranking of the richest and poorest parts of England, Preston is the 46th most deprived, on average, out of 318 local authority areas, while Lancaster is 112th.
However, Ribble Valley is the 36th most prosperous and, in contrast to its proposed new local authority partners, no part of it falls within the 10 percent most deprived places nationwide.
In Preston, almost one in five its so-called ‘lower super output areas’ (LSOAs) – similar to council wards – fall into that category, as do nine of the 25 LSOAs in Morecambe, which is within the Lancaster City Council patch
Cllr Brown says the pooling of resources across the new council area would be a boon to Preston.
“In terms of council tax, Ribble Valley has a lot of wealthier properties, [whose payments] could be used across the authority [area]. Obviously, Preston is a working class community [and] we don’t get the same level of council tax [income],” he explained.
Meanwhile, Preston’s Liberal Democrat opposition group leader John Potter says he also believes a merger with Lancaster and Ribble Valley would be a “fruitful” arrangement.
“No matter what boundaries you pick, there are always going to be some oddities and odd shapes.
“But [these three councils] put together have quite a lot of benefits in terms of economic areas within Lancashire, really good businesses [and] universities – and good prospects for the future as well,” Cllr Potter said.
Conservative group leader Stephen Thompson said that he would rather have seen Preston hitch its wagon to South Ribble and part of Chorley, as the area would have made “more sense” geographically.
However, with that arrangement off the table, he said looking towards Lancaster and Ribble Valley “would appear to be the best option”.
“The advantage [of that] grouping is a range of excellent businesses, universities and a good urban-rural balance,” Cllr Thompson said.
Preston, South Ribble and Chorley have co-operated over housebuilding – including by pooling and redistributing their new housing targets – for more than a decade. The trio are also currently finalising the first ever joint Central Lancashire Local Plan, which will dictate development across the sub-region until the early 2040s.
That policy – which has been six years in the making – will survive even if the three neighbours end up in different local authority areas, thereby binding them together in one respect for years to come.
Size matters
A new council area made up of Preston, Lancaster and Ribble Valley would have a population of around 366,000 – about double the size of the existing Preston City Council patch.
That would be below the 500,000 threshold the government has indicated it would prefer to see for any newly-established authorities.
However, ministers have also indicated a willingness to be flexible when it comes to which proposals they would approve, in order to ensure that new local authority structures “make sense”.
Cllr Brown says he believes a Preston/Lancaster/Ribble Valley authority would be a more suitable size than that resulting from merger with South Ribble, Chorley and West Lancashire – which he claims would be “too large”, at more than half a million residents.
In a joint letter answering a request from the government for an “interim plan”, Lancashire’s 15 leaders this month acknowledged that there was not yet agreement between them over the number or shape of any new council areas – instead setting out simple numerical options for between one and five authorities, in order to cover all shades of opinion across the county.
The population figures mean a merger between Preston, Lancaster and Ribble Valley would require the creation of four or five new councils across Lancashire, as opposed to the maximum three that could be established if the government’s population criteria was satisfied.
As the LDRS revealed last week, a County Councils Network assessment of the financial benefits of any new arrangements in Lancashire suggests savings to the public purse can only be achieved if three or fewer new councils were established.
Four were estimated to generate an extra £11m in annual running costs, because – unlike Lancashire’s current 12 districts – they would each be all-purpose authorities.
Local government minister Jim McMahon told the LDRS in February that a key aim of the council reorganisation the Labour government was instituting in counties like Lancashire was to eradicate the “two-tier premium” that meant money was not being used as efficiently as it could be.
Meanwhile, the government has said it would be open to considering changes to existing council boundaries as part of the merger process, where there is “strong justification” for doing so – meaning areas joining up might not have to do so in their current form.
That raises the prospect of district fringes shifting from one place to another and so leaving their former local authority patch behind as they become part of a new unitary area.
The politics of merging
Preston, Lancaster and Ribble Valley councils are all currently controlled by different political groupings.
Labour hold an outright majority on Preston City Council, while the Conservatives are in charge in Ribble Valley.
Lancaster City Council has a Green Party leader, but is run by a ‘shared administration’ cabinet – comprising Greens, Liberal Democrats and an independent – after a Labour-led coalition collapsed late last year.
Preston leader Matthew Brown says he believes the two city authorities are “very aligned” in their priorities.
“There is a focus around community wealth building, arts and culture [and] tackling the climate emergency. The vast majority of the time [Lancaster] has been Labour-led as well”, he said.
Cllr Brown also cited a shared commitment between the two cities to delivering council housing – and said he believed the proposed merger would enable Preston to pursue “the values we have…around trying to bring more fairness to our communities and our local economy”.
Ribble Valley Borough Council leader Stephen Atkinson – who has announced his intention to step down from that position and earlier this month defected from the Conservatives to Reform – said at a meeting of the authority last week that the borough and Preston and Lancaster shared “advantages such as housing, universities and fantastic assets like motorways and railways”.
While opposed to the principle of the revamp the government is demanding, Cllr Atkinson added: “This is about the art of the possible rather than the ideal. It might be disputed, but I think it will get the majority of support from Lancashire councils.”
He added:“The key tension is having new areas that are sustainable – and questions around spending and debt.
“It’s a big ask to create four [new] authorities. If we only have three, we would be [put together] with East Lancashire. That would be an area of deprivation like no other.
“One senior politician said at one meeting [I attended]: ‘We need Ribble Valley’s money’. But I asked for us not to be put in there. Ribble Valley with Lancaster and Preston is the best chance for prosperity.”
Lancaster City Council has not yet stated a specific preference for its merger partners under the shake-up.
Asked for her favoured option at a meeting earlier this month, the authority’s leader, Caroline Jackson, said: “We know options include Ribble Valley and Preston, or Ribble Valley and Wyre – or Blackpool. These have all been suggested.
“We have to look at the best options. What might the good and bad things be? Who might our neighbours be? What will a new authority be called? What do other authorities think?
“We have had no conversations with Blackpool, but we have [had] with other councils, which were useful.”
“This is not about my preference – this is about getting the best for the district.”
Lancashire now has until 28 November to develop a final proposal for the government to consider – or, if it is unable to agree, will have to submit multiple blueprints for ministers to decide upon.
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