A new council that merged Blackpool and Preston into the same area would help boost regeneration and tackle deprivation in both places.
That is one of the central arguments being made for the creation of the new local authority, which would also include Fylde and western parts of Wyre – and serve 475,000 people.
The proposal has been put forward by Blackpool Council in response to a government call for suggestions about how to streamline the local authority system right across Lancashire.
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Ministers have resolved to abolish all 15 of the county’s existing councils in 2028 – including the standalone authority for Blackpool, Lancashire County Council and the districts of Fylde and Wyre.
The government has set a deadline of 28th November for the current authorities to submit plans for the number and shape of the all-purpose ‘unitary’ councils they would like to see replace them – with Whitehall set to make a final decision next summer following a public consultation on a shortlist of options in the new year.
Blackpool Council’s blueprint is one of two that would create four new authorities across Lancashire – with options for two, three and five new councils also being suggested by other areas.
However, the Blackpool proposal is also the only one in which the new council would cut across existing local authority borders – with an area west of the Wyre estuary, including Fleetwood, Thornton Cleveleys and Poulton-le-Fylde, joining the new Blackpool/Fylde/Preston authority, and the rest of Wyre, including Garstang, becoming part of a council that also covers Lancaster and most of Ribble Valley.
In an interview to coincide with the publication of the 70-page document setting out the vision for the arrangement, Blackpool Council’s Labour leader Lynn Williams told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that it made sense on many levels.
“Blackpool and Preston are areas that are really pushing the issue of regeneration and [we both have] that urbanness – so there is far more in common [between us than not].
“I think [the proposed area] also reflects how people live and how they travel to work – a lot of people who live in Blackpool work in Preston and vice versa. You’ve got the connectivity of the M55, so there’s [west-east travel] as much as there is up to Cleveleys, Poulton and Fleetwood [which we have] a lot in common with.
“So there’s a real feeling of connectivity, work and community,” Cllr Williams said.
The bid document trumpets the ”large-scale regeneration programmes and ambitions” found in Blackpool and Preston – with a coming together of the two areas being promoted as an opportunity to bring “a clarity of purpose” on projects that could be developed between them, “together with consideration of the complementary roles of west Wyre and Fylde”.
However, the proposal also acknowledges the challenges posed by deprivation across the suggested new council area – pointing to the particularly concentrated pockets of poverty found in parts of Blackpool, Fleetwood and Preston.
But it posits that the footprint of the new council would promote “innovation” in what would be better co-ordinated and “scaled-up” efforts to help those areas facing “systemic inequalities and interlocking disadvantages across health, education, employment, housing and access to services”.
The plan adds that the new authority’s proposed geography would avoid “diluting” deprivation across too wide an area, which Cllr Williams said would risk a loss of the “policy drive” needed to deal with the problem.
The high proportion of houses in multiple occupation (HMO) – bedsit-style accommodation – in Blackpool and Preston is also recognised, along with a warning that any measures to tackle the issues those properties sometimes cause may simply displace them into Fleetwood and St. Annes, where there are also “significant numbers” of such premises.
It is estimated that the Blackpool Council proposal for four new Lancashire authorities would generate savings of £147.7m for the public purse by 2032/33 – and recurring annual savings of £66m thereafter, compared to the current cost of local government in the county. But the blueprint would also include a request for £250m of “debt repayment support” from the Treasury to be divided between the new councils.
It would also see the creation of a council for Lancaster, central and eastern Wyre and Ribble Valley – minus Clitheroe and surrounding areas, which would pass to a new East Lancashire authority – that would have a population of just 202,000. That figure is far below the government’s indicative threshold for new councils areas of 500,000.
Cllr Williams says the benefits of that northern authority would be an ability for it to focus on its “ruralness” in a way that may be denied it in other scenarios.
Nevertheless, no other council in Lancashire supports the Blackpool vision for the forthcoming shake-up. Of those authorities with which Blackpool would be wholly or partially bound under the suggested arrangement, Preston wants to hook up with Lancaster and Ribble Valley – in an alternatively-drawn four-council set-up – while Fylde and Wyre are both behind a merger between themselves, Blackpool and Lancaster as part of a three-council configuration for the county.
Asked whether she was concerned about having to go it alone to the government with the Blackpool Council proposal, Cllr Williams said it was not unusual for the town to be “stand[ing] on our own”.
But she added: “We think that this is right, not just for Blackpool, but for Lancashire. I think other [proposals] focus more on the data, without actually lifting your head up and looking at the county and how it would work.”
The proposal was discussed at a meeting of Blackpool’s full council on Tuesday evening, but a final decision on submitting it to the government will be taken by the authority’s cabinet on 25th November.
Why not all of Wyre?
The characterisation of Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre as a cohesive ‘Fylde coast’ area is “misleading”, according to the Blackpool Council proposal.
“The specific social and environmental issues along the more urban coastal strip stretching between the Wyre and Ribble Estuaries are considerably different to the rural communities looking towards Lancaster, [the] area known as Over Wyre. There is a distinct geographic polarity between the two halves of Wyre, which is not a continuous area of land,” the document notes.
It suggests that a Blackpool/Fylde/Preston combination – along with the areas west of the Wyre estuary – “offers a different focus” for a new council area, which would address the Wyre “anomaly”.
“Blackpool’s major transport links are via Preston and the M6 motorway, with an enviable frequency of rail services through Poulton-le-Fylde and Layton to Blackpool North, and alternative services through Fylde and other Blackpool stations to Blackpool South. Blackpool and Fylde both have an interest in an addition[al] crossing for the River Ribble, which completes the peninsula’s coastline within Preston’s boundary,” the blueprint explains, also highlighting the planned new Cottam Parkway station in suburban Preston which would sit on the South Fylde line.
“By putting Fylde at the heart of the new borough, the geography recognises the association of parts of St. Annes northward to Blackpool, and Lytham, Warton, Kirkham and Freckleton eastward to Preston, and allows for further development of a complimentary economic and tourism offer in a co-ordinated way. It also offers opportunity for both St. Annes and Kirkham to benefit from their geographic locations,” the proposal adds.
Not all in Blackpool in favour
But the Conservatives would prefer to see a version which includes Lancaster instead of Preston, saying a combined coastal authority would be a better fit.
Cllr Paul Galley, leader of Blackpool’s Conservative opposition, told the meeting the process felt rushed and added: “Blackpool, is so unique – trying to merge a coastal town like ours with industrial Preston doesn’t make sense.
“Why are we allowing this to happen with a whimper and not a shout?”
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